J. Foster, Editor
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Produced as a collaborative effort by the Joint IETF/RARE/CNI Networked Information Retrieval - Working Group (NIR-WG)
This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
The purpose of this report is to increase the awareness of Networked Information Retrieval by bringing together in one place information about the various networked information retrieval tools, their developers, interested organisations, and other activities that relate to the production, dissemination, and support of NIR tools. NIR Tools covered include Archie, WAIS, gopher and World Wide Web.
1. Introduction .............................................. 2
2. How the information was collected ......................... 3
3. What is covered? .......................................... 3
4. Updating information ...................................... 5
5. Overview of the types of NIR Tool ......................... 5
6. NIR Tools ................................................. 9
7. NIR Groups ................................................ 123
8. Security Considerations ................................... 180
9. Acknowledgements .......................................... 180
10. Author's Address .......................................... 180
11. Appendix A: NIR Tool Template ............................. 181
12. Appendix B: NIR Group Template ............................ 188
13. Appendix C: Email Lists and Newsgroups .................... 192
14. Appendix D: Coming Attractions ............................ 207
15. Appendix E: Extinct Critters (Tools) ...................... 222
16. Appendix F: Extinct Critters (Groups) ..................... 222
As the network has grown, along with it there has been an increase in the number of software tools and applications to navigate the network and make use of the many, varied resources which are part of the network. Within the past two and a half years we have seen a widespread adoption of tools such as the archie servers, the Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS), the Internet gopher, and the Worldwide Web (WWW). In addition to the acceptance of these tools there are also diverse efforts to enhance and customise these tools to meet the needs of particular network communities.
There are many organisations and associations that are focusing on the proliferating resources and tools for networked information retrieval (NIR). The Networked Information Retrieval Group is a cooperative effort of three major players in the field of NIR: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Association of European Research Networks (RARE) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), specifically tasked to collect and disseminate information about the tools and to discuss and encourage cooperative development of current and future tools.
The purpose of this report is to increase the awareness of NIR by bringing together in one place information about the various networked information retrieval tools, their developers, interested organisations, and other activities that relate to the production, dissemination, and support of NIR tools. The intention is to make this a "living document". It will be held on-line so that each section may be updated separately as appropriate. In addition, it is intended that the full document will be updated once a year so that it provides a "snapshot" report on activities in this area.
Whilst the NIR tools in this report are being used on a wide variety of information sources including files and databases there remains much that is currently not accessible by these means. On the other hand, the majority of the NIR Tools described here are freely available to the networked Research and Education community. Tools for accessing specialised datasets are often only available at a cost.
It should be noted that in many ways networked information retrieval is in its infancy compared with traditional information retrieval systems. Thesaurus construction, boolean searching and classification control are issues which are under discussion for the popular NIR Tools but as yet are not in widespread use. However it should be said that, with the vast amount of effort that is currently going into the NIR field, rapid progress is being made. Much work is currently being done on expanding some of the NIR tools to include handling of multimedia information services. Progress has also been made in the discussions on classifying and cataloguing electronic information resources.
2. How the information was collected
The information contained in this report was collected over the network from the contacts for each NIR Tool or Group using two templates:
The contents of these templates were discussed by the NIR WG in Boston (July, 1992) and subsequently on the email list. (See the Section on the NIR-WG for details of how to join this mailing list.) The initial draft report was discussed at the NIR Working Group in Washington (November, 1992) and updated and added to at subsequent WG meetings. Before the final submission as an RFC the individual templates were reviewed by independent reviewers from around the world. Their efforts are acknowledged in Section 9.
The NIR Tool template was used to collect the information necessary to identify and track the development of networked information retrieval tools. This template asked for information such as how and where to get the software for each NIR Tool, documentation, demonstration sites, etc. The main part of the template has been completed by the main individual responsible for the tool. Sections of the template (e.g., on clients) may have required completion by others.
The NIR Group template requested information on the aim and purpose of the group, the current tasks being undertaken, mailing lists, document archives, etc.
In the current report you will find information on the following NIR tools:
Alex
archie
gopher
Hytelnet
Netfind
Prospero
Veronica
WAIS (including freeWAIS)
WHOIS
World Wide Web (including MOSAIC)
X.500 White Pages
Appendix D covers "Forthcoming Attractions":
Hyper-G
Soft Pages
WHOIS++
and the following NIR Groups:
Appendix C contains a list of the relevant email lists and Appendix D contains information on "Coming Attractions" which are NIR tools not yet in widespread use.
Updates on and additions to the information contained in this report are welcome. CNIDR have agreed to host the report and to accept updates to individual templates from the template maintainers. Send updates using the appropriate template (from Appendix A or Appendix B of this report) to:
[email protected]
The current templates and this report may be retrieved from the UK Mailbase Server:
Via anonymous ftp (use your email address as the password):
URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/tool.template
URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/group.template
URL: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/nir.status.report
or via gopher or World Wide Web to mailbase.ac.uk
or via email:
Mail to: [email protected]
Text of the message:
send nir tool.template
send nir group.template
send nir nir.status.report
5. Overview of the types of NIR Tools
The following is an overview of major networked information retrieval (NIR) tools available on the Internet. There are many excellent books which discuss the Internet and NIR Tools in detail. Such books include "The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog" by Ed Krol and published by O'Reilly and Associates, Inc and "The Internet Guide for New Users" by Daniel Dearn and published by Meckler.
The number of these NIR tools is large and growing quickly. Certain techniques reappear regularly and seemingly different tools may perform similar tasks, allowing a simple classification of projects encompassing most of the existing tools and services.
The classification presented here is only one possible ordering. The goal is to define in broad outlines what can be done with particular tools, realizing that users will always find novel unanticipated ways of applying them.
Basic Internet services such as electronic mail and anonymous FTP can be used to share information across the Internet, but neither allows simple browsing and neither is particularly easy for the newcomer to learn to use. Gopher and the World Wide Web (W3) are two recent developments that attempt to make it easier to distribute information over the Internet. Both allow the user to browse information across the network without the necessity of logging in or knowing in advance where to look for information.
The Gopher project was first developed at the University of Minnesota to provide a simple campus-wide on-line information system. Gopher represents information as a simple hierarchy of menus and files. It has limited capability to recognize different types of files, allowing, for example, the display of selected types of image files. Gateways to other services are provided (usually in a manner that is transparent to the user). The underlying Gopher protocol is simple, and has facilitated the creation of freely available clients for use on a variety of hardware platforms and operating systems. The more recent Gopher+ protocol adds the ability to provide documents in alternate forms (PDF, PostScript, RTF, Word). These features and the ease of installing and administering gopher servers has led to an explosive growth of gopher sites since its initial deployment. As of November 1993, there were over 2200 known servers.
World Wide Web relies on hypertext; formatted documents are displayed, and hypertext links within the document can be selected to travel from the current document to another. W3 allows a user to annotate documents (using hypertext links), provides gateways to other services, and has multimedia support (for example, on appropriate hardware platforms it can intermix text and images in a displayed document). There is a range of free W3 clients, supporting many environments. World Wide Web was originally developed at CERN for the High Energy Physics Community.
Gopher and WWW share a maintenance problem in that there is no automated way to update links to other documents when those documents are moved or removed.
Directory Service tools are intended to provide a lookup service for locating information about users (often referred to as White Pages), or services and service providers (Yellow Pages). For example, a White Pages service might be used to locate an electronic mail address, given a name and organization, while a Yellow Pages service could be used to locate an online library catalog or file archive site.
One of the first directory services deployed on the Internet was WHOIS, a simple White Pages service created to track key network contacts for the early DARPA-sponsored incarnation of the Internet. A number of sites currently operate WHOIS servers, based on a range of extensions and enhancements to the original model. WHOIS enjoys the advantages of simplicity and the presence of WHOIS client software on a preponderance of Internet-connected hosts. Work is underway on a more powerful protocol, known as WHOIS++, which is backwards-compatible with WHOIS.
The X.500 Directory Service is a much more ambitious Directory project that has been under development for a number of years under the aegis of ISO/OSI. Implementations, concerned primarily with White pages services, are available in the public domain and from commercial sources. There are LDAP based X.500 clients available for most major platforms, as well as a LDAP based gopher gateway to X.500.
Despite years of effort, there is still no single White Pages Directory Service for the entire Internet; Yellow Pages services remain even less well developed and deployed. The cost of setting up the service is one obstacle; maintaining the required databases is even more daunting.
There are several Internet-based projects that build indexed catalogs of information to facilitate searching and retrieval. The first such services provided network access to library card catalogs, with more recent projects indexing network-based information.
archie:
The archie service began as a simple project to catalog the contents of hundreds of ftp-accessible online file archives. The archie service gathers location information, name, and other details describing such files and creates an index database.
Users can contact an archie server and search this database for files they require.
The archie service is accessible through a range of access methods, including telnet, stand-alone client programs running on a user's own machine, gopher, WWW, or via electronic mail. The initial implementation of archie tracks over 2,100,000 filenames on over 1,200 sites around the world (as of November 1993). There are about 30 (geographically distributed) archie servers. Both commercial and freely available versions of the archie client software are available.
Work continues on extending the archie service to provide additional types of information. The latest version is being used to provide a prototype Yellow Pages service and directories of online library catalogs and electronic mailing lists.
Veronica:
Veronica arose as an attempt to do for the world of Gopher what archie did for the world of ftp. A central server periodically scans the complete menu hierarchies of Gopher servers appearing on an ever-expanding list (over 2000 sites as of November 1993). The resulting index is provided by a veronica server and can be accessed by any gopher client.
Online library catalogs:
A large number of libraries make their computerized library catalogs available over the Internet. Most are available through telnet sessions in which the user connects to a specific address and logs in using a specific login name. Some are also available through other tools, such as Gopher.
Text-based Indexing Services (WAIS)
WAIS:
Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) is a system for indexing and serving information in a network-based environment. It is distinct from indexing tools such as archie and veronica in that it is used to index text-based target documents on a server, as well as descriptions of the contents of a server.
A WAIS server allows the administrator to set up an index of the documents (or resources) to be published. The user employs a WAIS client to attach to a particular WAIS server, and specifies a search pattern which is matched against the server's index. In early WAIS clients, searches are specified as simple natural- language queries; common ("stop") words are removed, and Boolean "ORs" are implicitly added between the remaining list of words. Matching documents are rank-ordered according to a simple statistical weighting scheme which attempts to indicate likely relevance. The user may choose to view selected documents, or further refine the search. The results of one search may be used to successively refine future searches ("relevance feedback"). Gopher clients can also access WAIS servers via a transparent gateway.
Both freely available and commercial versions of WAIS servers and clients are available. Current work is attempting to add Boolean expressions and proximity and field specifications to queries.
There are currently (as of November 1993) some 500 registered WAIS databases with an estimated 2000 additional databases that are not yet registered. There are approximately another 100 commercial WAIS databases.
This section contains detailed information about the various NIR Tools. It is ordered alphabetically.
Date template updated or checked: 19th March, 1994 By: Name: Vincent Cate Email address: [email protected]
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Brief Description of Tool:
OVERVIEW:
The Alex filesystem provides users and applications transparent read access to files in anonymous FTP sites on the Internet. Today there are thousands of anonymous FTP sites with a total of a few millions of files and roughly a terabyte of data. The standard approach to accessing these files involves logging in to the remote machine. This means that an application can not access remote files like local files. This also means that users do not have any of their aliases or local tools available. Users who want to use an application on a remote file first have to manually make a local copy of the file. There is no mechanism for automatically updating this local copy when the remote file changes. The users must keep track of where they get their files from and check to see if there are updates, and then fetch these. In this approach many different users at the same site may have made copies of the same remote file each using up disk space for the same data.
Alex addresses the problems with the existing approach while remaining within the existing FTP protocol so that the large collection of currently available files can be used. To get reasonable performance long term file caching is used. Thus consistency is an issue. Traditional solutions to the cache consistency problem do not work in the Internet FTP domain: callbacks are not an option as the FTP protocol has no provisions for this and polling over the Internet is slow. Therefore, Alex relaxes file cache consistency semantics, on a per file basis, and uses special caching algorithms that take into account the properties of the files and of the network to allow a simple stateless filesystem to scale to the size of the Internet.
USER'S VIEW:
To a user or application, Alex is just a normal filesystem. Any command that works on local files will work on Alex files. Since Alex is a real filesystem, nothing needs to be recompiled and no libraries are changed. Thus, users can apply all of their existing skills and tools for using files.
The user sees a filesystem with a hierarchical name space. At the top level (/alex) there are top-level Internet domains like "edu", "com", "uk", and "jp". Each component of the hostname becomes a directory name. Then the remote path is added at the end. If the user does a "ls /alex/edu/berkeley" he sees some machine names such as "ucbvax" and "sprite" and some directories on berkeley.edu. From the "ls" it is not clear what is where. The user may or may not be aware of host boundaries.
INFORMATION PROVIDER'S VIEW:
Alex is implemented as a user level NFS server. NFS was chosen because it makes it easy to add Alex to a wide range of machines. Most machines can simply use the mount command.
The model of usage is that there is one Alex server running at each institution (though this is not required in any way). Users mount the local server which caches files for users at that site.
Any information put into any anonymous FTP site becomes available via Alex.
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Primary Contact(s):
Name: Vincent Cate
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: School of Computer Science 5000 Forbes Ave. Pittsburgh PA, 15213
Telephone: +1-412-268-3077
Fax: +1-412-681-1998
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Help Line:
At this time Alex is a one person project (Vince).
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Related Working Groups:
Maybe the FTP working group.
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Sponsoring Organization / Funding source:
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Information Science and Technology Office, under the title "Research on Parallel Computing," ARPA Order No. 7330. Work furnished in connection with this research is provided under prime contract MDA972-90-C-0035 issued by DARPA/CMO to Carnegie Mellon University. Vincent Cate is supported by an "Intel foundation graduate fellowship".
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Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: alex-servers is for people setting up an Alex fileserver.
Archive: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.209.13)
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News groups:
None.
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Protocols:
What is supported: Any machine that can NFS mount a fileserver.
What it runs over: Unix machine and FTP
Other NIR tools this interworks with:
Uses FTP sites.
WAIS can be used to index files in Alex (this was done for ftpable-readmes and cs-techreports WAIS servers)
New versions of archie can output Alex paths.
Future plans: Graduate from CMU.
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Servers:
Date completed or updated: 19 March 1994 By: Name: Vincent Cate
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact: Name: Vincent Cate
Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-412-268-3077
Server software available from: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Location of more information: No other place to go to.
Latest version number: New versions all the time.
Brief Scope and Characteristics: This software is known to still contain bugs.
Approximate number of such servers in use: 200.
General comments: You can use lpr, make, grep, more, etc. on files around the world.
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Clients:
You just do an NFS mount of the server. No client software is needed.
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Demonstration sites:
Site name: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Access details - do the following as root: mkdir /alex mount -o timeo=30,retrans=300,soft,intr alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu:/ /alex
Example use: ln -s /alex/edu/cs/cmu/sp/alex/links alexlinks cd alexlinks ls cd cs-tr cd ls cd purdue ls lpr TR758.PS
If you like Alex and want to use it regularly please find, or set up, an Alex fileserver at/near your site.
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Documentation:
ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/www/alex.html ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/intro.ps ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/NIR.Tool ftp://alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu/doc/alex.post
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Bibliography:
@InProceedings{cate:alex, author = "Vincent Cate", title = "Alex - a Global Filesystem", booktitle = "Proceedings of the Usenix File Systems Workshop", year = 1992, pages = "1--11", month = may, place = "Ann Arbor, MI", keyword = "distributed file system, wide-area file system"
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Other Information:
FTP to alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu and "cd to doc". Get the "README" or anything else there. A current version of this document may be there and called "NIR.Tool". In Alex this file is named "/alex/edu/cmu/cs/sp/alex/doc/NIR.Tool".
ARCHIE
Date template updated or checked: 1 March, 1994 By: Name: Peter Deutsch Email address: [email protected]
The user searches the archie databases through either a telnet session to a machine running an archie server, or by using a stand-alone client program (which uses the Prospero protocol for sending and receiving requests). There is also an email interface which allows users to send and receive search requests via electronic mail.
Freely available archie clients exist for most operating systems and can be fetched using anonymous FTP from most of the current archie servers. There are also gateways to the archie system from many other NIR tools, including Gopher, WAIS and WWW. An X.500 interface to archie is currently under development.
The archie system is of particular utility serving information where there are many sites to be searched and/or where the cost of searching each site is high.
For example, there are currently over 1,200 anonymous FTP sites on the Internet, and the number continues to grow. Searching for a specific filename at a single site may involve scanning hundreds, or even thousands of filenames. Thus, most operators of anonymous FTP archives welcome the fact that archie indexes and serves the names of all files available from each site tracked.
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Primary Contact(s):
Name: Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc.
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Bunyip Information Systems Inc., 310 St-Catherine St. West, suite 202, Montreal, QC CANADA H2X 2A1
Telephone: +1-514-875-8611 Fax: +1-514-875-8134
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Help Line: for archie server system and telnet client
Name: Archie Group, Bunyip Information Systems Inc.
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +1-514-875-8611
Level of support offered:
Hours available: - server system:
email: 24 hour support
phone support: 9-5 EST
- helpdesk consultation: as time permits
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Funded by licensing of archie software and development contracts from sponsors. Additional information services based upon this software are now being tested.
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Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: none
-------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: "archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/archie-maint"
-------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: "archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/iafa"
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News groups: Name: comp.archives.admin
Archive: not known
-------------------
Name: alt.internet.services
Archive: not known
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Protocols:
What is supported:
The current archie system clients use the Prospero protocol for communication with the search engine on the archie server. Freely available clients are available which include source to perform this communication for those wishing to implement additional clients.
The archie server is capable of building arbitrary databases, using arbitrary search and access engines and the current release ships with the public domain implementation of WAIS. We expect future archie servers to serve information using this protocol. The current server system assumes the TCP/IP protocol suite is available, and in particular the ftp protocol for data gathering.
The archie system can be accessed through systems operating the Gopher, WAIS and WWW (HDDL) protocols. A gateway from the X.500 system is under development.
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Primary Contact:
Name: Alan Emtage
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +1-514-398-8611
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Clients:
Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: [email protected]
Primary Contact:
Name: Brendan Kehoe
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: not known
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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993 By: Name: Peter Deutsch Email address: [email protected]
Primary Contact:
Name: Khun Yee Fung
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: not known
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993 By: Name: Peter Deutsch Email address: [email protected]
Primary Contact:
Name: Brendan Kehoe
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: not known
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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: [email protected]
Primary Contact:
Name: George Ferguson
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: not known
Look for file "xarchie-1.3.tar.Z".
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Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: [email protected]
Primary Contact:
Name: Scott Stark
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: not known
Latest version number:
General comments: none.
Future plans: Not known
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Demonstration sites:
Site name: any one of:
archie.rutgers.edu 128.6.18.15 (Rutgers University) archie.unl.edu 129.93.1.14 (University of Nebraska in Lincoln) archie.sura.net 128.167.254.179 (SURAnet archie server) archie.ans.net 147.225.1.2 (ANS archie server) archie.au 139.130.4.6 (Australian server) archie.funet.fi 128.214.6.100 (European server in Finland) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.11.3 (UK/England server) archie.cs.huji.ac.il 132.65.6.15 (Israel server) archie.wide.ad.jp 133.4.3.6 (Japanese server)
Client software should be supported at all of these sites. Additional sites are available. Use the "sites" command in the archie telnet interface at any of the above sites for a more complete lists.
Access details:
Note: Some people forget and use ftp in place of telnet. This will not work. The hint that this is being done is that they claim that a password is needed, not that the site can't be found.
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Documentation:
Document Title: What is archie Location details: anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net Site: archie.ans.net Full file name: "pub/archie/doc/whatis.archie" Description: Brief overview of the archie system.
Document Title: archie man pages Location details: anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net Site: archie.ans.net Full file name: "pub/archie/doc/archie.man.*" Description: Manual pages for the archie system telnet interface in various formats (raw ASCII, nroff, compressed, etc.). This document also explains the various search options and other features, so is of use to users of the other archie client programs.
Document Title: What's New in 3.0 Location details: anonymous FTP from archie.ans.net Site: archie.ans.net Full file name: "pub/archie/doc/whats.new" Description: Description of the changes to archie for the first commercial release
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Bibliography: none
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: none
Date template updated or checked: 14 March 1994 By: Name: Mark P. McCahill Email address: [email protected]
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NIR Tool Name: Internet Gopher
The gopher protocol is often described as "fiercely simple"; it is connectionless (stateless), and uses TCP reliable streams. A client connects to a server using TCP, and sends a one-line text "selector string". The server responds by returning the item (a file, a directory listing, or a link to some other service) corresponding to the selector string and immediately closing the connection. Items in directory listings are returned as a series of lines terminated by carriage-return line-feed. Each item (line) is defined by a one- character tag to specify the item type, a display string or item-name that the client should display to the user, and a number of tab delimited fields to specify the selector string, host domain name and port number. Because of its simple and connectionless nature, gopher servers make very minimal demands on their host machines and gopher clients are extremely easy to implement.
The users view the Gopher world as a series of networked hierarchical directories much like a familiar filesystem. However, the links define a graph rather than a simple rooted tree. Links in the Gopher graph may define services other than simple files or directories; these include cso (qi) servers, telnet sessions, links to other gopher servers, and links to gateway servers.
The information provider's simplest view is that files and directories below a certain root directory on their machine are all visible and available for retrieval by gopher clients. More features like long names, item types, links, and gateway services are available to the more sophisticated information provider.
Servers and clients run on most popular hardware, including Macs, UNIX boxes, PC-DOS boxes. The Internet Gopher name is copyright (c) 1991-1992 by the University of Minnesota. The Internet Gopher protocol is described in an informational RFC (1436) available at better RFC archives everywhere. Extensions to the base gopher protocol allow for associating meta-information with gopher items, alternate views of documents (i.e., text, postscript, rtf, etc.) and electronic forms. Collectively, these extensions are referred to as Gopher+. Gopher+ is upward compatible with the orginal gopher protocol. The gopher software may be retrieved from numerous Gopher or FTP archive sites, including the University of Minnesota Gopher server, the Info-Mac Archive Gopher server, and by anonymous FTP from boombox.micro.umn.edu and sumex-aim.stanford.edu. As of December 1993, about 1/3 of the approximately 4800 Gopher servers on the internet support Gopher+.
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Primary Contact(s):
Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Microcomputer & Workstation Networks Center 152 Shepherd Labs 100 Union Street SE. University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455
Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Fax: +1-612-625-6817
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Help Line:
Name: Microcomputer HelpLine; ask for The Internet Gopher Development Team
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: USA: 612 MA MICRO (+1-612-626-4276) Helpline is for general support at the U of M.
Level of support offered: all users
Hours available: Phone Helpline 9-4 weekdays.
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Related Working Groups:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: News and views of all things gopher. Tends to be a high volume mailing list and technically oriented.
Archive: Via Gopher: University of Minnesota Gopher Information About Gopher
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: A low-volume mailing list of announcements of new software and servers.
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News groups:
Name: comp.infosystems.gopher
Description: Discussion of all things gopher.
Archive: Available via gopher client; connect to the gopher server at gopher.tc.umn.edu port 70, look in the "Information About Gopher" section.
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Protocols:
What is supported: Internet Gopher
What it runs over: Anything you can run TCP/IP over.
Future plans: New user interace metaphor on PowerPC and Pentium-based clients.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: UNIX.
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu
/pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (things change fast; please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Server, index server for WAIS based indices and for NeXT native indexing, tools, gateway code. Supports Gopher+.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Over 3000.
General comments: The defacto standard workhorse Gopher server. Paul Lindner is the architect and keeper of this server.
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Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Macintosh.
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Macintosh Gopher Server and tools, supports Gopher+.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Current estimates between 300 and 400.
General comments: Runs on any Macintosh with 1MB memory or more. Requires MacTCP. Can be configured to use Apple Computer's AppleSearch full-text search software as a Gopher-accessible search engine.
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Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: PC-DOS.
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Additional contacts: Name: Dennis Sherman Email address: [email protected]
Name: Foteos Macrides Email address: [email protected]
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 0.91b
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Basic Gopher server for PC-DOS boxes.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Current estimates between 25 and 75.
General comments: Written by Chris McNeil < [email protected] > , based on Phil Karns net package. The U of M Gopher team forwards difficult problems to Chris.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VMS
Primary Contact: Name: J. Lance Wilkinson Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-814-865-1818
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/VMS/
Latest version number: 1.2 VMS-0
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Basic VMS Server, shares some code with UNIX server.
Approximate number of such servers in use: 35-40 servers in use.
General comments: The VMS server was written and is maintained by J. Lance Wilkinson, Foteos Macrides, Bruce Tanner and others on the [email protected] mailing list.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VM/CMS
Primary Contact: Name: Rick Troth Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/ Brazos.IS.Rice.EDU:/pub/vmcms/
Latest version number: 2.4
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM VM/CMS installations.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.
General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Rick Troth. This server is commonly referred to as the Rice VM/CMS server. There is also another VM/CMS server: the Vienna VM/CMS server.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VM/CMS.
Primary Contact: Name: Gerhard Gonter Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 2.00.00
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM VM/CMS installations.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.
General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Gerhard Gonter. This server is commonly referred to as the Vienna VM/CMS server. There is also another VM/CMS server: the Rice VM/CMS server.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: MVS
Primary Contact: Name: Steve Bacher Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Server software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu:/pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 2.1
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher server for IBM MVS installations.
Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.
General comments: This server was written and is maintained by Steve Bacher.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Unix veronica server
Primary Contact: Name: Steve Foster Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Server software available from: Via FTP: veronica.scs.unr.edu:/veronica
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: veronica server software
Approximate number of such servers in use: Unknown.
General comments: Written and maintained by Steve Foster at the University of Nevada.
Future plans: Additional support for searching on Gopher+ attributes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Macintosh
Primary Contact Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP.
General comments: Macintosh TurboGopher is as of this writing, the fastest Gopher client available for the Mac. Written by the Minnesota Gopher Development Team. Supports Gopher+.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Macintosh
Primary Contact: Name: Don Gilbert, Biology, Indiana University - Bloomington Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: Indiana University Gopher Server IUBio Software+Data/GopherApp, Mac Gopher client Via FTP: ftp.bio.indiana.edu:/util/gopher/ gopherapp/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP.
General comments: Written and maintained by Don Gilbert. Supports Gopher+.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Macintosh
Primary Contact: Name: "Jonzy" Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: gopher.cc.utah.edu in Testing directory
Via FTP: ftp.cc.utah.edu:/pub/gopher/Macintosh/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: One of the many Macintosh Gopher clients. Requires MacTCP. Has a browser style interface. Uses customized Telnet application.
General comments: Written and maintained by "Jonzy".
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: UNIX (curses/EMACS based client)
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team
Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: The UNIX curses-based client.
General comments: Written and maintained by Paul Lindner. Supports Gopher+.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: UNIX (simple client does not use CURSES)
Primary Contact: Name: Sean Fuller Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 0.3
Brief Scope and Characteristics: sgopher is a simple gopher client for inetd/batch/online; it does not require much of the terminal other than it be 80X24 characters. It can be run stand alone or it can be launched from inetd. It doesn't use termcap or curses. Sgopher outputs the \r\n pair at the end of line and requires a < return > after each command to support more terminal types.
General comments: Runs on VMS, IRIX, Ultrix, AIX, Solaris 2.x, Solaris 1.x
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Xgopher: UNIX XWindows based client
Primary Contact: Name: Allan Tuchman Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes use of the X interface.
General comments: Written and maintained by Allan Tuchman.
Future plans: Gopher+ support planned for the future.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Xgopher: UNIX XWindows based client
Primary Contact: Name: Andrew Scherpbier Email address: [email protected] [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes use of the X interface... displays a way cool chewing gopher icon while information is being downloaded.
General comments: XView based gopher client.
Future plans: Gopher+ support.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: NeXT: NeXTstep client
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution
Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Makes full use of the NeXT interface.
General comments: Initial version written by Max Tardiveau. Now maintained by Paul Lindner.
Future plans:
-------------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: DOS TurboVision w/Clarkson packet drivers
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Character-based graphics and windows under DOS. Uses either Clarkson Packet drivers (CRWYN packet drivers) and a built-in TCP/IP protocol stack or Ftp, Inc.'s protocol stack (PC/TCP).
General comments: Gopher+ support.
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VMS.
Primary Contact: Name: Mark Van Overbeke Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 0.6
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General comments: The VMS client was written and is maintained by Mark Van Overbeke.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VMS.
Primary Contact: Name: The Internet Gopher Development Team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-612-625-1300
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: 1.12
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Identical to Unix gopher1.12. Works on a VMS 5.5-2 system running MultiNet 3.1B. UCX and Wollongong are also supported.
General comments: A port of the University of Minnesota Unix client to VMS.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VM/CMS.
Primary Contact: Name: Rick Troth Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Gopher client for IBM VM/CMS installations.
General comments: This client was written and is maintained by Rick Troth. This client is commonly referred to as the Rice VM/CMS client. There is also another VM/CMS client: the Vienna VM/CMS client.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: VM/CMS.
Primary Contact: Name: Gerhard Gonter Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: boombox.micro.umn.edu /pub/gopher/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for IBM VM/CMS installations.
General comments: This client was written and is maintained by Gerhard Gonter. This client is commonly referred to as the Vienna VM/CMS client. There is also another VM/CMS client: the Rice VM/CMS client.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: DOS with PC/TCP.
Primary Contact: Name: Steven E. Newton Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via FTP: oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu:/public/dos/misc/
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for DOS with PC/TCP
General comments: Written and maintained by Steven E. Newton
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: DOS with PC-NFS.
Primary Contact: Name: Stan Barber Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via FTP: bcm.tmc.edu:/nfs/gopher.exe
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for DOS with PC-NFS
General comments: Written and maintained by Stan Barber
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: DOS Novell LWP Gopher Client
Primary Contact: Name: Jeremy T. James Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via FTP: lennon.itn.med.umich.edu:pub/gopher
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: DOS Novell LWP Gopher Client
General comments: Written and maintained by Jeremy T. James.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Windows 3.1 with Winsock or PC/NFS.
Primary Contact: Name: Martyn Hampson Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Latest version number: (please check software distribution)
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for Windows; uses either Winsock DLL or PC/NFS network interface.
General comments: Written and maintained by Martyn Hampson. Gopher+ support.
Future plans:
-------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Windows with Winsock and ToolBook.
Primary Contact: Name: Kevin Gamiel Email address: [email protected] Telephone:
Client software available from: Via Gopher: U of M Gopher Information About Gopher Gopher Software Distribution Via FTP: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/micro/pc-stuff/ms-windows/winsock/gophbook.zip
Latest version number: 1.0
Brief Scope and Characteristics: Gopher client for Windows; uses Asymetrix's ToolBook to paint the screen and speaks to the network via a Winsock DLL.
General comments: Written and maintained by Kevin Gamiel
Future plans:
------------------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Air Gopher commercial client for windows
Primary Contact: Name: David Pool, Spry Software, Inc. Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-206-447-0300
Client software available from:
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General Comments:
Future plans: Gopher+ support planned.
------------------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994 By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Win Gopher
Primary Contact: Name: Bill Easton, Notis, Inc. Telephone: +1-708-866-0159
Client software available from:
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General Comments: Requires Winsock. Supports gopher.
Future plans: Gopher+ support planned.
------------------------------
Date completed or updated: 14 March, 1994
By: Name: Mark McCahill Email address: [email protected]
Platform: GINA
Primary Contact: Name: Mark Resmer, California Technology Project Email address: [email protected]
Client software available from:
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General Comments: Macintosh and windows clients include netnews, email.
Future plans:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
site name ip address login as serving area ---------------------------------------------------------------- consultant.micro.umn.edu 134.84.132.4 gopher North America gopher.uiuc.edu 128.174.33.160 gopher North America panda.uiowa.edu 128.255.40.201 panda North America info.anu.edu.au 150.203.84.20 info Australia gopher.chalmers.se 129.16.221.40 gopher Sweden tolten.puc.cl 146.155.1.16 gopher South America
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Title: RFC 1436 The Internet Gopher Protocol (a distributed document search and retrieval protocol) Via FTP: nic.ddn.mil /rfc/rfc1436.txt
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
The Whole Internet, Ed Kroll, O'Reilly, 1992
The Internet Gopher, "ConneXions", July 1992, Interop.
Exploring Internet GopherSpace "The Internet Society News", v1n2 1992
The Internet Gopher Protocol, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third IETF, CNRI, Section 5.3
Internet Gopher, Proceedings of Canadian Networking '92
The Internet Gopher, INTERNET: Getting Started, SRI International, Section 10.5.5
Tools help Internet users discover on-line treasures, Computerworld, July 20, 1992
TCP/IP Network Administration, O'Reilly.
Balakrishan, B. (Oct 1992) "SPIGopher: Making SPIRES databases accessible through the Gopher protocol". SPIRES Fall '92 Workshop, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
HYTELNET
Date template updated or checked: 28 February, 1994 By: Name: Peter Scott Email address: [email protected]
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Peter Scott
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: 324 8th Street East Saskatoon, Sask, Canada S7H 0P5
Telephone: +1-306-966-5920
Fax: +1-306-966-6040
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
Name: Peter Scott
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +1-306-966-5920
Level of support offered:
o volunteer
Hours available: 8:00 a.m - 3:30 p.m CST
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Mailing Lists: HYTELNET Updates Distribution
Address: [email protected]
Administration: By listowner Peter Scott [email protected]
Archive: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: bit.listserv.hytel-l
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported:
What it runs over:
Other NIR tools this interworks with:
Future plans: Possible translation into gopher format
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Platform: DOS
Primary Contact Name: Peter Scott Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-306-966-5920
Latest version number: 6.6 (Issued October 23, 1993)
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General comments:
Future plans: To contine to produce updated versions in current form.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hypertext...Information at your fingertips. In: Designing Information: new roles for librarians. Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1993
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
NETFIND
Date template updated or checked: 1 March, 1994 By: Name: Mike Schwartz Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Netfind provides textual information about people, when it is able to locate such information. It is not a directory in the usual sense of the word. Rather, it searches for people using a number of Internet services and heuristics about how to locate user information. Because of the techniques it uses, Netfind can locate information about more people than any other Internet user directory - over 5 million people in over 9,000 domains worldwide when last measured.
You can use the University of Colorado Netfind server by telnet to bruno.cs.colorado.edu: login as "netfind" (with no password). Help screens providing more detailed instructions and technical information are available there. There is currently no way for non- Internet users to access Netfind (e.g., using an email interface).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Mike Schwartz
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Department of Computer Science University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0430
Telephone: Declined. (Note: Netfind is currently a volunteer service. We do not have staff resources to support telephone inquiries.)
Fax: Declined.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
There are an increasing number of Netfind servers being set up at various Network Information Centers (including the U.S. Internic). However, since Netfind is provided as a volunteer service at this time, there is no help line.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: mailing list for user changes and updates.
Archive: None.
----------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: mailing list for sites running Netfind servers.
Archive: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
What it runs over: TCP/IP.
Other NIR tools this interworks with: Finger, Gopher, PH, SMTP, USENET news, UUCP maps, Various NIC databases, Various service logs, WAIS, WHOIS, X.500, DNS
In addition to the above list, we are currently exploring possibilities to integrate the Netfind seed database gathering mechanisms into the Fremont framework, to make the process more scalable, and to support other types of information (e.g., to help with mapping the Internet).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Platform: SunOS 4.1 or more recent. Uncertain whether Netfind will run on Solaris.
Primary Contact: Name: Mike Schwartz Email address: [email protected] Telephone: (not supplied)
Server software available from: ftp.cs.colorado.edu, in the directory pub/cs/distribs/netfind.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients: The Netfind client is available in the same release as the server. See above.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites: Site name: bruno.cs.colorado.edu The current list is: archie.au (AARNet, Melbourne, Australia) bruno.cs.colorado.edu (University of Colorado, Boulder) dino.conicit.ve (Nat. Council for Techn. & Scien. Research, Venezuela) ds.internic.net (InterNIC Directory and DB Services, S. Plainfield, NJ) eis.calstate.edu (California State University, Fullerton, CA) lincoln.technet.sg (Technet Unit, Singapore) malloco.ing.puc.cl (Catholic University of Chile, Santiago) monolith.cc.ic.ac.uk (Imperial College, London, England) mudhoney.micro.umn.edu (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis) netfind.anu.edu.au (Australian National University, Canberra) netfind.ee.mcgill.ca (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada) netfind.if.usp.br (University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil) netfind.oc.com (OpenConnect Systems, Dallas, Texas) netfind.vslib.cz (Liberec University of Technology, Czech Republic) nic.nm.kr (Korea Network Information Center, Taejon, Korea) nic.uakom.sk (Academy of Sciences, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia) redmont.cis.uab.edu (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/ Netfind.Gathering.ps.Z (compressed PostScript)
or
ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/ Netfind.Gathering.txt.Z (compressed ASCII).
An earlier paper is also available in
ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/ White.Pages.ps.Z or
ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/ White.Pages.txt.Z,
containing some of the original ideas in Netfind and measurements of the system. The Netfind.Gathering paper contains an up-to-date description of the data gathering and integration algorithms.
The third source of information focuses particularly on the URL-based remote site customization mechanism, and is available in ftp://ftp.cs.colorado.edu/pub/cs/distribs/netfind/Netfind.WP.URLs
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PROSPERO
Date template updated or checked: 1 March, 1994 By: Name: Steven Augart Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Prospero provides access to existing directories and indices that can be used to find files of interest that are available from Internet archive sites. Among the indices available is the archie database and a gateway to all Gopher menus, files, and searches. We hope to have WAIS indices and World Wide Web documents online in the near future.
Prospero also provides a mechanism to make directories and indices available to end-users and applications in a format that allows information from different sources to be integrated into a coherent whole.
Prospero does not interpret the data that it organizes. It does provide mechanisms to retrieve the data, but the display and use of the data is up to the user's application. Prospero is intended to serve as infrastructure that integrates information from a variety of sources and supports a variety of user applications.
Prospero allows fine grained authorization of requests to all objects, including directories and indices. Prospero supports the authentication of clients through four mechanisms: (a) simple client assertion of the user's identity; (b) a trusted port mechanism similar to that used by the Berkeley UNIX R commands; (c) a simple cleartext passwording mechanism; (d) Kerberos (version 5). The maintainer of an ACL chooses which of these mechanisms he or she wishes to accept as proof of the client's identity.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Email address: [email protected]
--------------------------
Name: Clifford Neuman
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: U.S.C. Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 U.S.A.
Telephone: +1-310-822-1511
------------------------
Name: Steven Augart
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: U.S.C. Information Sciences Institute 4676 Admiralty Way Marina del Rey, CA 90292-6695 U.S.A.
Telephone: +1-310-822-1511
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The design and implementation was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. CCR-8619663), the Washington Technology Center, Digital Equipment Corporation, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency under NASA Cooperative Agreement NCC-2-539.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is really two one-way mailing lists. Send mail to INFO-PROSPERO to obtain information about Prospero, papers, or the release. Mail to INFO-PROSPERO will not be passed on to subscribers. INFO-PROSPERO is also the list to which we will send status updates and information on how to obtain new releases.
Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as /pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc
Via Prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system as /sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc
--------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is for general discussion of Prospero, for announcements of new sites that have come on board, and for announcements of directories that people have created to organize the information already accessible.
Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as /pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc
Via Prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system as /sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Prospero does not have its own file retrieval protocol. Files may be automatically retrieved using FTP, NFS, AFS, and GOPHER. Loginable services may also be accessed via TELNET.
What it runs over: Directory service requests are layered on top of UDP, with our own (included) reliable message delivery layer.
Other NIR tools this interworks with: Archie, Gopher, Wais, WWW
Future plans:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
Date completed or updated: 1 November, 1993
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact: Name: Clifford Neuman and Steven Augart Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-310-822-1511
Via Prospero: /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z, in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype" virtual system.
Note that the name prospero.tar.Z refers to the most stable release (currently Beta version 5.1). If you want the latest version of the server (which includes the Gopher gateway), you should retrieve it by version number; the name for the latest version is prospero-alpha.5.2.tar.Z
Latest version number: Alpha Version 5.3
General comments:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
Date completed or updated: 1st November, 1993
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact Name: Clifford Neuman and Steven Augart Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-310-822-1511
Client software available from: Via anonymous FTP: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU, /pub/prospero/prospero.tar.Z
Via Prospero: /releases/prospero/prospero.tar.Z, in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/swa" virtual system.
Note that the name prospero.tar.Z refers to the most stable release (currently Beta version 5.1). If you want the latest version of the clients (which includes the Prospero menu browser), you should retrieve it by version number; the name for the latest version is prospero-alpha.5.2.tar.Z
Latest Version number: Alpha Version 5.2
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Title: The Prospero Protocol, version 5 Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-protocol.PS.Z
Document Title: Prospero User's Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-user-manual.PS.Z
Document Title: Prospero Library Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-library-manual.PS.Z
Document Title: Prospero Menu-based Browser API Manual Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/doc/prospero-menu-api.PS.Z Document Title: Description of Prospero Documents and Papers Location details: Site: PROSPERO.ISI.EDU Full file name: /pub/prospero/papers/README-prospero-documents
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Prospero:/papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-bii.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/papers/prospero/prospero-bii.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{prosperobii,
AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford and Augart, Steven Seger", TITLE = "Prospero: A Base for Building Information Infrastructure", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of INET'93", YEAR = 1993, MONTH = "August"}
For the readers of this report, this is the first paper you probably want to read about Prospero. This paper describes how Prospero can be used to integrate internet information services, including Gopher, WAIS, Archie, and World Wide Web. The paper was presented at INET'93 in August.
Prospero:/papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-oir.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-oir.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @ARTICLE{oir, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "Prospero: A Tool for Organizing {I}nternet Resources", JOURNAL = "Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy", MONTH = "Spring", YEAR = 1992, VOLUME = 2, NUMBER = 1}
This is the first paper we give to more general computer science audiences to read. It's also a good first paper to look at. It gives a good overview of Prospero and what it does. It also describes a bit about the Virtual System model, of which Prospero is a prototype implementation. Describes what Prospero does, not how it does it.
Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-gfsvsm.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{gfsvsm, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {P}rospero {F}ile {S}ystem: A Global File System based on the {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of the Workshop on File Systems", YEAR = 1992, MONTH = "May"}
This is a good third paper to read about Prospero. This one is targeted more toward system implementors. It provides more implementation details than the paper on organizing Internet resources, but less of the vision of how Prospero can be used together with other systems.
Prospero: /papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-smlic.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/papers/prospero/prospero-smlic.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @INPROCEEDINGS{prosperosmlic, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford and Augart, Steven Seger and Upasani, Shantaprasad", TITLE = "Using Prospero to Support Integrated Location-Independent Computing", BOOKTITLE = "Proceedings of the Usenix Symposium on Mobile and Location-Independent Computing", YEAR = 1993, MONTH = "August"}
This paper describes how the Prospero Directory Service can be used to solve the server selection problem and the user location problem. The paper was presented in August at the Usenix Symposium on Mobile and Location-Independent Computing.
Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/UW-CS-89-01-07.PS.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @TECHREPORT{vsmldos, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel for Large Distributed Operating Systems", INSTITUTION = "Department of Computer Science, University of Washington", YEAR = 1989, MONTH = "April", NUMBER = "89-01-07"}
This describes the initial vision for the Virtual System Model, the model on which Prospero is based. Much of the material in this paper appears in greater detail in other papers.
Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/UW-CSE-90-05-01.PS.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @TECHREPORT{vsmtp, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel: A Scalable Approach to Organizing Large Systems (A Thesis Proposal)", INSTITUTION = "Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington", YEAR = 1990, MONTH = "May", NUMBER = "90-05-01"}
for a long time this was the best description of Prospero, but all the information in this document appears in more recent papers and the dissertation itself.
Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-closure.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @ARTICLE{nfclosure, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The Need for Closure in Large Distributed Systems", JOURNAL = "Operating Systems Review", MONTH = "October", YEAR = 1989, VOLUME = 23, NUMBER = 4, PAGES = "28--30"}
This paper describes the reasons that operating systems need to support closure, that is they need to make it clear which name space is to be used when resolving names. While closure is one of the important features of Prospero, the concept should be applied in other operating systems too.
Prospero: /papers/subjects/operating-systems/prospero/prospero-neuman-thesis.ps.Z Anonymous FTP: /pub/prospero/papers/prospero-neuman-thesis.ps.Z (POSTSCRIPT) @PHDTHESIS{phdneuman, AUTHOR = "Neuman, B. Clifford", TITLE = "The {V}irtual {S}ystem {M}odel: A Scalable Approach to Organizing Large Systems", SCHOOL = "University of Washington", MONTH = "June", YEAR = 1992, NOTE = "Department of Computer Science and Engineering Technical Report 92-06-04"}
This is Clifford Neuman's Ph.D. Dissertation. It is currently the definitive work on Prospero and the Virtual System Model. Includes an obsolete version of the Prospero User's Manual and of the Prospero Protocol Specification.
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The PFS and PCOMPAT libraries are documented in the library reference manual. The PFS library allows one to directly make Prospero requests and parse the results and to manipulate Prospero objects as abstractions. The PCOMPAT library is an interface to the PFS library which uses the same interface as the UNIX filesystem; one can link many existing programs with the PCOMPAT library in order to get it to resolve names in the Prospero namespace. It is not as portable as the PFS library and does not provide as much functionality.
The third library interface is the menu-browser API library. It is documented in the menu-based browser API manual and is used by our menu-based browser.
VERONICA
Date template updated or checked: 28 February, 1994 By: Name: Steven Foster Email address: [email protected]
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veronica is the comprehensive title-index of the world's gopher servers. Because of veronica, the Gopher web is a search-and- retrieval system as well as a browsing system. veronica is popular because the ubiquitous Gopher client can both access the search server, and provide immediate access to the discovered resources. Taking advantage of Gopher's linked menus, and of the policy of open access at most gopher sites, veronica finds and indexes almost all items on publicly-accessible gopher servers.
As of February, 1994, veronica holds indexes to more than 3200 gopher servers on approximately 2500 internet hosts. In February 1994 the public-access veronica sites served an estimated 1,200,000 queries. Most queries are resolved in less than twenty seconds. Eight server sites offer searches to the internet community, and several other institutions run servers for internal access.
veronica is easily accessed via any Gopher client. It offers various types of searches, ranging from single-keyword searches to boolean queries of indefinite complexity.
A veronica search originates with a user's request for a search, submitted from a gopher client. The searches may include boolean operators ( AND, OR, NOT, and parentheses ) and several options to control the number of items returned, and to restrict the search to certain gopher types. The result of a veronica search is a set of gopher-type data items, which is returned to the gopher client as a gopher menu. Each item on this menu contains the user's desired keyword or keywords in the item title.
The user can access any of the gopher items by selecting from the returned menu. Items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. Because veronica is accessed through gopher clients, it provides immediate access to all types of data supported by the gopher protocol and the client implementation.
The veronica service comprises two functions:
1) Harvesting menu data from gopher servers, and preparing it for use; 2) Offering searches of that database to gopher clients.
These two functions are not necessarily provided by the same host computer. Currently collection and preparation of data are done at University of Nevada, and datasets are distributed to the other veronica servers.
The veronica service infrastructure has been fairly stable since July, 1993, with eight server sites offering searches for the internet community (March 1994). These servers are supported by the participating institutions: NYSERNET, PSI, SERRA, CNIDR, University of Koeln, SUNET, University of Bergen and the University of Nevada System Computing Services. Several additional servers offer searches with access limited to internal users; in this class are servers at MSU, SUNET, and the Australian University system.
An auxiliary tool to build a locally held menu of Public available has been created. Called "maltshop", it has been distributed since January, 1994. It appears that maltshop is rapidly being accepted, but its long-term effect on loading of the servers may be problematic.
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Primary Contact(s):
Name: veronica development team Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: VERONICA development team SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023 Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108
Name: Fred Barrie Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023
Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108
Name: Steven Foster Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: SCS Computer Center Building mailstop 270 University of Nevada, Reno Reno, NV 89557-0023 Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557 Fax: +1-702-784-1108
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Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: no telephone support available
Level of support offered: all users
Hours available: irregular response latencies to email queries, based on schedule of developers.
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Related Working Groups: GOPHER, FACETS
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Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected] Address: [email protected]
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What it runs over: TCP
Other NIR tools this interworks with: Gopher, WAIS, ftp
Future plans: Implement extensions with Gopher+. Support for URN/URL standards. Per-site updates of indexes. Subject-area-specific indexes. Indexes for USENET news and LISTSERV articles. Automated server load-levelling.
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Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact: Name: veronica development team Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-702-784-4292 or +1-702-784-6557
veronica-faq
how-to-compose-veronica-queries
Via Gopher: gopher.cnidr.org
veronica
veronica-faq
how-to-compose-veronica-queries
Via ftp: veronica.scs.unr.edu
veronica-code/
veronica-docs/
Latest version number: 0.6.5
Next planned version: 0.7b (March 1994)
1. Data-collector runs on any Unix computer that does TCP and compiles perl. This has not been distributed yet. Data collection, data preparation, and indexing are being done at veronica.scs.unr.edu. The harvester "walks" all advertised gopher servers, and any newly-discovered servers. Almost all redundant links are removed, leaving the ( hopefully ) canonical reference for each item. Indexes are built at Nevada, and the indexed dataset is distributed to server sites.
2. Server module.
Servers run on unix computers and answer to gopher-type-7
requests. Boolean keyword logic is implemented. See file
"how-to-compose-veronica-queries". Several options allow
retrieval of items with specified gopher-types, retrieval
of a file of links containing the search results, and
override for the default limit on number of results returned,
which is 200 items.
Server software runs on most flavors of unix, requires dbm and perl, and requires about 1.4 GB of data on disk, with considerable /tmp space available.
Server software is available to any site which wants to run a server. Server sites are encouraged to offer the service to the net at large.
Approximate number of such servers in use: twelve.
Auxiliary tool: Maltshop v. 0.2d
Maltshop builds a menu of Public Gopher Servers for the local
gopher menu.
Via Gopher: veronica.scs.unr.edu, port 70
11/Search ALL of Gopherspace
12/Script to automate your local
Veronica menu
Though veronica is well-accepted at this level of service, we are undertaking significant upgrade efforts during Winter 93-94.
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WAIS (WAIS, Inc.)
Date template updated or checked: 1 March 1994
By: Name: Nathaniel Lee
Email address: [email protected]
freeWAIS (CNIDR)
Date template updated or checked: 1 March 1994
By: Name: Jane Smith and Jim Fullton
Email address: [email protected] and [email protected]
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WAIS was developed by Thinking Machines Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts in collaboration with Apple Computer, Inc., Dow Jones & Company, and KPMG Peat Marwick. With over 100 databases and 5,000 users worldwide, WAIS is rapidly becoming a standard for information distribution within the Internet environment.
WAIS is a client-server application. Most of the clients remain freely available with a few exceptions. WAIS, Inc. develops and sells commercial versions of WAIS and the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) develops freeWAIS, a version free for distribution and use. A few freely distributable versions remain available from Thinking Machines, Inc. and other organizations.
What does WAIS do?
WAIS allows multimedia information to be stored anywhere on any platform. Using your interface of choice, WAIS enables you to find personal, corporate and public information. The information is accessible regardless of format: text, formatted documents, pictures, spreadsheets, graphics, sound, or video.
WAIS recognizes natural language queries. The search and retrieval of relevant information is made using your native language. To date, we have used English, French, Italian, and Latin! The most relevant documents, regardless of size, can be sent back to the server in their entirety to further refine your search (telling the server, "Find me more like this document.") Proven searches can be automatically repeated, monitoring and alerting you to new information as it becomes available.
How does WAIS work?
WAIS uses a single computer-to-computer protocol (NISO Z39.50- 1988). Each WAIS server reads your question and based on its words, searches the full text of the database for the most relevant documents, and ranks them using automatic word weighting. Servers need not fully understand your query; the retrieval process is based on a search method called relevance feedback.
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
Email address: [email protected]
Server software available from: Thinking Machines Corp.
245 First Street
Cambridge, MA 02145 Location of more
information:
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Jane Smith
Email address: [email protected]
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Jane Smith
Email address: [email protected]
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
Email address: [email protected]
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
Email address: [email protected]
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone:
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Date completed or updated: 13th December, 1993
By: Name: Brewster Kahle
Email address: [email protected]
"The details are correct, but I must point out that this version of WAIS is most outdated. I'd suggest replacing it with AIX ports of the wais-8-b5 or freeWAIS packages, if anyone's done those (I haven't) .." -Dennis.
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Site name: quake.think.com
Access details: telnet quake.think.com
login as wais.
Site name: cnidr.org
Access details: telnet cnidr.org
login as demo
select #2 (Demos of NIDR software)
select #2 (WAIS)
(this is the worst of all possible interfaces since it is just a dumb terminal interface)
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The Mac interface WAIStation has a user manual. The unix commands have man pages.
Available in special circumstances. Contact [email protected].
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Bibliography:
- "WAIS Bibliography", WAIS Inc, (last update) September 1993.
Available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais-inc-doc/txt/WAIS-bibliography.txt @wais.com or WAIS server wais-discussion-archive.src
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WHOIS
Date template updated or checked: 17 March, 1994 By: Name: Joan Gargano Email address: [email protected]
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The InterNIC Registration Services is located at Network Solutions, Inc., Herndon, VA, and is funded by a cooperative agreement from the National Science Foundations to provide assistance in registering networks, domains, asn's, and other entities to the Internet community via telephone, electronic mail, and U.S. postal mail.
Databases and information servers of interest to network users are provided, including the WHOIS registry of domains, networks, asn's and their associated poc's. Gopher and Wais interfaces are also available for retrieving information and accessing whois. Online documents maintained at registration services include registration related rfc's, registration templates, and various netinfo files. Many of the online files are available through our automatic mail service, [email protected]. Whois queries can also be directed to rs.internic.net. From a host, use the TELNET program to connect to host RS.INTERNIC.NET. When greeted by the Registration host, type "WHOIS" and press RETURN.
[email protected] is an automated service provided by InterNIC Registration Services. It allows access to documents and information via ordinary electronic mail. This is especially useful for users who do not have access to the NIC via a direct Internet link, such as users of BITNET, CSNET and UUCP sites.
To use the mail service, send a mail message to [email protected]. In the SUBJECT field, request the type of service you wish followed by any needed arguments. The message body is normally ignored. Large files will be broken into smaller separate messages. The information you request will be sent back to you as soon as possible.
WHOIS xxx Returns information about xxx from the WHOIS service. Use "WHOIS HELP" for information on how to use WHOIS.
The MILNET Network Information Center, maintains the central NICNAME database and server, providing online look-up of individuals, network organizations, MILNET nodes, and other information of interest to those involved in management of the Internet. Whois queries can be sent to nic.ddn.mil.
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Primary Contact(s): Network Solutions, Inc.
Name: Hostmaster
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Network Solutions AttN: InterNIC Registration Services 505 Huntmar Park Drive Herndon, VA 22070
Telephone: +1-703-742-4777
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Help Line: (for major center as well as each client)
Name: Hostmaster Help information available via gopher, gopher.internic.net
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +1-703-742-4777
Level of support offered:
Hours available: 24 hours/day, 7 days per week.
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Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: ietf-wnils-request
Description: This mailing list is used by the IETF Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS) working group which is defining enhancements to whois.
Archive: ftp.ucdavis.edu:/archive/wnils-archive
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News groups: None.
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Protocols:
What is supported: TCP/whois
What it runs over: TCP/IP networks
Other NIR tools this interworks with:
Future plans: Enhancements through Whois++ Enhancements through Referral Whois.
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Servers:
Date completed or updated: 4 March, 1994 By: Name: Joan Gargano
Platform: Unix
Primary Contact: Network Solutions, Inc.
Name: Hostmaster Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-703-742-4777
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Demonstration sites:
Site name: rs.internic.net Access details: Using a whois client, whois -h rs.internic.net "name" where "name" is the name of a person.
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Documentation:
Document Title: RFC 954 Location details: Site: nic.ddn.mil:/rfc Full file name: rfc954.txt
Document Title: Specifications for WHOIS Services Location details: Site: ftp.ucdavis.edu Full file name: /archive/ietf-wnils/Discussion.Paper
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Bibliography:
RFC 954
Internet Drafts:
draft-ietf-wnils-whois-01.txt
draft-ietf-wnils-whois-02.txt
draft-ietf-wnils-whois-lookup-00.txt
draft-huitema-solo-00.txt
Please check the 1id-abstracts.txt listing contained in the internet-drafts Shadow Directories on nic.ddn.mil, nnsc.nsf.net, nic.nordu.net, ftp.isi.edu, or munnari.oz.au to learn the current status of any Internet Draft.
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Other Information:
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Evaluation:
World-Wide Web
Date template updated or checked: 28th January, 1994 By: Name: Tim Berners-Lee Email address: [email protected]
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The project allows information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups. Originally aimed at the High Energy Physics community, it has spread to other areas and attracted much interest in user support, resource discovery and collaborative work areas. It is currently the most advanced information system deployed on the Internet.
READER VIEW
The WWW world consists of documents, and links. Indexes are special documents which, rather than being read, may be searched. The result of such a search is another ("virtual") document containing links to the documents found. A simple protocol (" HTTP ") is used to allow a browser program to request a keyword search by a remote information server.
The web contains documents in many formats. Those documents which are hypertext, (real or virtual) contain links to other documents, or places within documents. All documents, whether real, virtual or indexes, look similar to the reader and are contained within the same addressing scheme.
To follow a link, a reader clicks with a mouse (or types in a number if he or she has no mouse). To search and index, a reader gives keywords (or other search criteria). These are the only operations necessary to access the entire world of data.
INFORMATION PROVIDER VIEW
The WWW browsers can access many existing data systems via existing protocols (FTP, NNTP) or via HTTP and a gateway. In this way, the critical mass of data is quickly exceeded, and the increasing use of the system by readers and information suppliers encourage each other.
Providing information is as simple as running the W3 server and pointing it at an existing directory structure. The server automatically generates the hypertext view of your files to guide the user around.
To personalize it, you can write a few SGML hypertext files to give an even more friendly view. Also, any file available by anonymous FTP, or any internet newsgroup can be immediately linked into the web. The very small start-up effort is designed to allow small contributions. At the other end of the scale, large information providers may provide an HTTP server with full text or keyword indexing. This may allow access to a large existing database without changing the way that database is managed. Such gateways have already been made into Oracle(tm), WAIS, and Digital's VMS/Help systems, to name but a few.
The WWW model gets over the frustrating incompatibilities of data format between suppliers and reader by allowing negotiation of format between a smart browser and a smart server. This should provide a basis for extension into multimedia, and allow those who share application standards to make full use of them across the web.
This summary does not describe the many exciting possibilities opened up by the WWW project, such as efficient document caching. The reduction of redundant out-of-date copies, and the use of knowledge daemons. There is more information in the online project documentation, including some background on hypertext and many technical notes.
GETTING STARTED
You can bootstrap yourself into the web by telnetting to info.cern.ch (no user or password). You can try a full screen interface "Lynx" by telnetting to ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu, login in as "www". You can also find out more about WWW in this way. These are the least sophisticated browsers -- remember that the window-oriented ones are much smarter! It is much more efficient to install a browser on your own machine, and you have many more facilities.
If you have an X-windows based workstation, PC or Mac just FTP to FTP.NCSA.UIUC.EDU and get the binary of NCSA's "Mosaic" browser in directory /Web/Mosaic-binaries. Download it, uncompress it, set it executable, and run it. It will tell you all you need to know.
Mosaic is now available for PCs and Apple Macs.
If you have an MSDOS machine with Windows, you could try the "Cello" browser from FATTY.LAW.CORNELL.EDU in directory /pub/LII/Cello.
The line mode browser is currently available in source form by anonymous FTP from node info.cern.ch [currently 128.141.201.74] if you take both files
/pub/www/src/WWWLibrary_v.vv.tar.Z. /pub/www/src/WWWLineMode_v.vv.tar.Z.
(v.vv is the version number - take the latest.)
Also available is a hypertext editor for the NeXT (in /pub/www/bin/next), the MidasWWW and ViolaWWW browsers for X11, an alpha-test Mac browser, and and a basic server (/pub/www/src/WWWDaemon_v.vv.tar.Z). Documentation, including the latest list of software available , is readable using www. A plain text version of the installation instructions is included in the tar file!
Printable (postscript) documentation and articles are in /pub/www/doc on info.cern.ch.
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Primary Contact(s):
Name: Tim Berners-Lee Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Telephone: +41-22-767-3755 Fax: +41-22-767-7155
Name: Robert Cailliau Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Telephone: +41-22-767-5005 Fax: +41-22-767-7155
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Help Line: (for www technical or political issues, to report bugs, to register new servers, or new software)
Name: www support Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: none. Telnet: info.cern.ch for information.
While CERN collaborates with all NIR and W3 development anywhere, CERN cannot provide user support for non-HEP end users.
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Related Working Groups: NIR, URI, IIIR
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Sponsoring Organisations / Funding source: NO FUNDING SOURCE
Bodies providing development effort include HEP labs (CERN, CH; SLAC, CA, USA; FNAL, IL, USA; NIKHEF, NL; etc.), National Center for SuperComputer Applications (NCSA, IL, USA), O'Reilly Associates, (ORA, CA, USA), Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR, NC, USA), BSD Inc (BSD, CA, USA) and many others too numerous to mention.
Other sources welcomed!
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Newsgroup:
Name: comp.infosystems.www
Description: General technical discussion, announcements of new software, etc.
Please mail new server announcements to [email protected].
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Mailing Lists:
1. Address: [email protected] for CONTRIBUTIONS ONLY
Administration: [email protected] (robot) [email protected] (human)
Description: Technical discussion, W3 related. Experts to experts. General questions to comp.infosystems.www, please.
Archive: Not currently served, but kept.
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2. Address: [email protected] NOT FOR GENERAL USE - serious low-volume announcements only
Administration: [email protected] (robot) [email protected] (human)
Description: Low volume summary announcemements of product releases, etc.
Archive: Not currently public
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Protocols:
What is supported: HTTP FTP anonymous FTP Gopher NNTP WAIS (compile time option) Local mounted file access Telnet sessions Rlogin sessions
What it runs over: TCP/IP DECnet option.
Other NIR servers W3 clients interworks with: Techinfo, Hyper-G and X.500 via gateways. Built-in capability in clients for others above Archie access via WWW "WARCHIE" archie server with direct hypertext pointers to FTP sites.
Future plans: Collaborative work features, Hypertext editors for information organisation
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HTTP Servers: CERN httpd
Platform: unix, VMS, VM/XA, VM/CMS
Primary Contact: [email protected]
Server software available from: ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/src
Latest version number: 2.14
Approximate number of such servers in use: 600
Many tools available for serving different sorts of information
Gnu info teX SGML man pages
etc., as hypertext.
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Other servers: For more information use WWW to access http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/Overview.html
Plexus Written in Perl -- many features. Unix.
MacHTTPD Server for the Macintosh
REXX for VM A server consisting of a small C program which passes control to a server written in REXX.
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Mail Server:
Platform: unix
Primary Contact: [email protected]
Location of more information: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/MailRobot/Overview.html
Latest version number: 1.0
Restricts length of data returned. Allows access to ANY document by URL unless restrictions are imposed (FTP, news, etc., included). Quite generic.
When hypertext messages are retrieved, the links are numbered like [1] and a list of URLs of referenced documents is appended to the document.
Send message containing HELP to [email protected] for details.
Approximate number of such servers in use: 1 (-3?)
General comments
Extends potential readership of W3 information to anyone with email, so an important step for universal readership.
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NOTE: A full list of client software is kept in http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Clients.html and is not repeated here, as the list is constantly changing. Around 20 different clients. Telnet to info.cern.ch to see the list. Only the Line Mode Browser, lynx and Mosaic are covered here.
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Client: Line Mode Browser
Date completed or updated: 28th January, 1994 By: Name: Tim Berners-Lee Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Anything. Even a hard copy terminal. Written in portable C.
Primary Contact: Name: Tim Berners-Lee Email address: [email protected]
Client software available from: ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/src
Location of more information: http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/LineMode/Browser.html and linked documents
Latest version number: 2.14
History list, Back/Next/Previous/Home navigation, ability to print or save documents (or pipe to shell commands on unix).
-----------------------------------
Client: Lynx
Date completed or updated: 11 February 1994 By: Name: Lou Montulli Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Unix + VMS
Primary Contact(s): Name: Lou Montulli, Michael Grobe Email address: [email protected], [email protected] Postal Address: Computer Center, University of Kansas, Lawrence KS, 66045 Telephone: +1-913-864-0436 (Lou) +1-913-864-0452 (Michael) Fax: +1-913-864-0485
Client software available from: ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in directory /pub/lynx.
Location of more information: ftp2.cc.ukans.edu
Latest version number: 2.2
Help Line:
Name: Lou Montulli Email address: [email protected] Telephone: +1-913-864-0436 Level of support offered: volunteer Hours available: 11-5pm M-F CST
Documentation:
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected] Administration: [email protected]
-----------------------------------
Client: NCSA MOSAIC for X
Date completed or updated: 16th December, 1993 By: Name: Marc Andreessen Email address: [email protected]
Platform: X Window System (Unix) -- Sun, DEC, IBM, SGI, HP, others.
Primary Contact: Name: Marc Andreessen Email address: [email protected] Postal Address: National Center for Supercomputing Applications 605 E. Springfield Champaign, IL 61820 Telephone: +1-217-244-0765
Client software available from: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Web/Mosaic.
Location of more information: ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in /Web/mosaic, and online, within Mosaic. http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/help-about.html
Latest version number: 1.1
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System is a client interface to a wide variety of networked information systems, including World Wide Web, Gopher, WAIS, FTP, Usenet News, Archie, Techinfo, X.500, Hytelnet, Telnet, NCSA Data Management Facility, CSO ph/qi and others. It offers a Motif-based point-and-click X interface with support for plaintext, formatted text, and embedded images; hyperlinks can also refer to images, video sequences, audio clips, PostScript files, etc.
Mosaic also offers substantial interaction and collaboration facilities, including global history tracking, text and voice annotations, group/community-wide annotations, and more.
General comments:
Sponsoring Organisation: National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Future plans:
Enhancement of the NCSA Mosaic environment to support advanced networked information systems and collaboration capabilities; development of clients on other architectures; research and development into intelligent agent-style user assistance mechanisms and novel navigation and representation strategies for dense, dynamic distributed information spaces. (This is all dependent upon funding, of course.) Beta-test versions of Mac and Microsoft Windows 3.1 were released in the fall of 1993.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
See individual sections on clients.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
All the W3 documentation available is in the web. Some is also dumped off into postscript. Here are the URLs of entry points into the web for the subjects requested:
** To retrieve any document by URL, use WWW (www
http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
see also
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/help-about.html
http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/Summary.html
http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/Provider/Overview.html
http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/FAQ/List.html
ftp://info.cern.ch/pub/www/doc/*.txt
Illustrated talk on WWW including transparencies: see
ftp://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Talks/General/html
see also
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[General WWW bibliography]
Bibliography:
o For latest list, see:
Bibliography for the World Wide Web
WORLD-WIDE WEB BIBLIOGRAPHY
This lists papers and articles about the W3 initiative and related
matters which you may want to pick up for background reading or quote
as references. You can of course also quote any page you read with
W3 by its document address. The FTP server info.cern.ch has some of
these in /pub/www/doc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
All WWW working notes and specs are on the web. If it is not there
somewhere, it may not be anywhere.
Seek and ye shall find. And if ye don't, mail someone to fix it.
X.500 White Pages
Date completed or updated: 10 March, 1994
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The first solid version of the X.500 protocol was released in
1988, and has been the subject of much research in the past 5
years. Consequently, there are a large number of clients, for
almost every platform, and a healthy number of servers. There are
mail interfaces to some parts of the X.500 directory, and there is
a X.500 to Gopher gateway. An X.500 interface to archie is
currently under development, as well as an X.500 to WWW interface.
Also, there is a great effort underway to reduce the startup costs
of X.500 access by providing a lightweight X.500 access protocol
for client-server applications. This work is detailed in RFC
1487:
"Lightweight Directory Access Protocol", by Yeong, Howes, and
Kille. This protocol is expected to make the cost of entry for a
service provider much less that it has been.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: The PARADISE Project
Email address: [email protected]
Name: The White Pages Pilot Project
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
X.500 encompasses a great number of clients and as a distributed
system does not have a central help line. Please see the
Documentation section for pointers to servers, clients, and associated
help lines.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Working Groups:
IETF's OSI-DS (OSI Directory Services)
IETF's IDS (Integrated Directory Services)
OSI Implementor's Workshop's DS-SIG (Directory Services-SIG)
RARE's WG-NAP (Network Application Support)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:
Not Applicable
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mail list for OSI-DS working group.
-------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mail list for IDS working group.
Archive: Anonymous FTP, merit.edu in directory
/pub/ietf-ids-archive.
-------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mail list for OIW DS-SIG group
-------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mail list for RARE working group WG-NAP
Archive: Anonymous FTP, ftp.rare.nl, directory
/rare/working-groups/wg-nap/mail/current
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported: X.500
What it runs over: Applications run on full ISO stack down to
transport over TCP/IP + RFC1006, CONS, CLNS, or
X.25(80)
Other NIR tools this interworks with: Gateways to Gopher and WWW.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
A full list of servers and clients is available in FYI 11, RFC 1292,
"A guide to available X.500 Implementations". See the Documentation
section for the location of this document. However, the most widely
deployed server is listed here for convenience.
QUIPU
Date completed or updated: 21 October, 1993
By: Name: Chris Weider
E-Mail: [email protected]
Platform: BSD 4.2, 4.3; AT&T System V; SunOS; AIX
Primary Contact:
Name: Steve Kille
E-Mail: [email protected]
Telephone: +44-81-332-9091
Fax: +44-81-332-9019
Location of more information:
RFC 1292
Latest Version Number: 8.0 (public domain)
IC R1 (ISODE consortium version)
Approximate number of such servers in use: 400
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
Site name: paradise.ulcc.ac.uk
Access details: telnet to paradise.ulcc.ac.uk
login as dua
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
Document Title: FYI 11, RFC 1292, "Catalog of Available X.500
Implementations", R. Lang, R. Wright.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1292.txt
An update of this document is in preparation:
Document Title: "A Revised Catalog of Available X.500
Implementations", A. Getchell, S. Sataluri.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: draft-ietf-ids-catalog-00.txt
Document Title: FYI 13, RFC 1308, "Executive Introduction to directory
services using the X.500 protocol", C. Weider, J. K. Reynolds
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1308.txt
Document Title: FYI 14, RFC 1309, "Technical Overview of Directory
Services using the X.500 protocol", C. Weider, J. K. Reynolds,
S. Heker.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1309.txt
Document Title: RFC 1430, "A Strategic Plan for Deploying an Internet
X.500 Directory Service",
S. Kille, E. Huizer, V. Cerf, R. Hobby, S. Kent.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1430.txt
Document Title: FYI 21, RFC 1491, "A Survey of Advanced Usages of
X.500", C. Weider, R. Wright.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1491.txt
Document Title: RFC 1487, "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol",
W. Yeong, T. Howes, and S. Hardcastle-Kille
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1487.txt
Document Title: RFC 1588, "WHITE PAGES MEETING REPORT",
J. Postel, C. Anderson
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1588.txt
These documents contain pointers to the rest of the literature.
This section contains information about the various groups working in
the area of networked information retrieval. The groups are listed
alphabetically within their overall groupings (CNI, IETF, RARE,
etc.). See Section 3.
CNI Groups
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Craig A. Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Association of Research Libraries
(ARL), CAUSE, and EDUCOM
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup: Modernization of Scholarly Publishing
Transformation of Scholarly Communication
Directories and Information Resource Services
Architecture and Standards
Legislation, Codes, Policies and Practices
Access to Public Information
Teaching and Learning
Management and Professional and User Education
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Description of main group:
The Coalition for Networked Information was founded in March 1990 to
help realize the promise of high performance networks and computers
for the advancement of scholarship and the enrichment of intellectual
productivity. The Coalition is a partnership of the Association of
Research Libraries (ARL), CAUSE, and EDUCOM. ARL is dedicated to
equitable access to, and effective use of, recorded knowlege in
support of teaching, research, scholarship, and community service,
and CAUSE and EDUCOM are dedicated to different aspects of the
introduction, use, and management of information technology and
related resources in research and education in general and higher
education in particular. The Coalition pursues its mission with the
assistance of a task force that provides a common vehicle by which
more than 190 institutions and organizations are exploring a shared
vision of how information management must change in the 1990s to meet
the social and economic opportunities and challenges of the 21st
century. Members of the Coalition Task Force include, among others,
higher education institutions, publishers, network service providers,
computer hardware, software, and systems companies, library networks
and organizations, and public and state libraries. A truly diverse
collaboration of institutions and organizations.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Paul Evan Peters
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
USA
Telephone: +1-202-296-5098
Fax: +1-202-872-0884
---------------------
Name: Joan K. Lippincott
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
USA
Telephone: +1-202-296-5098
Fax: +1-202-872-0884
---------------------
Name: Craig A. Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Circle, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
USA
Telephone: +1-202-296-5098
Fax: +1-202-872-0884
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-announce
Description: CNI News and Announcements
---------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-architecture
Description: CNI Architecture and Standards Working Group Forum
--------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-bigideas
Description: CNI Big Ideas Project Forum
----------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-copyright
Description: Copyright and Intellectual Property Forum
------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-directories
Description: CNI Directories and Information Resource Services
Working Group Forum
------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-legislation
Description: CNI Legislation, Codes, Policies, and Practices
Working Group Forum
------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-management
Description: CNI Management & Professional & User Education
Working Group Forum
-------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-modernization
Description: CNI Modernization of Scholarly Publication
Working Group Forum
-------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-pubinfo
Description: CNI Access to Public Information Working Group
Forum
--------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-teaching
Description: CNI Teaching and Learning Working Group Forum
---------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe cni-transformation
Description: CNI Transformation of Scholarly Communication
Working Group Forum
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
None. The Coalition relies on the publication programs of its parent
organizations (ARL, CAUSE, and EDUCOM) to disseminate printed
information on the Coalition's projects and programs. Information on
the Coalition's program is also disseminated via electronic mailing
lists on the network.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
URL:gopher://gopher.cni.org 70/CNI Working Group Forums/*
BRS/SEARCH full-text telnet a.cni.org
information retrieval
system: login: brsuser
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Craig A. Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Working subgroups
Name of subgroup: Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed
Mailinglist-Address:
Description of main group:
Program priorities are 1) to facilitate a consistent and complete
mechanism for linking bibliographic, abstracting, and indexing files
to files of their associated source materials; 2) a single standard
for the transmission of bitmapped image files; 3) protocols for
handling networked requests for delivery of source materials; 4)
mechanisms for interorganizational authentication, accounting, and
billing; and 5) to integrate lessons drawn from the experience of
pilot projects that exercise networked printing utilities and 6) to
provide an "interoperability workshop" to specify, implement, and
test advanced functions of Z39.50 to accelerate the pace and to
ensure the quality of standardization efforts in this area.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Clifford Lynch
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Office of the President
University of California
300 Lakeside Dr., 8th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612-3350
USA
Telephone: +1-415-987-0522
Fax: +1-415-839-3573
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
SUB cni-architecture Lastname Firstname
Archive:
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/forums/cni-architecture/*
URL:gopher//gopher.cni.org 70/CNI Working Group Forums/
cni-architecture/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: None
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Craig A. Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup: TopNode Management Team
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Description of main group:
This group recognizes the need for open systems, standards, and
therefore, interoperable products and services based upon a
distributed architecture of servers that draw upon a common or at
least comparable set of data elements. It is creating a (printed
and networked) directory of directories and resource information
services that provide qualitative (consumer) as well as descriptive
information. The group supports the Library of Congress effort to
enhance the MARC formats to account for the cataloging requirements of
networked resources and services, and the National Science Foundation
effort to procure a new NSFNet Network Information Center.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: George Brett
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
Center for Communications at MCNC
PO Box 12889, 3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889
USA
Telephone: +1-919-248-1499
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
---------------------
Name: Peggy Seiden
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Scribner Library
Skidmore College
North Broadway
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Telephone: +1-518-584-5000 ext. 2126
Fax:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
SUB cni-directories Lastname Firstname
Archive:
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/forums/cni-directories/*
URL:gopher//gopher.cni.org 70/Coalition Working Groups /
WG E-mail Forums/CNI-directories/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details
Site: ftp.cni.org
Directory: /CNI/forums/cni-directories/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: None
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Craig A. Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Directories and Information Resource
Services Working Group
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup:
Mailinglist-Address:
Description of main group:
(from ARL Newsletter #164 -- September 9, 1992)
The Coalition's TopNode Project is creating a directory of
directories, catalogs and aids of networked information resources,
services and tools. The project is intended to facilitate the
network navigational duties, responsibilities and tasks of staff
in libraries, computer centers, networking offices and other
similar operations. The primary product of the TopNode project
will be a set of records describing these networked information
resources, records that can be loaded into a wide range of
database management systems.
Based on their response to a Call for Statements of Interest and
Experience, Indiana University and Merit Network, Inc. were
chosen to lead the development effort on the Coalition TopNode
project. Pete Percival, Manager, Academic Information Environment
at Indiana University and Craig Summerhill, Coalition Systems
Coordinator, have completed the design for the database structure
which is being built on the Coalition's Internet fileserver using
BRS/SEARCH. Based on earlier work of the leaders of the
Directories and Resource Information Services Working Group,
George Brett II of the University of North Carolina General
Administration and Peggy Seiden of Skidmore College Library,
Percival and Summerhill have developed a data structure that they
believe to be both flexible and responsive to the needs of the
many interested parties who have been consulted.
Under the direction of Gary Charbonneau of the Indiana University
Libraries, records are being created and prepared for loading. A
thesaurus of added descriptor terms is being maintained. As of
mid-August 1992, close to 200 records had been verified and had
received descriptive cataloging.
When the database is complete, libraries will be alerted and
encouraged to mount the TopNode records into their online
catalogs. Records will be available from the Coalition. In
addition, MERIT will use the TopNode database in an experiment to
test the viability of the X.500 directory format standard for
providing yellow pages-type services (e.g., with subject access).
After its initial release, the database will be maintained by
Indiana University libraries on the Coalition server; BRS has
assisted in the development of procedures for online data entry.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Pete Percival
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Indiana State University
Telephone: +1-812-855-9146
Fax: +1-812-855-0299
------------------
Name: Craig Summerhill
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Coalition for Networked Information
21 Dupont Cricle, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
USA
Telephone: +1-202-296-5098
Fax: +1-202-872-0884
------------------
Name: Gary Charbonneau
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Indiana University
Telephone:
Fax:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details
Site: ftp.cni.org
Directory: /CNI/projects/topnode/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
Status Report - TopNode Directory of Directories. Pete Percival.
Presented at Coalition's 1992 Fall Task Force meeting, Landsdowne VA
site: gopher.cni.org/ Coalition FTP archives / Coalition Projects /
TopNode / *
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
The Coalition has an alpha implementation of Topnode setup using the
BRS/SEARCH full text information retrieval software. This database
was created during the data element definition portion of the project,
so the data may not be of production-level service quality.
URL:telnet://brsuser
CNIDR
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Jane Smith
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: National Science Foundation,
Center for Communications at MCNC
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup:
Mailinglist-Address:
Description of main group:
Several user-friendly client-server software tools have been
developed recently for locating and retrieving information
published on computer platforms reachable over wide-area data
communications networks like the Internet. Among them, freeWAIS
(freely available wide-area information system), the Internet
Gopher, archie, and the WorldWide Web (WWW) have become popular.
freeWAIS, archie, and Gopher indicate where information of
interest is likely to reside and then assist the user in locating
specific information. WWW permits a user to thread a path through
the network by selecting tagged hypertext items.
While focused on the evolution of wide-area information retrieval
systems, the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery
and Retrieval (CNIDR) works closely with developers of other
tools toward providing compatibility, consistency, and, to the
extent possible, convergence of the tools.
Specific activities are to provide a central focus and forum for
networked information discovery and retrieval (NIDR) tools and to
minimize the divergence of individual implementations by
providing a repository for the collection, evaluation, and
distribution of protocol-compliant releases and enhanced
versions.
CNIDR participates in standards and policy associations such as
the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Coalition for
Networked Information, with the goal of increasing consensus
among developers and exploring appropriate uses of networked
information. CNIDR also actively promotes the use of networked
information discovery and retrieval tools at many national and
international conferences to inform and educate implementors and
end users.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: George Brett
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
(CNIDR)
Center for Communications at MCNC
PO Box 12889, 3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889 USA
Telephone: +1-919-248-1886
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
------------------
Name: Jane Smith
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
(CNIDR)
Center for Communications at MCNC
PO Box 12889, 3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889 USA
Telephone: +1-919-248-9213
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
------------------
Name: Jim Fullton
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
(CNIDR)
Center for Communications at MCNC
PO Box 12889, 3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889 USA
Telephone: +1-919-248-9247
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: none.
Description: e-mail sent to this address will receive an
automated response containing more information
about current CNIDR activities.
Archive: none
-------------------------------
Mailing Lists: [email protected]
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
sub zip Lastname Firstname
Description: Technical discussion of Z39.50-92 application
development. Subscribers receive brief overview
of project and information on how to access
archives.
Archive:
ftp://ftp.cnidr.org/NIDR.tools/zip
gopher://gopher.cnidr.org/NIDR Tools/Discussion/Online Discussion
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive: ftp.cnidr.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: [email protected]
IETF Groups
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is the protocol
engineering, development and standardisation arm of the Internet. It
has grown to be a large open international community of network
designers, operators, vendors and researchers concerned with the
evolution of the Internet protocol architecture and the smooth
operation of the Internet.
IETF Information including RFCs and Internet Drafts is available by
anonymous FTP from several sites.
East Coast (US) Address: ds.internic.net
West Coast (US) Address: ftp.isi.edu
Europe Address: nic.nordu.net
Pacific Rim Address: munnari.oz.au
(The Internet-Drafts on this machine are stored in Unix
compressed form (.Z).)
In addition the information is available via gopher from
cnri.reston.va.us under the menu item "Internet Society".
IDS
Date template updated or checked: 21 October, 1993
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Working subgroups: NONE
Description of main group:
The Integrated Directory Services Working Group (IDS) is chartered to
facilitate the integration and interoperability of current and future
directory services into a unified directory service. This work will
unite directory services based on a heterogeneous set of directory
services protocols (X.500, WHOIS++, etc.). In addition to specifying
technical requirements for the integration, the IDS group will also
contribute to the administrative and maintenance issues of directory
service offerings by publishing guidelines on directory data
integrity, maintenance, security, and privacy and legal issues for
users and administrators of directories.
Membership is open, and is not limited to IETF attendees. A full
charter for this group is available for anonymous FTP from
ds.internic.net as ids-charter.txt in directory ietf/ids.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Chris Weider, Chair
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: 2001 South Huron Parkway 12
Ann Arbor
Michigan
48104, USA
Telephone: +1-313-971-2223
Fax: +1-313-971-2223
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP to merit.edu, directory
/pub/ietf-ids/archive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: ds.internic.net or any Internet Draft Server (see
sub-section entitled IETF groups)
Directory: internet-drafts. All IDS document file names start
with either draft-ietf-disi or draft-ietf-ids.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Document Title: FYI 11, RFC 1292, "Catalog of Available X.500
Implementations", R. Lang, R. Wright.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1292.txt
An update of this document is in preparation:
Document Title: "A Revised Catalog of Available X.500
Implementations", A. Getchell, S. Sataluri.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: draft-ietf-ids-catalog-00.txt
Document Title: FYI 21, RFC 1491, "A Survey of Advanced Usages of
X.500", C. Weider, R. Wright.
Location details: Available for anonymous FTP from
Site: ds.internic.net
Full file name: RFC-1491.txt
Marine, A, X.500 Pilot Projects, June 1993. Available as
draft-ietf-ids-pilots-00.txt from any Internet Draft server.
IIIR
Date template updated or checked: 14 March, 1994
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Forces (IETF)
Working subgroups: None
Description of main group:
The IIIR group was chartered in September 1992 to facilitate
interoperability between and integration of the various Internet
information services (Archie, Gopher, WAIS, etc.), just as the IETF
was founded to facilitate the integration of various LANs running
different protocols. It will develop, specify, and align protocols to
integrate the services into a single "virtually unified information
service" (VUIS).
Also, where necessary for interoperability, IIIR will create
technical documentation for protocols used for information services
in the internet.
Membership is open, and is not limited to IETF attendees. A full
charter for this group is available via anonymous FTP from
ds.internic.net as ietf/iiir/iiir-charter.txt
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Chris Weider, Chair
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: 2001 South Huron Parkway 12
Ann Arbor
Michigan
48104
USA
Telephone: +1-313-971-2223
Fax: +1-313-971-2223
-------------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP, iiir/archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: ds.internic.net or any Internet Draft Server (see sub-section
entitled IETF groups).
Directory: internet-drafts
All IIIR document file names start with the string 'draft-ietf-iiir-'
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Weider, Chris, and Peter Deutsch, 'A vision of an integrated Internet
information service', Internet Draft, March 1993. Available as
draft-ietf-iiir-vision-00.txt from any Internet Draft server.
Weider, Chris, 'Resource Transponders', Internet Draft, March 1993.
Available as draft-ietf-iiir-transponder-00.txt from any Internet
Draft server.
Ankelesaria, et al, 'The Internet Gopher Protocol', RFC 1436, March
1993. Available from any RFC repository.
Berners-Lee, Tim. 'Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)', Internet Draft,
March 1993. Available as draft-ietf-iiir-html-00.ps from any Internet
Draft server.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
This is a new area, one with lots of interesting open problems and
the potential to help shape the future of information services on the
Internet. Even if you can't make the IETF meetings, you are
strongly encouraged to join the group and contribute.
NIR
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Jill Foster
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and
RARE (Association of European Research Networks)
Working subgroups: None
Description of main group:
There are many organizations and associations that have begun to
focus on the proliferating resources and tools for networked
information retrieval (NIR). The Networked Information Retrieval
Group will be a cooperative effort of three major players in the
field of NIR: IETF, RARE, and the Coalition for Networked Information
(CNI) specifically tasked to collect and disseminate information
about the tools and to discuss and encourage cooperative development
of current and future tools such as the archie servers, the Wide Area
Information Servers (WAIS), the Internet Gopher, and the WorldWide
Web (WWW).
The NIR Working Group intends to increase the useful base of
information about networked information retrieval (NIR) tools, their
developers, interested organizations, and other activities that
relate to the production, dissemination, and support of NIR tools.
Membership is open and is not limited to attendees of the quarterly
IETF meetings; the mailing list is open to all. The NIR-WG charter
is available via anonymous ftp from the various IETF repositories as
nir-charter.txt.
Goals:
To disseminate information about NIR tools and those groups working
on them. The information in the NIR Status report will be updated
and new entries added as appropriate once per year. This report will
be submitted as an RFC.
Current work includes discussing the criteria for evaluating the
major NIR tools available.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Jill Foster
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Computing Service
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
U.K.
Telephone: +44-91-222-8250
Fax: +44-91-222-8765
---------------------------------
Name: Kevin Gamiel
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address:
Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval
Center for Communications - MCNC
PO Box 12889 3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2889
U.S.A.
Telephone: +1-919-248-1886
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Auto subscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe nir firstname lastname"
Human admin to: [email protected]
Description:
Archive: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/nir/files/*
or via gopher to mailbase.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details
Site: mailbase.ac.uk
Directory: /pub/lists/nir/files
or from any Internet Draft Server (see sub-section entitled IETF
groups)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
This Working Group was formed jointly in the User Services and
Applications Areas of the Internet Engineering Task Force.
The RARE (Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche Europeenne) ISUS WG
(Information Services and User Support Working Group) is
represented by NIR-WG co-chair Jill Foster. NIR-WG information
is also posted to the mailing list for the ISUS WG at
"[email protected]".
More information about CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) may
be obtained via anonymous ftp files from ftp.cni.org.
NISI
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: April Marine
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: IETF
Description of main group:
The NISI Working Group will explore the requirements for common,
shared Internet-wide network information services. The goal is to
develop an understanding for what is required to implement an
information services "infrastructure" for the Internet. Membership
is open. Charter is online in the various IETF repositories as
nisi-charter.txt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: April Marine
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Network Applications and Information Center
NASA Ames Research Center
M/S 204-14
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
USA
Telephone: +1-415-604-0762
Fax: +1-415-604-0978
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: Internet-Drafts and FYI RFCs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
RFC 1302: Building a Network Information Services Infrastructure
RFC 1355: Privacy and Accuracy Issues in Network
Information Centre Databases
OSI-DS
Date template updated or checked: 24 February, 1994
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Forces (IETF)
Working subgroups: NONE
Description of main group:
The OSI-DS group's mission is to enable building a global Directory
Service based on X.500 and to facilitate its deployment on the
Internet. The primary focus is on developing agreements and
technical specifications needed to make this happen. The WG will not
be directly concerned with piloting and service activities, but will
liaise with such activities.
Membership is open, and is not limited to IETF attendees. A full
charter for this group is available for anonymous FTP from
ds.internic.net as ietf/osids/osids-charter.txt
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Steve Kille, Chair
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: ISODE Consortium
P.O. Box 505
SW11 1DX London
England
Telephone: +44-71-223-4062
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP, bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk
Directory:/osi-ds
Site: ds.internic.net
Directory: /ietf/osids
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
The COSINE and Internet X.500 Schema, P. Barker, S. Kille, RFC-1274.
Replication and Distributed Operations Extensions to Provide an
Internet Directory Usign X.500, S. Hardcastle-Kille, RFC-1276
Requirements to provide an Internet Directory using X.500.
S. Hardcastle-Kille, RFC-1275
A Strategic Plan for Deploying an Internet X.500 Directory Service,
S. Hardcastle-Kille et al, RFC-1340
URI
Date template updated or checked: 14 March, 1994
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Forces (IETF)
Working subgroups: NONE
Description of main group:
The Uniform Resource Identifiers Archives Working Group is chartered
to define a set of standards for the encoding of system independent
Resource Location and Identification information for the use of
Internet information services. There are three classes of
information being standardized in this group:
1) Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), which specify a standardized
method for encoding location and access information to
resources across multiple information systems,
2) Uniform Resource Names (URNs), which specify a standardized
method for encoding a unique resource identifier for a given
content, and
3) Uniform Resource Citations (URCs), which specify a
standardized method for encoding information about a given
instantiation of a content.
The URLs allow an information service to give a user access and
location information for a resource. The URN allows an information
service to determine if the contents of two information resources are
the same or not. The URC allows an information service to select
which of a number of different encodings of a resource are
appropriate for a given user's retrieval capabilities, and may
contain such things as file size and compression techniques.
Membership is open, and is not limited to IETF attendees. A full
charter for this group is available for anonymous FTP from
ds.internic.net as /ietf/uri/uri-charter.txt
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Jim Fullton, co-chair
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Center for Communications
P.O. Box 12889
3021 Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park
North Carolina 27709-2889
Telephone: +1-919-248-1499
Fax: +1-919-248-1101
-----------------------------------
Name: Alan Emtage, co-chair
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Bunyip Information Systems, Inc.
266 Blvd. Neptune
Dorval QUEBEC H9S 2L4 CANADA
Telephone: +1-514-875-8611
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: archives.cc.mcgill.ca:~/pub/uri-archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: ds.internic.net
Directory: internet-drafts. All documents will start with the
string draft-ietf-uri.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Berners-Lee, Tim, 'Uniform Resource Locators', Internet Draft, March
1993.
Available as draft-ietf-uri-url-00.ps from any Internet Draft server.
Weider, Chris and Peter Deutsch, 'Uniform Resource Names', Internet
Draft, May 1993. Available as draft-ietf-uri-resource-names-00.txt
from any Internet Draft server.
WNILS
Date template updated or checked: 28 February, 1994
By: Name: Joan Gargano
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup:
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Description of main group:
This description is the current WNILS-WG charter.
The Network Information Center (NIC) maintains the central NICNAME
database and server, defined in RFC 954, providing online look-up of
individuals, network organizations, key nodes, and other information
of interest to those who use the Internet. Other distributed
directory information servers and information retrieval tools have
been developed and it is anticipated more will be created. Many
sites now maintain local directory servers with information about
individuals, departments and services at that specific site.
Typically these directory servers are network accessible. Because
these servers are local, there are now wide variations in the type of
data stored, access methods, search schemes, and user interfaces.
The purpose of the Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
(WNILS) working group is to expand and define the standard for WHOIS
services, to resolve issues associated with the variations in access
and to promote a consistent and predictable service across the
network.
Goals and Milestones:
Done Review and approve the charter making any changes deemed
necessary. Examine the particular functional needs for
expanded whois directory service. Begin work on a framework
for recommendations. Assign writing assignments for first
draft of document.
12/1/93 Submit the Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
Recommendations document to the IESG as an Internet Draft.
12/1/93 Submit the WHOIS++ protocol document to the IESG as an
Internet Draft.
12/1/93 Submit the "Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service"
document to the IESG as a revised Internet Draft.
12/1/93 Freeze all work on the Internet Drafts for 6 months for
software development.
Membership is open to attendees of the quarterly IETF meetings; the
mailing list is open to all. The WNILS-WG charter can be obtained via
anonymous ftp from the Document Archive sites listed in the Networked
Information Retrieval Working Group (WNILS-WG) template.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Joan Gargano
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Distributed Computing Analysis and Support (DCAS)
Information Technology
University of California, Davis
Davis, California 95616
U.S.A
Telephone: +1-916-752-2591
Fax: +1-916-752-9158
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description:
Archive: ftp://ftp.ucdavis.edu:/pub/archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details: Gopher: gopher.ucdavis.edu 70
ftp://ftp.ucdavis.edu/archive/wnils-archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
This Working Group formed jointly in the User Services and
Applications Areas of the Internet Engineering Task Force.
IRTF-RD
Date template updated or checked: 1st March, 1994
By: Name: Mike Schwartz
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Internet Society
Working subgroups: None
Description of main group:
The IRTF-RD group is focused on problems of scale that will arise in
resource discovery systems in the next 3-5 years. We divide these
scaling problems into three dimensions: volume of information, size of
the user base, and information diversity.
Our goal is to explore techniques for dealing with these problems
through a set of interrelated prototypes demonstrating advances in
each of these dimensions. Briefly, our current approaches are:
Membership of this group is closed. We will consider new members,
with two constraints. First, the group must be kept small and focused
to make substantive progress - at most 4 or 5 members seems
appropriate at this time. Second, prospective members must be active
resource discovery researchers, who will bring clear strengths to the
group. Prospective members should send a vitae and a one page
position paper describing what they propose to do to advance the
group's efforts, addressed to the group chair.
The group currently consists of:
Mic Bowman (Transarc, Inc.)
Peter Danzig (University of Southern California)
Udi Manber (University of Arizona)
Mike Schwartz (University of Colorado - Boulder; chair)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Mike Schwartz
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0430
Telephone: +1-303-492-3902
Fax: Declined.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
The IRTF-RD group has no formal mailing list or archive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
The IRTF-RD group has no news groups.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
The IRTF-RD group has no document archive, although our paper(s) and
prototype(s) are available from the members' FTP archives (see below).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
Occasional updates in the Internet Monthly Report.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
C. Mic Bowman, Peter B. Danzig and Michael F. Schwartz.
Research Problems for Scalable Internet Resource Discovery.
Technical Report CU-CS-643-93, Department of Computer Science,
University of Colorado, Boulder, March 1993. To appear,
Proceedings of INET '93. Available by anonymous FTP from
ftp.cs.colorado.edu in the file
pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/RD.ResearchProblems.ps.Z
(compressed PostScript) or in the file
pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/RD.ResearchProblems.txt.Z
(compressed ASCII).
C. Mic Bowman, Peter B. Danzig, Udi Manber and Michael F.
Schwartz. Scalable Internet Resource Discovery: Research
Problems and Approaches. Technical Report CU- CS-679-93,
Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder,
October 1993. To appear, Communications of the ACM, 1994. A
pre-publication version of this paper is available by anonymous
FTP and e-mail from ftp.cs.colorado.edu in the file
pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/PostScript/RD.ResearchProblems.Jour.ps.Z
(compressed PostScript) or in the file
pub/cs/techreports/schwartz/ASCII/RD.ResearchProblems.Jour.txt.Z
(compressed ASCII).
Z39.50 Implementors Group
Date template updated or checked: 28 February 1994
By: Name: Mark Needleman
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The group was originally formed to deal with interoperability issues
among the Z39.50 implementations that were beginning to emerge in
1989 and 1990 but the group has since expanded its role and has now
become the primary forum in which new features and versions of the
Z39.50 are developed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s): Z39.50 Implementors Group
Name: Mark Hinnebusch (Chair)
Email address: [email protected] (Internet)
FCLMTH@NERVM (Bitnet)
Postal address: Florida Center For Library Automation
Suite 320
2002 NW 13th Street
Gainesville, FL 32609
Telephone: +1-904-392-9020
Fax: +1-904-392-9185
------------------------
Z39.50 Maintenance Agency
Name: Ray Denenberg
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: Library of Congress
Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Collections Services
Washington, DC 20540
Telephone: +1-202-707-5795
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Name: Z39.50 Implementors Group (ZIG)
Address: [email protected]
Administration/Subscriptions: [email protected]
(archives of the mailing list are also
available at this address.)
Archive: gopher://sally.fcla.ufl.edu
ftp://sally.fcla.ufl.edu
gopher://marvel.loc.gov/11/services/z3950
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation and References for the Z39.50 Protocol
American National Standard Information Retrieval Application
Service Definition and Protocol Specification for Open Systems
Interconnection Version 2, National Information Standards
Organization, July 1992
Mark Hinnebusch "A Primer on Z39.50 Parts 1-8", Academic and
Library Computing Volume 9, Numbers 2-9, February-October 1992,
Meckler Corporation, Westport CN. (ISSN 1055-4769)
Mark Hinnebusch "The Z39.50 Explain Service", Campus Wide
Information Systems, Volume 10, Number 1, January/February 1993,
Meckler Corporation, Westport, CT. (ISSN 1065-0741)
Michael Buckland and Clifford Lynch. "THE LINKED SYSTEMS PROTOCOL
AND THE FUTURE OF BIBLIOGRAPHIC NETWORKS AND SYSTEMS,"
Information Technology and Libraries 6:2 (June 1987), pp. 83-88.
Michael Buckland and Clifford Lynch. "NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
IMPLICATIONS OF THE LINKED SYSTEMS PROTOCOL FOR ONLINE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SYSTEMS," Cataloging and Classification Quarterly
8:3/4 (Spring 1988), pp. 15-33.
Clifford Lynch. "INTERSYSTEM LINKING AND DISTRIBUTED DATABASE
TECHNOLOGY: A COMPARISON OF TWO APPROACHES TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF
NETWORK-BASED INFORMATION UTILITIES," Proceedings of the Fourth
Integrated Online Library Systems Meeting, New York, New York,
May 10-11, 1989. (Medford, NJ: Learned Information, Inc., 1989),
pp. 107-112.
Clifford A. Lynch "LIBRARY AUTOMATION AND THE NATIONAL RESEARCH
NETWORK," EDUCOM Review (Fall 1989), pp. 21-28.
Clifford A. Lynch. "ACCESS TECHNOLOGY FOR NETWORK INFORMATION
RESOURCES," CAUSE/EFFECT (Summer 1990), pp. 15-20.
Clifford A. Lynch; Cecilia M. Preston. "INTERNET ACCESS TO
INFORMATION RESOURCES," Annual Review of Information Science and
Technology (ARIST) Volume 25. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1990), pp. 264-312.
Clifford A. Lynch. "THE CLIENT-SERVER MODEL IN INFORMATION
RETRIEVAL," Interfaces for Information Retrieval and Online
Systems: The State of the Art Martin Dillon, ed. (Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 1991); pp. 301-318.
Clifford A. Lynch. "INFORMATION RETRIEVAL AS A NETWORK
APPLICATION," Library Hi Tech 8:4, Issue 32 (1990), pp. 59-74.
Clifford A. Lynch. "THE Z39.50 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL PROTOCOL:
AN OVERVIEW AND STATUS REPORT," Computer Communications Review
21:1 (Sigcomm) (January 1991), pp. 58-70.
Clifford A. Lynch. THE Z39.50 PROTOCOL: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
Produced as a pamphlet by Data Research Associates (1991).
Dennis Lynch "Z39.50 Extended Services" Campus Wide Information
Systems Volume 10, Number 3 May/June 1993, Meckler Corporation,
Westport, CT (ISSN 1065 0741)
Mark H Needleman. "The Z39.50 Protocol: An Implementor's Perspective",
Resource Sharing and Information Networks Volume 8 Number 1, 1992, The
Haworth Press Inc, Binghamton, NY (ISSN 0737-7797)
Kunze, John A. "Nonbibliographic Applications of Z39.50." The
Public-Access Computer Systems Review 3, no. 5 (1992): 4-30.
(Refereed Article.) To retrieve this article, send the following
e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 or [email protected]:
GET KUNZE PRV3N5 F=MAIL.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
Brief Description of the Z39.50 Protocol
Z39.50 is a US ANSI standard protocol for information retrieval. It
uses a client server model that allows clients ( or origins in Z39.50
terminology) to search servers (targets in Z39.50 usage) and retrieve
records from remote databases. The type and format of the data
retrieved is not constrained by the protocol but is agreed to by the
origin and the target. There is a mechanism that allows popular
record syntax's to be registered and then referred to by well known
identifiers. Z39.50 is an OSI application layer protocol; that is,
it is designed to make use of the OSI presentation layer protocol.
It may be used with or without the presentation protocol, and below
that, it is irrelevant (to the Z39.50 protocol) what protocols are
used. Most implementations of Z39.50 currently run directly over
TCP/IP.
User's View:
Users (either human or electronic) run client software to connect
with servers to retrieve information using the Z39.50 protocol. Many
clients already exist at least in prototype version today and more
are being written. Most of the major library automation vendors have
announced that they will be supporting Z39.50 in either client or
server mode or both. Many of the major information vendors either
currently have or are working on implementations of Z39.50 for their
systems. There are also a couple of Z39.50 implementations that are
expected to be put in the public domain at some point. The recently
announced FREEWAIS software incorporates Z39.50 Version 2 into it
(the older version used a variant of the 1988 version 1 protocol).
The Library of Congress acts as the maintenance agency for Z39.50 and
can be contacted for a list of registered Implementors.
Z39.50 provides a protocol mechanism for accessing remote information
sources. It defines the model for the interaction between two sides,
a client and a server. It makes no assumptions or presumptions about
how the data is actually organized in the server, nor about how the
data is presented to the end user by the client.
The model postulates one or more databases on the remote system that
can be searched using attributes from defined search attribute sets,
creating a result set. Records can be retrieved from the result set
using agreed upon record formats.
Information types supported:
The Z39.50 protocol was designed as a general purpose search and
retrieval mechanism that could be used with a wide variety of data
types. The MARC format (a format used for cataloging library
material among other things) and a search attribute set suitable for
bibliographic and similar types of data are registered within the
current version of the standard. It is assumed that, as the protocol
begins to be used by other communities and for other types of data,
other attribute sets and record syntaxes will be developed. This
process has already begun and a generic record syntax and attribute
set are already under development, as well as some others,
specifically those supporting chemical structures, general science
and technology, and business information. The design philosophy
behind Z39.50 is that it will be used with other standards such as
Postscript, SGML, ODIF (and others), to communicate a wide variety of
data types, including full text, images, and many others.
RARE Groups
RARE (Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche Europeenne) is the
Association of European Networking Organizations and their users.
RARE's aim is to overcome national boundaries in research networking
by creating a harmonized computer communications infrastructure for
the European research community. At this point in time RARE has over
40 members, most of which are national networking organizations
providing networking services to their national research and education
community.
RARE's technical programme is carried out by volunteers working in a
number of Working Groups.
For further information on RARE contact:
RARE Secretariat
Singel 466-468
NL-1017 AW AMSTERDAM
Telephone number +31-20-639-1131
Fax number +31-20-639-3289
E-mail address RFC8222
[email protected]
E-mail address X.400
C=nl; ADMD=400net; PRMD=surf; O=rare; S=raresec;
RARE ISUS
Date template updated or checked: 28th February, 1994
By: Name: Jill Foster
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation:
RARE (Reseaux Associes pour la Recherche Europeenne)
Working subgroups (of relevance to nir):
Name of subgroup: MMIS Task Force
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Name of subgroup: NIR Task Force
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Name of subgroup: UNITE Task Force
Mailinglist-Address: [email protected]
Description of main group:
The Information Services and User Support (ISUS) Working Group has
been established by the RARE Technical Committee as one of the major
working groups in the RARE Technical Programme. ISUS is concerned
with all aspects of networked information services, group
communications and network user support. It is open to all those
involved in working in these areas and should include:
Network User Support Staff: National and European Support Staff
(whether RARE, RIPE, EARN, Eunet etc.)
Site Computing Centre Support Staff
Special subject related User Support Staff
Library Staff
Networked Information Providers
Networked Information Service Providers
Application Developers
The ISUS WG mailing list will act both as a forum for discussion
amongst experts in this field and as a means for disseminating
information to the wider community.
The ISUS Working Group is chartered to have a very broad area of
interest which is broken down into several sub-areas:
Network User Support
Asynchronous Group Communication
Networked Information Retrieval and Services
Liaison
Current tasks being worked on in the area of NIR include:
o Coordination of NIR services in Europe
o Collection of information related to NIR tools and groups.
This is a joint effort with the IETF and CNI.
o Network Interface to everything (UNITE). This group is starting
to look at the user requirements for a single interface to the
network (network information services, email, bulletin boards,
etc.). ([email protected])
o Multimedia Information Services task force (MMIS). This group is
a joint task force of the RARE ISUS Working Group and RARE
Interactive Multimedia Working Group ([email protected]).
charter: anonymous ftp from mailbase.ac.uk
file: /pub/lists/wg-isus/files/isus.charter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Jill Foster
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Computing Service
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UK
Telephone: +44-91-222-8250
Fax: +44-91-222-8765
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Auto subscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe wg-isus
Human admin to: [email protected]
Description: General purpose mailing list for whole ISUS WG.
Archive: Not yet available
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details
Site: raredoc.rare.nl
Directory: /rare/working-groups
Location details
Site: mailbase.ac.uk
Directory: /pub/lists/wg-isus/files
/pub/lists/nir/files
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: RARE Technical Reports
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
RARE Technical Report 1: User Support and Information Services
in the RARE Community - a Status Report. Jill Foster
RARE Technical Report 5: A Survey of Distributed Multimedia -
Research, Standards and Products. Chris Adie
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
This group was formed in May 1992 and takes over and expands on the
work of the former RARE WG3 USIS Subgroup. The group conducts most
of its business by email, but meets twice a year before the European
Networking Conferences.
The EARNinfo group has recently joined forces with RARE ISUS WG, they
will be working together in the areas of documentation and network
training.
USMARC/OCLC
Date template updated or checked: 10 March 1994
By: Name: Rebecca Guenther
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Working Group or Organisation: USMARC/OCLC
Name of group: USMARC Advisory Group; OCLC Internet Resources
Cataloging Experiment
Sponsoring Organisations: OCLC, Library of Congress,
USMARC Advisory Group
Working subgroups: None
Description of main group:
OCLC and the Library of Congress have formed a working group to
consider how libraries can create cataloging records for online
information resources. The group initiated a cataloging experiment
designed to test and verify the applicability of the cataloging rules
and the USMARC format for computer files. Guidelines have been
written for cataloging Internet resources and were considered by the
American Library Association committee responsible for maintaining the
Anglo- American Cataloging Rules. Changes to the USMARC format were
initiated to accommodate a subset of these materials (electronic data
resources, such as software, electronic text, bibliographic and
nonbibliographic databases). USMARC format changes which were
approved included an identification of type of file and a field for
location and access of the resource (very much like a URL).
The group is continuing its work by looking at how online systems and
services can be accommodated in USMARC. This work will be done within
the USMARC Advisory Group of the American Library Association, which
considers changes to the USMARC formats. Data elements will be
defined with mapping to MARC fields; in some cases new fields will be
proposed. This will be accomplished in conjunction with efforts by
other working groups (e.g., Government Information Locator Service, or
GILS).
A proposal was presented and approved in February 1994 to the USMARC
Advisory Group to add data elements to the Electronic Location and
Access Field (USMARC field 856). Included among these was a subfield
for URL (Uniform Resource Locator). It is intended to be used instead
of or in addition to other data identifying location of and access to
a networked information resource.
Membership is closed at this point.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s): Rebecca Guenther [email protected]
Name: Rebecca Guenther
Email address: [email protected]; [email protected]
Postal address: Network Development and MARC Standards Office,
Library of Congress,
Washington, DC 20540-4020
Telephone: +1-202-707-5092
Fax: +1-202-707-6269
-------------------------------
Name: Erik Jul
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: OCLC, Inc.
6565 Franz Rd.
Dublin OH 43017-0702
Telephone: +1-614-764-4364
Fax: +1-614-764-2344
----------------------------
Name: Priscilla Caplan
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: University of Chicago Library,
1100 E. 57th St.,
Chicago, IL 60637
Telephone: +1-312-702-5079
Fax: +1-312-702-6623
----------------------------
Name: William W. Jones, Jr.
Email Address: [email protected]
Postal Address: New York University/Elmer Holmes Bobst Library,
Technical and Automated Services Division,
70 Washington Square South,
New York, NY 10012
Telephone: +1-212-998-4070
Fax: +1-212-995-4070
---------------------------
Name: Nancy Olson
Email Address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Memorial Library,
Mankato State University,
Mankato, MN 56001
Telephone: +1-507-389-5062
Fax: +1-507-389-5488
----------------------------
Name: Glenn Patton
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: OCLC, Inc.
6565 Franz Rd.
Dublin OH 43017-0702
Telephone: +1-800-848-5878
Fax: +1-614-764-0155
--------------------------------
Name: Martin Dillon
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: OCLC, Inc.
6565 Franz Rd.
Dublin OH 43017-0702
Telephone: +1-614-764-6079
Fax: +1-614-764-2344
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Archives under USMARC listserv.
Documents available:
94-2.doc (Proposal 94-2: Addition of Subfields $g and $3 to Field 856
Electronic Location and Access) in the USMARC
Holdings/Bibliographic
Formats: Document)
94-2.cov (Cover sheet with status information)
94-3.doc (Proposal 94-3: Addition of Subfield $u (Uniform
Resource Locator) to Field 856 in the USMARC
Holdings/Bibliographic
Formats: Document)
94-3.cov (Cover sheet with status information)
93-4.doc (Proposal 93-4: Changes to the USMARC Bibliographic
Format (Computer Files) to Accommodate Online Information
Resources: Document)
93-4.cov (Proposal 93-4: Cover sheet with status information)
dp69.doc (Discussion Paper No. 69: Accommodating Online Systems
and Services within USMARC: Document)
dp69.cov (Discussion Paper No. 69: Cover sheet with status
information)
Location details
Telnet to: marvel.loc.gov
Login: marvel
Select: Services to Libraries and Publishers
Select: USMARC Standards
Select: USMARC Listserv
See list of documents
-or-
Site: [email protected]
Send email message with
get usmarc 93-4.doc
get usmarc 93-4.cov
get usmarc dp69.doc
get usmarc dp69.cov
etc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
"Assessing Information on the Internet: Toward Providing Library
Services for Computer-Mediated Communication". Dublin, OH: OCLC
Online Computer Library Center, 1993. Available in print form
from OCLC, Inc. for $20 or electronically from:
ftp.rsch.oclc.org
/pub/internet_resources_project/report
Filenames: *.*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Proposal 94-2: Addition of Subfields $g and $3 to Field 856
Electronic Location and Access) in the USMARC Holdings/Bibliographic
Formats)
Proposal 94-3: Addition of Subfield $u (Uniform Resource Locator) to
Field 856 in the USMARC Holdings/Bibliographic Formats
Discussion Paper No. 69: Accommodating Online Systems and
Services in USMARC (Washington: Library of Congress, Network
Development and MARC Standards Office, Apr. 1993).
Proposal 93-4: Changes to the USMARC Bibligraphic Format
(Computer Files) to Accommodate Online Information Resources
(Washington: Library of Congress, Network Development and MARC
Standards Office, Nov. 1992 (rev. Mar. 1993).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: None.
Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
The report was very much a collaborative effort of the members of the
NIR WG and in particular Peter Deutsch (who contributed the mailing
list section and the basis for Section 5), April Marine, Rick
Rodgers, Lars-Gunnar Olsson, Farhad Anklesaria, Marsha Perrott, Kevin
Gamiel, George Brett, Barbara Thomas and all those who helped review
the document. Special thanks are due to all those contributors who
took the time to submit and update descriptions of their NIR tools
and groups; their names are included in the templates in Sections 6
and 7.
Before final submission of the report as an RFC, independent
reviewers from around the world took two or three templates each and
checked them out for accuracy and currency as best they could. They
liaised with the original template authors over the changes they
made. The volunteers were: Larry Masinter, Marilyn Martin, Sinha
Velu, Ton Verschuren, Shirley Browne, Alfred Vella, Bert Stals,
Yannis Corovesis, Gerard Egan, Robert Janz and Andy Linton. They
provided some very valuable input.
Purpose and scope:
This template is to be used to collect the information necessary to
identify and track the development of networked information retrieval
tools. It is intended that the main part of this will be completed by
the main individual responsible for the tool. Sections of the
template may require completion by others.
The NIR tools included are defined by enumeration. The IETF/RARE/CNI
NIR-WG welcome suggestions for others to be included.
New entries: Please complete this template and return it to
[email protected] (NIR-WG co-chair). Receipt of your
message will be acknowledged.
Please imbed descriptive text by at least one more column than the
heading for that item:
For example:
The full report will be updated annually and will form the basis of a
"snapshot" report on the activities in the area of networked
information retrieval (NIR).
-------------------------x---- cut here ----x--------------------------
Date template updated or checked: (e.g., 02 November, 1992)
By: Name:
Email address:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NIR Tool Name:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
[Please duplicate this section for each separate contact]
Name:
[May be the name of a role e.g., nirtool-support or of an
individual]
Email address:
Postal Address:
Telephone:
Fax:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
[for major center as well as each client if available]
Name:
[May be the name of a role e.g., nirtool-support or of an
individual]
Email address:
Telephone:
Level of support offered: [delete as appropriate]
o volunteer
o funded
o for experts only
o all users
Hours available:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Working Groups:
[Name only]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:
[Name only]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
[Duplicate this section for each list]
Address: [Email Address to send contributions]
Administration: [
Description:
[This is optional - if the group has only one mailing list]
Archive: [Location of message archive for this list]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
[Duplicate this section for each news group]
Name:
Description:
[This is optional - if the group has only one news group]
Archive: [Location of message archive for this news group]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported: [e.g., Z39.50]
What it runs over:
Other NIR tools this interworks with:
Future plans:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
[Duplicate the following for each platform
e.g., Unix, VMS, VM/CMS,....]
[The main contact for this NIR tool should complete at least
"platform" and "contact" for each server known to them.]
Date completed or updated:
By: Name:
Email address: [If different from that of the Primary
contact listed below]
Platform:
Primary Contact:
Name:
Email address:
Telephone:
Server software available from:
Location of more information:
[Such as installation instructions
copyright statements,
warnings & bug reports etc.
Eventually this will be the Unique Resource
Identifiers of the documents]
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Approximate number of such servers in use:
General comments:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
[Duplicate the following for each platform
e.g., MS-DOS PC, MAC, vt100,...]
[The main contact for this NIR tool should complete
"platform" and "contact" for each server known to them.]
Date completed or updated:
By: Name:
Email address: [If different from that of the Primary
contact listed below]
Platform:
Primary Contact:
Name:
Email address:
Telephone:
Client software available from:
Location of more information:
[Such as installation instructions
copyright statements,
warnings & bug reports etc.
Eventually this will be the Unique Resource
Identifiers of the documents]
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General comments:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
List of sites which are willing to act as demonstration
sites for this application.
[Duplicate for each site]
Site name:
Access details:
[e.g.,
telnet archie.sura.net
login as archie ]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
The following is a list of suggested items to be found in a
document archive. Note that the location pointers below could be
replaced in the future by the "Uniform Resource Name".
[Duplicate the following for each existing document as
necessary]
Document Title:
Location details:
Site:
Full file name:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
[A list of a maximum of 10 key papers, books etc. on this NIR tool.
Optionally a pointer to a fuller bibliography could be given.]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
[Feel free to add other information that you feel is relevant.
This will be considered for inclusion in the report.]
Purpose and scope:
This template is to be used to collect the information necessary to
identify and track major groups that are working to promote or develop
networked information retrieval. It is intended that this will be
completed by the group representative.
The groups included are defined by enumeration. The IETF/RARE/CNI
NIR-WG welcome suggestions for other groups to be included.
Groups:
CNI Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Architectures and Standards
Directories and Resource Information Services
TopNode for Networked Information Resources, Services,
and Tools
CNIDR Clearing House for Networked Information Discovery
and Retrieval
IETF Integrated Directory Services (IDS)
Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR)
Networked Information Retrieval (NIR) joint IETF/RARE WG
Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI)
OSI-Directory Service (OSI-DS)
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI)
Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS)
IRTF Internet Research Task Force Research Group on
Resource Discovery and Directory Service (IRTF-RD)
NISO Z39.50 Implementors Group
RARE Information Services and User Support Working Group
(ISUS)
USMARC/OCLC USMARC Advisory Group; OCLC Internet Resources
Cataloging Experiment (USMARC/OCLC)
New Entries: Please complete this template for your group or
organisation and return it to [email protected] (NIR-WG
co-chair). Receipt of your message will be acknowledged.
Please imbed descriptive text by at least one more column than the
heading for that item:
For example:
Description of main group:
This is the most active NIR group. This is the decription imbedded
one more column.
Updates: updates to existing information on NIR Groups may be sent by
the appropriate contact person at any time to:
The full report will be updated annually and will form the basis of a
"snapshot" report on the activities in the area of networked
information retrieval (NIR).
-----------------------x---- cut here ----x----------------------------
Date template updated or checked: (e.g., 02 November, 1992)
By: Name:
Email address:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NIR Group Name:
Sponsoring Organisation:
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup:
Mailinglist-Address:
Description of main group:
[Description of the scope and purpose of the group and the
current tasks being worked on. (Recommended maximum of
100 lines.) Please indicate whether membership is open or
closed. Include a pointer to an on-line charter if
appropriate]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
[Please duplicate this section for each separate contact]
Name:
[May be the name of a role e.g., group-secretariat or of an
individual]
Email address:
Postal Address:
Telephone:
Fax:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
[Duplicate this section for each list]
Address: [Email Address to send contributions]
Administration: [
Description:
[This is optional - if the group has only one mailing list]
Archive: [Location of message archive for this list]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
[Duplicate this section for each news group]
Name:
Description:
[This is optional - if the group has only one news group]
Archive: [Location of message archive for this news group]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
[Duplicate if necessary]
Location details:
Site:
Directory:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
[for example: Journal, Newsletter, Report Series]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
[A list of a maximum of 10 key papers, books etc. produced by
this group on their NIR work].
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
[Feel free to add other information that you feel is relevant.
This will be considered for inclusion in the report.]
/* A summary of email lists and newsgroups dealing with */
/* various issues in resource discovery and networked */
/* information retrieval. */
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Created-By: Peter Deutsch
Email Address: [email protected]
Last Updated: 16 December 1993
Comments: Please send comments, corrections and
additions to the author at the above address.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/* The following mailing lists are in IAFA format. NIR Groups and */
/* Tool developers are encouraged to make such descriptions */
/* available for their lists. */
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Alex
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: alex-servers is for people setting up an Alex
fileserver. alex-users is for people who just
want to use Alex.
Archive: alex.sp.cs.cmu.edu (128.2.209.13)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Archie
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is for people who operate and
maintain archie servers. Announcements of bug
fixes, new releases and discussion of new
features are carried out on this list.
Archive: archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/archie-maint
----------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: The archie People Mailing List
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is for people interested in
the archie project and its future developments.
Announcements of upgrades, new services, etc.
are made to this list.
Archive: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name Gopher
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: News and views of all things gopher.
Archive: Via gopher: University of Minnesota Gopher
Information About Gopher
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: HYTELNET Updates Distribution
Address: [email protected]
Administration: By listowner Peter Scott
[email protected]
Description: To inform members of new version of the
software, and to keep users informed of
new/changed/defunct Telnet-accessible sites.
To subscribe send email message to
[email protected] with no subject, and
sub hytel-l firstname lastname as the body of
the message.
Archive: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Netfind
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mailing list for user changes and updates.
Archive: None.
---------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mailing list for sites running Netfind servers.
Archive: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Prospero
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is really two one-way mailing
lists. Send mail to INFO-PROSPERO to obtain
information about Prospero, papers or the
release. Mail to INFO-PROSPERO will not be
passed on to subscribers. INFO-PROSPERO is
also the list to which we will send status
updates and information on how to obtain new
releases.
Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as
/pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc
Via prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype"
virtual system as
/sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/info-prospero.arc.
-----------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is for general discussion of
Prospero, for announcements of new sites that
have come on board, and for announcments of
directories that people have created to
organize the information already accessible.
Archive: Via anonymous FTP to PROSPERO.ISI.EDU as
/pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc
Via Prospero in the "#/INET/EDU/ISI/GUEST/prototype"
virtual system as
/sites/isi.edu/pub/prospero/mail/prospero.arc.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Veronica
Address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: WAIS
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Moderated, digested biweekly posting about WAIS
and Electronic publishing subjects. Please
submit interesting materials.
Archive:
/pub/wais/mail-archives/wais-discussion/issue-*@wais.com
and wais-discussion-archive WAIS server
-----------------------------
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Implementors forum on WAIS. This is for
talking about nitty gritty details of protocols
and implementations.
Archive: /pub/wais/mail-archives/[email protected]
-----------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: freeWAIS
Address: [email protected]
Administration: not applicable
Description: Mailing list for reporting bugs in freeWAIS.
Archive: None.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: WWW
Address: [email protected] for CONTRIBUTIONS ONLY
Administration: [email protected] (robot)
[email protected] (human)
Description: Technical discussions, W3 related. Experts to
experts. General questions to
comp.infosystems.www please.
Archive: Not currently served, but kept.
---------------------------
Address: [email protected]
NOT FOR GENERAL USE - serious low-volume
announcements only
Administration: [email protected] (robot)
[email protected] (human)
Description: Low volume summary announcements of product
releases, etc.
Archive: Not currently public.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: X.500
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Mail list for OIW DS-SIG group.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Groups
All of the CNI lists are managed with the Unix-Listprocessor software.
To join any of them mail to:
[email protected]
sub cni-
All CNI list archives are available as:
URL:ftp://ftp.cni.org/CNI/forums/cni-
--------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI News and Announcements
Address: [email protected]
--------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Architecture and Standards Working Group
Address: [email protected]
--------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Copyright and Intellectual Property
Forum
Address: [email protected]
-------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Directories and Information Resource Services
Working Group
Address: [email protected]
--------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Legislation, Codes, Policies and
Practices Working Group Forum
Address: [email protected]
-----------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Management & Professional & User
Education Working Group Forum
Address: [email protected]
---------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Modernization of Scholarly
Publication Working Group Forum
Address: [email protected]
--------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Access to Public Information
Working Group Forum
Address: [email protected]
-------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Teaching and Learning Working Group
Forum
Address: [email protected]
-------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNI Transformation of Scholarly
Communication Working Group Forum
Address: [email protected]
-------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: TopNode for Networked Information Resources,
Services and Tools
Address: [email protected]
[email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
SUB cni-directories Lastname Firstname
Archive: ftp.cni.org:/CNI/forums/cni-directories/*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: CNIDR
Address: [email protected]
Administration: none
Description: Email sent to this address will receive an
automatic response containing more information
about current CNIDR activities.
Archive: none
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: [email protected]
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
sub zip Lastname Firstname
Description: Technical discussion of Z39.50-92 application
development. Subscribers receive brief
overview of project and information on how to
access archives.
Archive:
ftp://ftp.cnidr.org/NIDR.tools/zip
gopher://gopher.cnidr.org/NIDR Tools/Discussion/Online Discussion
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: IDS: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) WG
on Integrated Directory Services
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP to merit.edu, ids/archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: IIIR: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) WG
on Integration of Internet Information Resources
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP, iiir/archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: NIR: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) WG
on Network Information Retrieval
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Auto subscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe nir firstname lastname"
Human admin to: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is intended to act as a
clearing-house for discussions of Networked
Information Retrieval and the active research
projects in this field (eg WAIS, WWW, Gopher).
Keywords: IETF, URIs, UDIs, URLs, UDLs, resource
discovery, Internet, Gopher, WAIS, WWW, X.500,
archie
Archive: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/files/nir/*
or via gopher to mailbase.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: NISI: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) WG
on Network Information Services Infrastructure
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: OSI-DS: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
WG on OSI Directory Services
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: Anonymous FTP, bells.cs.ucl.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: URI: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) WG
on Uniform Resource Identifiers
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: archives.cc.mcgill.ca:~/pub/uri-archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: WNILS: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
subscribe ietf-wnils Firstname Lastname
Description: This mailing list is used by the IETF Whois and
Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS)
working group which is defining enhancements to
whois.
Archive: ucdavis.edu:/pub/archive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Z39.50 Implementors Group (ZIG)
Address: [email protected] (Internet)
Z3950IW@NERVM (Bitnet)
Administration/ [email protected] (Internet)
Subscriptions: LISTSERV@NERVM (Bitnet)
Archive: Anonymous FTP and/or Gopher: sally.fcla.ufl.edu
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: RARE Information Services and User Support WG
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Auto subscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe wg-isus
Human admin to: [email protected]
Description: General purpose mailing list for whole ISUS WG.
Document Archive: Site: raredoc.rare.nl
Directory: /rare
------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: MMIS: RARE Multimedia Information Services
Task Force
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Autosubscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe mmis firstname lastname
Human admin to: [email protected]
Archive: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/files/mmis/*
or via gopher to mailbase.ac.uk
------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: UNITE: RARE Task Force on "User Network
Interface To Everything"
Address: [email protected]
Administration: Autosubscriptions to: [email protected]
"subscribe unite firstname lastname
Human admin to: [email protected]
Archive: ftp://mailbase.ac.uk/pub/lists/files/unite/*
or via gopher to mailbase.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Hyper-G
Address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: Soft Pages
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Technical discussion related to representation
of network information in the directory and its
usage is carried out in this group.
Archive: Not (yet) available via anonymous FTP.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: WHOIS++
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: pub/archive/[email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailinglist-Name: IAFA: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
Internet Anonymous FTP Archive working group
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: This mailing list is for people who are
involved in the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives
Working Group of the IETF. This group was
involved in standardizing the encoding of
information at anonymous FTP archives and thus
is of interest to operators and users of the
archie system. It came to completion in
November, 1992 and produced two documents which
have been presented to the IETF as informational
RFCs.
Archive: archives.cc.mcgill.ca:/pub/mailing-lists/iafa
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/* The following Usenet newsgroups discuss various issues in */
/* resource discovery or specific NIR projects. */
Newsgroup-Name: comp.archives.admin
Mailinglist-Gate:
Description: This group discusses problems in administering
Internet archives. It has also been used as an
informal source of announcements for project
releases, a place for new-comers to ask
questions, etc.
Keywords: anonymous FTP, archives, Internet, archie
Archive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: comp.infosystems.wais
Mailinglist-Gate:
Description: This group was created to host discussions
about the Wide Area Information Server
Also included are information and help with the
public domain release available from Thinking
Machine Corp. and setting up your own WAIS
server.
Keywords: WAIS, resource discovery, indexing, Internet
Archive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: alt.wais
Mailinglist-Gate:
Description: This alt. group was created to host discussions
about the Wide Area Information Service. It has
been superceeded by the group
"comp.infosystems.wais" and its use is
discouraged.
Keywords: WAIS, resource discovery, indexing, Internet
Archive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: comp.infosystems.www
Mailinglist-Gate:
Description: This group was created to host discussions
about the World Wide Web distributed hypertext
information services project based at CERN in
Switzerland, including discussion of the many
public domain implementations of WWW clients
and servers available.
Keywords: World Wide Web, campus-wide information
systems, resource discovery, indexing, Internet
Archive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: alt.gopher
Mailinglist-Gate:
Description: This group was created to host discussions
about the Gopher distributed information
project, based at University of Minnesota,
including discussion of the many public domain
implementations of Gopher clients and servers
available. It has been superceeded by the
group "comp.infosystems.gopher" and its use is
discouraged.
Keywords: Gopher, campus-wide information systems,
resource discovery, indexing, Internet
Archive:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: alt.internet.services
Description: This newsgroup is for people interested in
Internet-related services, with a focus at the
user level. Announcements and discussions of
issues related to archie are presented here, as
well as discussions of more general issues
relating to Internet services.
Archive: not known
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroup-Name: bit.listserv.hytel-l
This section will be used to keep a note of NIR Tools which are
considered by the NIR Group to be sufficiently well developed to
include here, but that are not yet in widespread use.
Items currently included here are:
Hyper-G
Soft Pages
Whois++
HYPER-G
Date template updated or checked: 19th October, 1993
By: Name: Frank Kappe
Email address:[email protected]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NIR Tool Name: Hyper-G
Hyper-G is designed as a general-purpose, large-scale, multi-user,
distributed hypermedia information system. As such, it combines
concepts of hypermedia, information retrieval systems, documentation
systems with aspects of communication and collaboration, and computer
supported teaching and learning. It also provides seamless
integration of other systems (e.g., World-Wide Web, Gopher, WAIS) that
also operate under the client/server paradigm and allows remote logins
to interactive services.
In addition to hypertext links, Hyper-G allows navigation through
hierarchies, queries (including full text), guided tours, and is
multilingual.
Hyper-G is currently operated at some 10 locations throughout the
world, including a University Information System at the Graz Technical
University. Clients and the server are available without fee for
educational institutions, and are distributed as binaries for a number
of platforms.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Frank Kappe
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Schieszstattg. 4a, A-8010 Graz, AUSTRIA
Telephone: +43-316-832551-22
Fax: +43-316-824394
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
Sorry no help line
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Working Groups:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:
Austrian Ministry of Science
European Space Agency
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
[email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported: RPC
What it runs over: TCP/IP
Other NIR tools this interworks with: gopher, WAIS, World Wide Web
Future plans: Too numerous to mention.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
Date completed or updated: 12th October, 1993
By: Name: Gerald Pani
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact:
Name: Gerald Pani
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +43-316-832551-34
Server software available from: anon-ftp from iicm.tu-graz.ac.at,
in directory pub/Hyper-G/Server
Location of more information: see README in above directory
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Approximate number of such servers in use: 13
General comments:
Currently available as binary distribution for SUN, DEC, HP,
and SGI workstations.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
UNIX curses client (a.k.a. VT100 Client)
Date completed or updated: 19th October, 1993
By: Name: Frank Kappe
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact:
Name: Frank Kappe
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +43-316-832551-22
Client software available from:
anonymous ftp: iicm.tu-graz.ac.at:/pub/Hyper-G/UnixClient
Location of more information:
Latest version number: 1.41
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Fairly sophisticated terminal viewer with ~50 commands, multi-
language user interface, history, authoring capabilities (text
documents and links) and the ability to speak to gopher,
World-Wide-Web, WAIS and to start telnet sessions.
General comments:
Future plans:
The terminal viewer will probably remain rather stable in the future.
Our main effort now goes into the development of clients for
X-Windows and MS-Windows.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
MS-Windows Client
Date completed or updated: 10th October, 1993
By: Name: Thomas Dietinger
Email address:
Platform: UNIX
Primary Contact:
Name: Thomas Dietinger, Frank Kappe
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +43-316-832551-22
Client software available from:
anonymous ftp: iicm.tu-graz.ac.at:/pub/Hyper-G/pc-client
Location of more information:
Latest version number: 1.37
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Preliminary version of a Hyper-G client for MS-Windows 3.1 and Windows
NT. Currently mostly identical to the UNIX curses client. An
exception is its ability to elegantly import and export RTF text files
to/from Hyper-G, and its multimedia capabilities.
General comments:
Future plans:
Will become more fancy (menus, icons, buttons...) in the near future.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
List of sites which are willing to act as demonstration
sites for this application.
Site name: hyperg.tu-graz.ac.at
Access details: 'rlogin hyperg.tu-graz.ac.at' or
'telnet hyperg.tu-graz.ac.at', login 'info'
(rlogin has the advantage that the terminal size
of xterms is handled correctly (can even be
changed in the middle of a session)
Note: The same information is available through Gopher and WWW
gateways.
Gopher: host gopher.tu-graz.ac.at, port 70
WWW: URL=http://www.tu-graz.ac.at:80/ROOT
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
Document Title: Most of the documentation is available on-line in the
Graz server. The server distribution include man-pages
of the additional authoring tools and utilities that
are supplied with the server. The ideas behind Hyper-G
are described in a number of research papers (see
Bibliography).
Location details:
Site: iicm.tu-graz.ac.at
Full file name: look in directory /pub/Hyper-G/doc
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
Kappe F.: Aspects of a Modern Multi-Media Information System. IIG
Report 308, IIG, Graz University of Technology, Austria, June 1991.
Available by anonymous ftp from
iicm.tu-graz.ac.at:/pub/Hyper-G/doc/report308.ps.Z
Kappe F., Maurer H., Sherbakov N.: Hyper-G - A Universal Hypermedia
System. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, Vol. 2,
No. 1, pp. 39-66 (1993). Also available by anonymous ftp from
iicm.tu-graz.ac.at:/pub/Hyper-G/doc/report333.txt.Z
Kappe F., Pani G., Schnabel F.: The Architecture of a Massively
Distributed Hypermedia System. Internet Research: Electronic
Networking Applications and Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 10-24; Meckler
(Spring 1993)
Kappe F., Maurer H.: Hyper-G: A Large Universal Hypermedia System and
Some Spin-Offs; ACM Computer Graphics, experimental special online
issue; available by anonymous ftp from siggraph.org in directory
publications/May_93_online/Kappe.Maurer (May 1993)
Kappe F.: Hyper-G: A Distributed Hypermedia System; Proc. INET '93,
San Francisco, California, pp. DCC-1 - DCC-9 (Aug. 1993).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
SOFT PAGES
Date template updated or checked: 4th November, 1993
By: Name: Glenn Mansfield
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NIR Tool Name: SoftPages
The X.500 directory services is used in several stages
However, under present circumstances, due to lack of deployment of
network information in the directory, when information is unavailable
from X.500, alternate sources/methods are used. [Static-lists of
file-servers, or lists of file servers from other clients (e.g.,
archie); Paths and/or costs are obtained from static lists or derived
by other direct means (e.g., ping, traceroute); file information is
sought from other servers (e.g., archie).]
Query of files based on incomplete name is supported. The system also
supports queries based on keywords.
Since the system supports query on name and keywords (not on
contents) all kinds of information may be supported.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Manager, SoftPages Project
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: AIC Sytsems Lab.
Minami Yoshinari 6-6-3
Aoba-ku, Sendai-shi 989-32, Japan
Telephone: +81-22-279-3310
Fax: +81-22-279-3640
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
Name: SoftPages Project Support Group
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +81-22-279-3310
Level of support offered:
o volunteer
o all users yes
Hours available: Regular working hours
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Working Groups:
The SoftPages Project Working Group
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:
The project is supported by:
AIC Systems Lab., Sendai, Japan
Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
The WIDE Project, Japan
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Technical discussion related to representation
of network information in the directory and its
usage is carried out in this group.
Archive: Not (yet) available via anonymous FTP.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported: X.500 DAP
What it runs over: LDAP over IP
Other NIR tools this interworks with:
Future plans:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
Date completed or updated: 4th November, 1993
By: Name: Glenn Mansfield
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Unix
Primary Contact:
Name: Manager, SoftPages Project
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +81-22-279-3310
Server software available from:
Any standard X.500 package will do.
We are using the QUIPU package that is included
in the ISODE system
Location of more information:
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
Approximate number of such servers in use:
General comments:
some new oids need to be assigned for
SoftPages related objects.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
Date completed or updated: 4th November, 1993
By: Name: Glenn Mansfield
Email address: [email protected]
Platform: Unix.
Primary Contact:
Name: Manager, SoftPages Project
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +81-22-279-3310
Client software available from:
will be announced on the mailing list in the
near future
Location of more information:
Latest version number:
Brief Scope and Characteristics:
General comments:
The Prototype is under development and testing.
It is not (yet) available for public use.
Future plans:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
Document Title: README
Location details:
Site: ftp.tohoku.ac.jp
Full file name:pub/spp/README
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
"The Soft Pages Project", Th. Johannsen, G.Mansfield,
OSI-DS-39, February 1993.
Location details:
Site: cs.ucl.ac.uk
Full file name:osi-ds/osi-ds-39-00.{txt, ps}
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
"Optimized Document Retrieval - Soft Pages Project", Th. Johannsen,
G.Mansfield, S.Noguchi, Booklet of Abstracts,
The Network Services Conference '92, Pisa, November 1992.
WHOIS++
Date template updated or checked: 21 October, 1993
By: Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NIR Tool Name: whois++ and the whois++ index service
The protocols describe two logically distinct types of servers that an
information provider can set up. The first type is the base-level
whois++ server. This contains primary information, such as entries
for individual people or entries describing resources available
locally. For example, if one wished to provide a campus directory
through whois++, one would set up a base-level whois++ server that
contained entries for each student. In addition, this base-level
server must be able to generate 'forward knowledge' for the
information it contains. The second type of server collects the
'forward knowledge' generated by a number of base-level servers, and
can take a query sent to it and determine which of the base-level
servers it indexes might contain information relevant for the query.
A single physical server may contain both primary information and
'forward knowledge' for a number of other servers, and an index server
can also index 'forward knowledge' for a number of other index
servers, allowing a hierarchical mesh of index servers to be built.
For more details on the information provider's point of view, see the
'Documentation' section of this template.
The basic information model is centered on the concept of 'templates'.
A template is a collection of attribute:value pairs, where the
allowable attributes are specified by the template type. The whois++
templates are based on the templates defined by the IAFA working group
of the IETF. The values associated with given attributes are not
necessarily limited to text, they can be digitized sound clips, etc.
Depending on the client she uses, the user will see a connection to
the local whois++ base-level server. The user can ask the server for
a list of templates supported by that server, and can then call up a
blank version of the template so that she can fill in values for the
attributes she knows. Once she has filled in the template as much as
she wants, she issues a query to the server to find all the entries
which have these attribute:value pairs. If she is not satisfied with
the responses, she can then start traversing the index service to
locate a server which can adequately answer her query. In addition,
if a user makes frequent use of the index service, she can set
'bookmarks' which can be used later to directly contact servers she's
found useful in the past, without having to traverse the index service
again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Chris Weider
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: 2001 South Huron Parkway 12
Ann Arbor
Michigan
48104, USA
Telephone: +1-313-971-2223
Fax: +1-313-971-2223
----------------------------
Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: [email protected]
Postal Address: Bunyip Information Systems, Inc.
266 Blvd. Neptune
Dorval QUEBEC H9S 2L4
CANADA
Telephone: +1-514-875-8611
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Help Line:
Not yet deployed.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Related Working Groups:
Whois Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS) Working Group of the
Internet Engineering Task Forces (IETF)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation / Funding source:
None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Archive: pub/archive/[email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
NONE
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Protocols:
What is supported: WHOIS, whois++
What it runs over: TCP/IP
Other NIR tools this interworks with: None yet.
Future plans: Providing resource location services and URN/URL
mappings for GOPHER, ARCHIE, WAIS, and WWW.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Servers:
Only beta versions available at this time (21 October, 1993). Please
contact [email protected] (Chris Weider) for more information.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Clients:
Only beta versions available at this time (21 October, 1993). Please
contact [email protected] (Chris Weider) for more information.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Demonstration sites:
NONE at this time (21 October, 1993)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Documentation:
Document Title: Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service
Location details:
Site: gopher.ucdavis.edu
Full file name: /pub/IETF/WNILS/Architecture.Index.Service
Document Title: Architecture of the WHOIS++ Service
Location details:
Site: gopher.ucdavis.edu
Full file name: /pub/IETF/WNILS/Architecture.Overview
Document Title: Specifications for WHOIS Services
Location details:
Site: gopher.ucdavis.edu
Full file name: /pub/IETF/WNILS/Discussion.Paper
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
See the documentation section of this template.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
As this is a coming attraction, we encourage people to get in on the
ground floor. The authors of this protocol see it as potentially
being a key player in any integrated Internet information
architecture, and we can always use more volunteers who want to
beta-test code for us.
This section will contain information on Tools moved from the main
body of the report as the Tool falls out of common usage.
There are no items currently in this section.
This section will be used as a historical record of groups which were
once in the main body of the report, but which have since been closed.
Items in this section:
IAFA
IAFA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: IETF
Working subgroups: none.
Description of main group:
This working group came to completion during the IETF meeting in
November, 1992 and two Internet drafts are are now circulating. The
archive for this mailing list is currently available on
"archives.cc.mcgill.ca" via anonymous ftp in the file
"pub/mailing-lists/iafa".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Peter Deutsch
Email address: [email protected]
Telephone: +1-514-398-3709
Fax: +1-514-398-6876
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Discussion list for the IAFA Working Group
concerning the administration of anonymous FTP
archive sites.
Keywords: IETF, IAFA, anonymous, FTP, archive, Internet,
archie
Archive: The archive for this mailing list is currently
available on "archives.cc.mcgill.ca" via
anonymous FTP in the file
"pub/mailing-lists/iafa".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: archives.cc.mcgill.ca
Directory: pub/mailing-lists/iafa
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information:
Z39.50
Date template updated or checked: 8th July 1993
By: Name: Jane Smith
Email Address: [email protected]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsoring Organisation: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Architectures and Standards Program
Working subgroups:
Name of subgroup:
Mailinglist-Address:
Description of main group:
Program priorities are 1) to facilitate a consistent and complete
mechanism for linking bibliographic, abstracting, and indexing files
to files of their associated source materials; 2) a single standard
for the transmission of bitmapped image files; 3) protocols for
handing networked requests for delivery of source materials; 4)
mechanisms for interorganizational authentication, accounting, and
billing; and 5) to integrate lessons drawn from the experience of
pilot projects that exercise networked printing utilities and 6) to
provide an "interoperability workshop" to specify, implement, and test
advanced functions of Z39.50 to accelerate the pace and to ensure the
quality of standardization efforts in this area.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Primary Contact(s):
Name: Clifford Lynch
Email address: [email protected]
Postal address: Off. of the President
Unv. of California
300 Lakeside Dr.,
8th Flr. Oakland, CA 94612-3350 USA
Telephone: +1-415-987-0522
Fax: +1-415-839-3573
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mailing Lists:
Address: [email protected]
Administration: [email protected]
Description: Implementors' list for low level discussions
of protocol details.
Archive:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
News groups: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Document Archive:
Location details:
Site: ftp.cni.org
Directory: /CNI/projects/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Official Publications: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography: None
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Other Information: None
http://info.cern.ch./hypertext/WWW/Bibliography.html
NIR Group Name: Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
NIR Group Name: Architecture and Standards Working Group
NIR Group Name: Directories and Information Resource
Services Working Group
NIR Group Name: TopNode for Networked Information Resources,
Services, and Tools
NIR Group Name: Clearinghouse for Networked Information
Discovery and Retrieval
NIR Group Name: Integrated Directory Services (IDS)
NIR Group Name: Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR)
NIR Group Name: Networked Information Retrieval Working Group (NIR-WG)
NIR Group name: Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI)
Working Group
NIR Group Name: OSI Directory Services (OSI-DS)
NIR Group Name: Uniform Resource Identifiers (uri)
NIR Group Name: Whois and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS)
NIR Group name: Z39.50 Implementors Group
NIR Group Name: RARE Information Services and User Support Working
Group
Jill Foster
Computing Service
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Claremont Road
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
UK
Phone: +44-91-222-8250
Fax: +44-91-222-8765
Email: [email protected]
NIR TOOL Template (last updated 22.12.93)
NIR Tools:
Alex
archie
gopher
Hytelnet
Netfind
Prospero
Veronica
WAIS (including freeWAIS)
WHOIS
World Wide Web (including MOSAIC)
X.500 White Pages
Future plans:
Items included here could include
NIR Group Template (last updated 22.12.93)
COMING ATTRACTIONS
get list of file-servers
get path to file servers
get attributes for computing cost of paths
search for file that is being sought
Extinct Critters (Tools)
Extinct Critters (Groups)
Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed
Date template updated or checked: 8th July 1993
By: Name: Peter Deutsch
Email Address: [email protected]
NIR Group Name: Internet Anonymous File Archive Working Group
Postal address: Bunyip Information Systems
266 Blvd Neptune
Dorval, Quebec H9S 2L4
CANADA
NIR Group Name: Z39.50 Interoperability Testbed