• Author: Christian, Eliot J.
  • Date: March 19, 1993
  • 0:00 Title slides
  • 0:50 Eliot Christian: welcome, mentioning of names: Kahle, Fulton, etc.
  • 2:50 Eliot Christian's own perspective, his work on global change, need for free flow of information, new technologies and standards allow scientistis to have own perspective, radical shift and its effect on our institutions (libraries, schools, gov. agencies) when citizens gain more access to information and tools
  • 7:00 Introduce Jim Fulton of CNIDR (Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval)
    • funded by NSF
    • WAIS is one of its tools (also gopher, WWW, directory services, URIs, URLs, IETF standards)
    • working toward release of FreeWAIS --- new public version, not beta, of WAIS
    • fits in with Z30.50 (underlying data transfer standard)
  • 11:00 Brewster Kahle - floored by the exponential growth
  • 12:00 Why were the WAIS founding corporate groups willing to get together?
  • 12:55 used by Perot and Clinton, Library of Congress and USGS --- all sharing protocol
  • 13:50 history of electronic publishing: mainframes; 1980s had LANs but had to connect islands; 1990s are WANs, internet, digital libraries; current tools include WAIS, archie, gopher, netfind
  • 15:30 digital information infrastructure allows shift in work habits; 12 countries running WAIS servers
  • 16:15 WAIS history: 1990: group met, thought what everyday person needed -- personal, corporate, as well as wide area information; no algebra; natural language question as metaphor plus positive feedback for interface mechanism; save your query as an automatic profile/routing aid
  • 18:20 1991 worked on std, with $300/hr people testing to see if would use themselves (not only by assistants)
  • 19:00 1992 tested in internet
  • 1920 1993 use for government information sharing, get people dependent on that, commercial publishing starting and expected to flower by year end
  • 20:20 WAIS on the internet: W. Europe, N. America, Pacific Rim, ..., not in Africa; 20K users directly, 28 countries, 300 databases - importance
  • 21:30 pent up need, number of servers doubling every 6 months
  • 22:00 some typical applications: Columbia Law Library, ...
  • 22:20 USGS championing use of WAIS protocol; keep own info but let others get to it for own needs - general project is heating up; compare with 70s idea of single center vs. now the idea is that those who create info should serve it
  • 23:30 extensions to searching - keep protocol and interface but change search to handle geographical or DNA informatoin
  • 24:15 Columbia application: space problem, Connection Machine, serving info to anyone in world; changing nature of university to serve world - using WAIS for own library
  • 25:15 Business applications: Sun server at UNC, campaign information, biologists
  • 27:00 Singapore global information; shipping information
  • 29:00 WAIS to help in this process: allow you to store repeat questions
  • 31:10 Directories, databases for children, page images, use for education and training
  • 32:20 Help publishers publish without trees (though can print out if want to), satisfy Freedom of Information Act
  • 35:00 WAIS Inc.: companies expect to work with companies; need help to apply these tools; complement CNIDR; closing of his talk<;/LI>
  • 37:10 WAIS Basics: Internet, Problem, Z39.50
  • 39:00 (CAN SKIP) What is the Internet: network of networks, standard suite, tool for communication
  • 41:10 Traditional Internet Tools: FTP, Telnet, etc.
  • 43:00 WAIS is different - recent tools operate client/server (actually client to many servers) (END OF SKIP)
  • 44:45 Why WAIS: Z39.50 allows use from Archie, WWW
  • 46:20 WAIS question window: list of information sources
  • 47:30 WAIS query response, presentation response (END OF CLASS SHOWING)
  • 49:00 Locating new information sources: search/retrieve descriptions of info. sources
  • 50:45 Reviewing an information source description
  • 52:00 Inside view of WAIS: Z39.50 support on client and server + WAIS text search
  • 53:30 Origin of Z39.50: use for MARC; 1992 version includes what WAIS added/needs
  • 54:45 Contribution of Z39.50: authentication, query submission and response; registration process
  • 57:00 Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress; Z39.50 --- full name of standard (relation to OSI: designed to work with OSI presentation); formal standards; ANSI
  • 1:02:00 ISO counterpart - SR; 1983 beginnings of NISO that finally had versioin 1 in 1989; SR finally approved in 1991; 1990 started ZIG (Z39.50 implementers group) and maintenance organization to handle publishing (e.g., ensure compatibility with SR)
  • 1:06:00 3 groups: ZIG, maintenance, and 3rd is interoperability group; members
  • 1:07:50 USGS, Water Resources, Doug --- who has what spatial data, Earth Science Information Center, variety of databases: make catalogs with metadata (where is data, what part of world is it about, ...), 77 sites targeted to have data available instead of sending tapes: National Cartographic Database, Geographic Names, ...., National Water Data Exchange, 300K abstracts, ...
  • 1:13:45 Distributed Spatial Library: example of search; bounding rectangle, bounding polygon
  • 1:17:30 Steps to set up WAIS Server: characterize info, ex. of digital elevation models; organize info and metadata with text description; index using WAIS index command
  • 1:21:40 Windows version of spatial data locator: select, see metadata: documentation, actual data (export file --- only fetched if preview checks out)
  • 1:25:50 Steps of spatial query processing; extensions (e.g., allow exclusion areas)
  • 1:28:00 Brewster Kahle -- NeXT interface, point and click, for building sources: new source; automatic and online updata; content includes: maintainer, contact info; finance with pay per search/month
  • 1:33:30 Indexer runs at 128M bytes/hour; afterwards can register to get into directory of servers
  • 1:36:00 Logs of access, reports from log data for server operator; exs. of interesting collections: Aesop, Yates
  • 1:38:00 Free NeXT interface, ex. of search for roses
  • 1:40:00 Mention of variety of databases; scanning page images and allowing search from OCR output
  • 1:45:00 Demos and/or presenter/topic: Tim Gosling, Mark Fleichman, Kerberos connection/access control to limit document access to certain individuals, USGS, access to WAIS from HyperCard stack; JPL for planetary data, U.S. dept. of agriculture, journal articles on astronomy, plates in earth, protein structures, budget planning data, Mosaic
  • 1:51:50 CNIDR contact - end