NIR "State of Play" report

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 The following message has just been posted on the "NIR" list. (Please
 keep discussion of NIR on that list.)

 As "nir" developed from an OSI-DS BOF at the last IETF, some of you
 may be interested in joining the nir mailing list and helping to put
 together a report on the state of play in the area of networked
 information retrieval. (See message below.)

 We also need a volunteer (Steve Kille?) to complete some information
 (template available) on the OSI-DS group for this report.

 Thanks,

 Jill Foster (co-chair NIR WG)

%%%%%%%% Forwarded message %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Date:     Wed, 02 Sep 92  17:34:59 BST
>From:    Jill.Foster @ newcastle.ac.uk
Subject:  NIR "State of Play" report
To:       nir @ cc.mcgill.ca

                                                                  
 As we are all too well aware:

 As the Internet grows rapidly, the problems of resource discovery and
 networked information search and retrieval increase daily.  Many
 groups are working on various aspects of the problems and the
 discussions are taking place on a large number of mailing lists.  The
 NIR mailing list was set up to enable mere mortals like me to keep up
 with the "state of play".  (But looking at the membership list there
 are not many "mere mortals" on the list :-) )

 The recent NIR (Networked Information Retrieval) BOF at the IETF
 (co-chaired by George Brett (Coalition for Networked Information) and
 myself (Jill Foster - RARE Information Services and User Support
 Working Group) had as its goal the formation of a joint IETF/RARE
 Working Group that would provide a regular 'snapshot' of what was
 happening in the NIR area to enable those interested to keep abreast
 of developments.

 In order to gather this information two templates were developed and
 tested out at the NIR BOF at the IETF in Boston.               

 The first stage is to agree the items in the template and to check
 that we have a current list of those applications and groups
 concerned.  (George Brett has already mailed these templates to the
 nir list.) We would like each group to try to complete (mentally) the
 "organisation" template and each application developer to complete the
 "application" template for their own group/project or application.
 This should show up possible problems or omissions.

 I would be grateful if the following would undertake to do this (or
 delegate to a named person) for their project/group or
 application/tool and to let me know the result by September 10th.  It
 would be very helpful if you could send me a brief acknowledgement
 that you intend to do this.

 Organisations/Projects
 ======================

 CNI          CNI-arch                  Clifford Lynch
              Top Node                  Craig Summerhill
              Directory                 George Brett

 RARE         ISUS                      Jill Foster

 IETF         IAFA                      Peter Deutsch/Alan Emtage
              OSI-DS                    Steve Kille
              NISI                      April Marine
              URL                       Tim Berners-Lee
              IIIS   (new)              Chris Weider
              URI    (new)              Peter Deutsch/Alan Emtage 
              NIR  (joint IETF/RARE WG) George Brett/Jill Foster


 IRTF         Resource Discovery        Mike Schwartz 

 WAIS Support Centre?                   George Brett

 Info Mesh Project                      Karen Sollins 

 Swedish SR-project (SR-NETT)           Geir Perdersen

 USMARC/OCLC project                    Rebecca Guenther


 Applications
 ============

 World Wide Web:         Tim Berners-Lee
 Archie                  Peter Deutsch and Alan Emtage 
 Prospero                Cliff Neuman
 WAIS                    Brewster Kahle/George Brett?
 gopher                  Farhad Anklesaria/Mark Macahill(?)
 Hytelnet                Peter Scott
 Alex                    Vince Cate
 Hyper-G                 Florian Schnabel
 Knowbot                 Vint Cerf
 Soft Pages              Thomas ?

 Please notify me of Groups or applications which are not mentioned
 here.  After 10th September I will update the templates in the light of
 comments and circulate them for any final comments.  The revised
 templates will then be sent to the individuals named above to be
 completed  for real.

 I realise that this means more work for some of you, but by each of us
 working on "our bit" we should be able to produce a very useful
 report.

 Thanks for your help.

 -- Jill