Minutes of 3/30 meeting

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User Documents II Working Group
Chairs: Ellen Hoffman (Merit)
        Lenore Jackson (NASA)
Tuesday, March 30, 1993 (4-6 p.m.)
 
 
I. Introduction
 
The group's charter was described and mailing addresses reviewed. 
Subscriptions to the mailing list should be sent to:
[e-mail].
 
II. Bibliography for New Users completed
 
The final version of the short bibliography was distributed. This has 
been submitted to the Area Chair as the first step in finalizing it as 
an FYI RFC.
 
The on-line documents listed in the soon-to-be FYI are all collected in 
an archive available from four servers on the Internet for anonymous FTP 
called "Introducing the Internet." Two sites have email servers 
(nic.merit.edu and nisc.sri.com). Gopher and WAIS servers are available 
at Merit. Four additional sites expressed interest in mirroring the 
archive.  The documents can also be reached via dialup services at Merit 
for those with a modem and communications software. For more 
information, send an email message to [e-mail] with the text: 
send access.guide.
 
To provide an ongoing source of information about new documents for the 
FYI, a file will be kept in the "Introducing the Internet" archive 
listing new materials aimed at beginning Internet users. The WG 
recommends updating the FYI itself in a year.
 
III. First draft of comprehensive bibliography distributed
 
A nine-page draft bibliography was distributed as a first step in 
updating RFC 1175. The group discussed goals and directions for the 
document. The group agreed that the new bibliography would supplement 
rather than obsolete the existing RFC. It will cover hardcopy and on-
line documents about the Internet from 1990-93. With nine pages in a 
very incomplete listing, it was also agreed that abstracts for all 
listings would make the bibliography too long, so some form of keywords 
would be developed to help provide content information.
 
The group agreed to work on developing the list on-line through the 
mailing list, and to try to have a final version for approval at the 
July meeting. A suggestion was made to develop an on-line version that 
would allow navigation to each of the electronic documents, and it was 
agreed this would be discussed at the next meeting. There was also 
interest in having a document that could have "icons" that would make it 
easy to identify different subject areas. Creating a tool useful to 
librarians was another area of interest. A previous bibliography done by 
OCLC was presented as a possible source tool.
 
Input was solicited on corrections and additions to the document. A 
revised version will be submitted as an Internet draft and working group 
members were asked to send suggestions to the mailing list or authors.
 
IV. Revised goals and directions
 
A brief discussion was held of new and future projects for the working 
group. A possible FYI aimed at those who are not yet connected which had 
been mentioned in the earlier User Services Working Group meeting was 
suggested as a project. With the group having taken on introductory 
materials as part of the short bibliography, it was agreed that this was 
a reasonable project. A couple of authors said they had already written 
materials on this and offered to send them to the mailing list for 
consideration. There was continued interest in creating a "living 
document" to keep the bibliographies updated, and a locator resource for 
documentation on the Internet. More work will be done on these topics on 
the mailing list.