[Web4lib] Federated search products

[Roy Tennant]

And I'd also like to point out that the amazing work that David is  
doing is the end result of...wait for it...part of one person. Sure,  
he's an uncommon person, but it's not like you have to have a roomful  
of programmers.
Roy

On Oct 20, 2005, at 3:45 PM, David Walker wrote:

>>> Even when [the Metalib X-Server] does get there,
>>> however, who will have the time and skills to build
>>> an interface essentially from scratch. We don't.
>>>
>
> Well, I guess we do, since we are building an interface from scratch
> here at Cal State San Marcos using the Metalib X-Server -- as are  
> three
> or four other libraries.
>
> But we are an early adopter of the X-Server.  As soon as we finish our
> work here at San Marcos, we'll make our code open source (and I  
> hope the
> other X-Server libraries will as well), so that new libraries who are
> interested in using the Metalib X-Server can start building their
> interfaces from . . . well, some point after scratch.
>
> It's actually not that difficult to make an interface against an
> XML-based API.  A little code to pass information back and forth and
> XSLT to make it pretty.
>
> So I guess there's actually a middle point between commercial and open
> source metasearch system -- and that is to have a group of libraries
> sharing open source code for the interface to a system, while the  
> vendor
> maintains the underlying application and knowledgebase.
>
> I think that can actually work out really well.  If I am going to  
> spend
> my time working on a metasearch system and sharing code, I would much
> rather spend it on the interface (which is the most important part of
> the system) than building Z39.50 and other types of connections.
>
>
> --Dave
>
> =================
> David Walker
> Web Development Librarian
> Library
> Cal State San Marcos
> 760-750-4379
> =================
>
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