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 2 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 3 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: 4 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