CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_


Reported by Kevin Gamiel/MCNC - CNIDR

Minutes of the Networked Information Retrieval Working Group (NIR)

Jim Fullton gave a general overview of the MCNC Clearinghouse for
Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR). CNIDR is funded
by the National Science Foundation to promote the use and development of
networked information tools and systems.

Anders Gillner from a RARE ISUS task force gave a presentation on the
Eurogopher.  The Eurogopher is an attempt to establish a geography-based
as well as subject-based gopher infrastructure throughout Europe.

The NIR report was discussed in some detail and edited by the group.


   o It was decided that NCSA's Mosaic for X should not be a stand-alone
     category, but rather indicated as a client under the World Wide Web
     category.

   o The WAIS and freeWAIS categories will be merged as WAIS/freeWAIS.
     Brewster Kahle and Jim Fullton will write parallel descriptions of
     each and will resubmit those writings to Jill for the next update.

   o The Grateful Med item was voted out of the report as it was
     generally considered not to be an open network resource.  Also
     voted to be removed from the report was the group Lister Hill
     National Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of
     Medicine.

   o Section 3 of the report will be edited to expand all acronyms.

   o The ZIT has been dissolved and therefore will be removed from the
     report.

   o Mark Needleman completed a tool template for the Z39.50 protocol.
     Since it is a protocol and not a tool, it was decided to port the
     template to a group template on the Z39.50 Implementors Group
     (ZIG).

   o comp.infosystems.www will be added to the newsgroup templates.

   o CNIDR is considering publishing the report on-line.  Access could
     be via FTP, gopher, Wais, and WWW. Any details will be posted to
     the NIR list as they become available (after the meeting, a
     representative from the InterNIC expressed interest in doing this
     as well).

   o It was agreed that the full report should be updated once per year,

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     although more regular updating of the individual sections held
     on-line should be possible.


Reinhard Doelz discussed his NIR tool checklist.  The checklist was very
extensive and ambitious.  Several schemes for maintaining the list were
discussed, including on-line telnet ``holes'' allowing the user to
complete the checklist.  As a first cut, however, April volunteered to
prune the checklist into a fairly simple list.  Reinhard's work was
deemed a useful resource for users deciding on NIR tools and will be
posted to the mailing list.

The group agreed to remove the sections concerning the provision of
documentation and training materials for NIR tools from the charter.  It
was agreed that this is too ambitious and out of scope.


Attendees

Chris Adie               C.J.Adie@edinburgh.ac.uk
Toshiya Asaba            asaba@iij.ad.jp
Zavisa Bjelogrlic        zavisa@roma.intecs.it
Luc Boulianne            lucb@cs.mcgill.ca
Kursat Cagiltay          kursat@vm.cc.metu.edu.tr
Jodi-Ann Chu             jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu
David Conrad             davidc@iij.ad.jp
Reinhard Doelz           embnet@comp.bioz.unibas.ch
Jill Foster              Jill.Foster@newcastle.ac.uk
Jim Fullton              fullton@cnidr.org
Kevin Gamiel             kgamiel@cnidr.org
Ben Geerlings            ben.geerlings@surfnet.nl
Maria Heijne             maria.heijne@surfnet.nl
Marco Hernandez          marco@mh-slip.cren.edu
Rune Hjelsvold           Rune.Hjelsvold@idt.unit.no
Per Jacobsen             p.h.jacobsen@usit.uio.no
Xander Jansen            xander.jansen@surfnet.nl
Brewster Kahle           Brewster@wais.com
John Kunze               jak@violet.berkeley.edu
John Lindsay             lindsay@kingston.ac.uk
Anne Lord                anne@ripe.net
April Marine             april@atlas.arc.nasa.gov
Linda Millington         l.millington@noc.ulcc.ac.uk
Pushpendra Mohta         pushp@cerf.net
Lisa Nielsen             lisa@hawaii.edu
Mark Prior               mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au
Joyce K. Reynolds        jkrey@isi.edu
Ulla Sandberg            ulla@kiera.ericsson.se
Rickard Schoultz         schoultz@admin.kth.se
Jennifer Sellers         sellers@nsipo.nasa.gov
A. Velu Sinha            avsinha@attmail.com
Patricia Smith           psmith@merit.edu
Milan Sova               sova@feld.cvut.cz
Bert Stals               bert.stals@surfnet.nl

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Marc van der Noordaa     noordaa@rare.nl
Guido van Rossum         guido@cwi.nl
Chris Weider             clw@merit.edu



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