USER-DOC Working Group
Chairpersons: Tracy LaQuey/Univ of Texas and Karen Roubicek/BBN,NNSC
CURRENT MEETING REPORT
Reported by Karen Roubicek
AGENDA
o Review Charter, Objectives, Timeframe
o Review and revise bibliography outline
o Review the documents we have to-date and make additions
o Clarify location and maintainer of bibliography as it is being written
o Define format, contents of entries
o Identify volunteers to write abstracts
o Define the review process for selecting documents for inclusion in
bibliography.
o Determine where bibliography will live after initial publication and
discuss maintenance/review/update in the future
o Identify sources for information and determine who will take
responsibility for soliciting it.
o Clarify how to distribute bibliography to users
ATTENDEES
1. Armstrong, Karen, armstrongk@sds.sdsc.edu
2. Bowers, Karen, kbowers@nri.reston.va.us
3. Breeden, Laura, breeden@bbn.com
4. Easterday, Tom, tom@nisca.ircc.ohio-state.edu
5. Enger, Robert M., enger@sccgate.scc.com
6. Finkelson, Dale, dmf@westie.unl.edu
7. Hallgren, Martyne M., martyne@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu
8. LaQuey, Tracy, tracy@emx.utexas.edu
9. Marine, April, april@nic.ddn.mil
10. Miller, Stephen, miller@m2c.org
11. Moore, Berlin, bm24@andrew.cmu.edu
12. Morris, Don, morris@ncar.ucar.edu
13. Oattes, Lee, oattes@utcs.utoronto.ca
14. Perillo, Francine, perillo@cisco.com
15. Pleasant, Mel, pleasant@rutgers.edu
16. Pugh, Jon, pugh@nmfecc.llnl.gov
17. Redfield, Elizabeth, red@nic.ddn.mil
18. Reynolds, Joyce K., jkrey@venera.isi.edu
19. Roubicek, Karen, roubicek@nnsc.nsf.net
20. Sitzler, Dana, dds@merit.edu
21. Stahl, Mary, stahl@nic.ddn.mil
22. Steinberg, Lou, louiss@ibm.com
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23. Sweeton, Jim, sweeton@merit.edu
24. Veach, Ross, rrv@seka.cso.uiuc.edu
25. Wintringham, Dan, danw@osc.edu
26. Yuan, Aileen, aileen@gateway.mitre.org
MINUTES
A few members of the User Services Working Group, who were attending a
FARNET meeting on May 31, met with Karen Bowers for a short time to form a
distinct group to create the userdoc bibliography. The July 25 IETF session
therefore was the first formal meeting of the USER-DOC Working Group.
The meeting began with a review of the charter of the USER-DOC Working
Group. To summarize, the purpose of the group is to prepare a bibliography
of online and hardcopy documents, reference materials, and training tools
addressing general networking information and "how to use the Internet".
End users and people who help end users are the targeted audience. The
group had already identified several documents since the first USWG meeting
in Texas and described some broad categories to cover prior to this meeting.
We had originally set mid-December 1989 as the publication date of the
bibliography but by the end of this meeting we agreed to issue a first draft
by the Hawaii IETF.
A discussion of subject areas to be covered in the bibliography identified
the following topics:
o Introduction to TCP/IP
o Guide for network administrators
o Electronic Mail
o Services Documents (Directories, Libraries)
o Mailing Lists
o RFCs
o Map Collections (pointers to)
o Workshops and Conferences
o Servers
o Security
o Newsletters
This list of categories is not exhaustive, nor is it set in stone. Tracy
suggested that including indexes of keywords will help us out with documents
or materials that will be difficult to fit into specific categories.
Several members felt that where possible, entries should have a designated
level of expertise associated with them. The group agreed that it would
only be realistic to rank a document as "beginner" or "novice" and
"intermediate and above".
Don Morris expressed an interest in listing helpful tools or applications,
such as the NCAR Internet Remote Job Entry System. The group decided that
although the bibliography was not the right place to include such
references, another working group could be formed for that purpose.
An important feature of the bibliography is that it be comprehensive enough
to be useful but not so large as to be overwhelming. Toward this goal,
Joyce Reynolds will provide a list of key RFCs to serve as a basic set. We
identified a category for documents that describe how to use available
servers, particularly those servers on non-Internet networks such as BITNET
and SPAN. Since large numbers of users on the Internet want to use these
facilities, the group decided to include such descriptive documents as are
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available and concluded that some may have to be written specifically for
the bibliography.
The question of including articles from periodicals was raised and some
members expressed concern that it would be difficult to keep up with all
journal articles and that the bibliography might become unwieldy. We agreed
that unless an article were very unusual (of the variety: Notable Computer
Networks by John Quarterman), we would not include it. A special issue of a
periodical devoted entirely to one particular topic or issue may be
included.
We reviewed the current list of references and added some new ones. The
materials referenced in the bibliography will not be limited to text, but
will include audiotapes, videotapes and regularly scheduled workshops and
conferences.
Tracy is currently maintaining the bibliography at emx.utexas.edu and will
continue to do so through the first draft in October. The group will decide
on the future of the bibliography at the next IETF meeting.
We provisionally chose Refer as a format for the bibliography. Standard
bibliographic requirements will be included (name, author, keywords, etc) as
well as some additional fields such as copyright information, length, order
source/pathname, version, obsoletes/updates, type of media and format.
Elizabeth Redfield and April Marine from SRI discussed the current work on a
NIC bibliography database. Their efforts are considerably larger in scope
than ours (current number of documents is greater than 2,000). The
importance of keeping in touch with developments in the library community
and documentation retrieval technology was mentioned. Laura Breeden
referred to CMU's Andrew project and Karen Bowers cited NRI's Digital
Library project. Two committees were established to facilitate the
publication process: an "editorial board" (Jon Pugh, Karen Bowers, Tracy
LaQuey, Francine Perillo, Joyce Reynolds, and April Marine) will review the
entries for appropriateness and accuracy; and Dale Finkelson, Jon Pugh and
representatives from the DDN NIC will constitute a group which will do the
work to flesh out the entries.
To facilitate the discussion about format and obtaining further
bibliographic references, the attendees formed two groups to go off and
pursue those issues and reconvene after an hour. April and Elizabeth had
expressed some concern over the compatibility of the USER-DOC bibliography
in Refer with the NIC's bibliographic efforts, so the group decided that the
NIC would include the USER-DOC entries in their database. They will also
pass on their template for possible use by the USER-DOC WG. The group
focusing on obtaining entries for the bibliography identified a list of
individuals, groups and organizations, and mailing lists from which we will
solicit information. Members of the working group will take advantage of
meetings that we attend to gather information from the participants, a
specific example being the IETF meeting itself. We decided that together
with members of the NOC-Tools Working Group we would compose a brief handout
requesting material for both the NOC-Tools catalog and the bibliography.
This was passed out at the Plenary session on Thursday morning with a
request to return suggestions that afternoon. We received a handful of
contributions.
In discussing how to effectively distribute the bibliography to users, we
concluded that the issue has relevance beyond just the USER-DOC Working
Group, and Karen Bowers volunteered to set up a separate session on Thursday
under the USWG umbrella to investigate methods of distribution (see USWG
report).
ACTION ITEMS:
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o Write up and pass out questionnaire at Plenary Session: Enger,
Roubicek, Bowers
o Develop Template (LaQuey, Marine, Redfield, Roubicek)
o Define set of key RFCs (Reynolds)
o Research Andrew system and Federal databases (Breeden)
o Contact Paul re: SOCRATES project (Breeden)
o Choose set of mailing lists (Roubicek, Bowers)
o Liaison with library community (Roubicek)
o Schedule distribution meeting (Bowers)
o Write article about bibliography for ConneXions soliciting information
(Perillo)
PRELIMINARY AGENDA for next meeting:
o Review first draft of bibliography
o Make final choice of format
o Establish permanent location(s) and maintainer(s) for bibliography