Lucene is a wonderful thing

Erik Hatcher, author of Lucene in Action has put together a nice presentation overview of Lucene at JavaLobby.org. A login is required, but it is worth it.

Erik has been doing some fascinating work with us at the University of Virginia where we use Lucene to index The Rossetti Archive, a comprehensive digital edition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's works. He transformed our search engine from a sloth to a cheetah. Searches that used to take minutes finish in under a second with Lucene.

I can't say good enough things about the Lucene technology or Erik's expertise with it. If you work with data and need to find it, Lucene may be of interest to you.