RFC 1689 (rfc1689) - Page 2 of 226

A Status Report on Networked Information Retrieval: Tools and Groups

RFC 1689   Networked Information Retrieval: Tools and Groups August 1994


1.   Introduction

   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



Foster