Is this possible to do without a small office acquiring a server?
 I'm trying to set this up for a small business in my area, but I
don't want to waste hours of time trying to see whether it's possible,
if it's not.
 The corollary questions is: if possible, how can it be shared, and
does Outlook 2003 offer this functionality?

The short answer is, yes, this is possible!  In Outlook 2000 Microsoft
had a very handy utility included call NetFolders which allowed you to
share Calendar, Tasks, and Contacts between yourself and any other
Outlook 2000 user with an email address.  Unfortunately, Microsoft
removed this functionality in Outlook 2002 and later.

The good news is that other software vendors have created software to
replace this functionality as an add-on to Outlook.  One such vendor
that I have identified is called 4Team.  You can view their Outlook
sharing product at this URL:

http://outlook.4team.biz/

Their software claims to be compatible with all Versions of Windows
above 98 and all Outlook versions above 2000.

I have not personally used this software, so I can't comment on how
well it works, but it seems to fit your needs.  And, it is much
cheaper than buying and maintaining an Exchange server.

If you only have a few calendars/contacts to share in a small office,
I think this product could work well for you.  But, if the web of
sharing gets too complicated or there are too many users involved, the
headaches of administering a setup like this may outweigh the cheap
cost.

Search strategy

I found this company by searching through Google for outlook+netfolder.

://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=outlook+netfolder

Good luck!
Weaver

Just what I was looking for - thanks!

I'm glad my answer was helpful!  Thanks for the great rating and the tip!

Weaver