CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_

Reported by Kevin Gamiel/MCNC - CNIDR

Minutes of the Networked Information Retrieval Working Group (NIR)


Agenda

  o Approval of the agenda
  o Status report on CNIDR
  o Status report on RARE related activities
  o NIR status report
     -  Final update and comments before publication as an RFC
     -  Maintenance
  o NIR evaluation
  o Review of the charter
  o Any other business


Status Report on CNIDR

Jim Fullton gave the current status of CNIDR. CNIDR is continuing
freeWAIS server development, the current version being 0.202.  A generic
search engine application programmer's interface is being developed to
allow the integration of any search engine under the WAIS protocol
stack.  FreeWAIS 1.0, a WAIS server based on Z39.50 1992, is being
developed as well.  Other projects include a CUSeeMe client for MS
Windows and the Global Schoolhouse project.


Status Report on RARE Related Activities

Jill Foster gave an overview of RARE related activities.  The NIR
Working Group is a joint IETF/RARE working group.  The RARE members of
the working group met in Warsaw, Poland in October.  Anders Gillner
(SUNET) reported there on the Eurogopher activities and held a BOF
session on recommendations for NEPAs (National (gopher) Entry Point
Administrators).  The recommendation was that NEPAs coordinate
registration of gopher and other information services within their own
countries.  Discussion included Veronica harvesting at a national level,
recommendations for structure of the top level menu, and on sharing
management tools.

Other Subgroups of the RARE ISUS (Information Services and User Support
) Working Group include MMIS (Multi-Media Information Services) and
UNITE (User Network Interface to Everything!).  The latter group has
undertaken a review of how well certain collections of software for
accessing the network work together on various platforms, with a view to
identifying what is lacking.

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NIR Status Report

The working group split into smaller groups to discuss each section of
the NIR status report as a final review.  Rick Rodgers from NLM is
updating section 5 of the document in light of discussion and will post
to Jill for re-integration.  Several additional mailing lists were added
to the report.  There was a question about adding interactive tools such
as CUSeeMe and other networked conferencing systems to the report.  The
group determined such interactive services fall outside the scope of the
report and suggested a call for comments on the list.

Maintenance - Originally, the report was to be updated every three
months.  This was determined to be a difficult task and the group
decided in Amsterdam to update only once per year.  The Internic has
agreed to publish the report under WAIS, Gopher, and World Wide Web.
CNIDR will maintain and update the report.  Updated templates can be
sent via email to [email protected].  Larry Manister offered his time
to provide an independent check of say four templates (to be assigned by
Jill), if other volunteers did the same.


NIR Evaluation

Kevin Gamiel felt this was one of the areas where the group got carried
away and the group needs to re-think what it wants to do here.  April
Marine discussed the background to the ``checklist.''  This is to be a
simple checklist of which clients/servers are available on particular
platforms.  April had sent a checklist to the mailing list for
discussion.  The group decided to work on the checklist as a separate
document in the interest of moving the current NIR report up the food
chain in the next month.  However, the checklist should be integrated
into the report as an appendix in the future.  Changes to April's
checklist include:  changed word ``taxonomy'' to ``purpose,'' added
``required ancillary tools'' attribute and added ``stack'' attribute.
It was noted that the ``X.500 Tools Catalog'' has a similar template and
Brendan Kehoe agreed to look into that catalog and report to the list.
A proposal was made that the group should evaluate individual server
packages.  (UNITE has performed some informal evaluation of client
software.)  The consensus was that the group should not, as it was a
political issue and lists devoted to each tool already serve this
purpose.


Review of the Charter

NIR was set up to act as a clearinghouse for information on what is
going on in this area.  The report was the natural first move on this.
There are other things we could do to improve current awareness of what
is going on.  It might be useful, for example, to post minutes (or at
least summaries) of the various related working groups to the NIR list.
The group decided to postpone this discussion until the next meeting, by

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which time the NIR report and checklist should be completed and the
mechanisms for updating them should be in place.


Attendees

Farhad Anklesaria        [email protected]
Sepideh Boroumand        [email protected]
Luc Boulianne            [email protected]
Susan Calcari            [email protected]
Hallie Carlson           [email protected]
Ann Cooper               [email protected]
Sallie Fellows           [email protected]
Jill Foster              [email protected]
Jim Fullton              [email protected]
Kevin Gamiel             [email protected]
Arlene Getchell          [email protected]
Judith Grass             [email protected]
Deborah Hamilton         [email protected]
Roland Hedberg           [email protected]
Richard Huber            [email protected]
Brendan Kehoe            [email protected]
Jim Knowles              [email protected]
Walter Lazear            [email protected]
Ben Levy                 [email protected]
Dave Livingston          [email protected]
Gary Malkin              [email protected]
Glenn Mansfield          [email protected]
April Marine             [email protected]
Larry Masinter           [email protected]
Mark McCahill            [email protected]
Mark Needleman           [email protected]
Scott Paisley            [email protected]
Pete Percival            [email protected]
Marsha Perrott           [email protected]
Joyce K. Reynolds        [email protected]
Richard Rodgers          [email protected]
Srinivas Sataluri        [email protected]
Milan Sova               [email protected]
Simon Spero              [email protected]
Margaret St.  Pierre     [email protected]
Anthony Valle            [email protected]
Raymond Vega             [email protected]
Jackie Wilson            [email protected]



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