Just thinking about this probably fairly simple task, but it seems a bit overwhelming. Suppose you want a searchable archive of 9fans and all you have to start with is this single 150 MB file of ~46,000 messages. What do you do? The answer isn't obvious to me.
Greg P.S. I'm prepared to rely on existing searchable archives to do this in real life. It's just that in the few minutes thought I've given to this problem, I've become much more impressed with those existing seachable archives and their very quick responses.
