9315306 Brett A three-year award in the form of a Cooperative Agreement between the National Science Foundation and the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) will establish the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR). In the past year several user-friendly client-server tools have been developed for locating and retrieving information contained in platforms reachable over the Internet. Among them, Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), Gopher and Archie have become very popular, globally, and World-Wide-Web (WWW) is poised for popularity once suitable client software is developed and distributed. WAIS, Archie and Gopher present overviews of where information of interest is lilely to reside, and then they assist the user in locating specific information objects. WWW permits a user to thread a path through the network by opening up network connections to referenced information by mouse-clicking on active hypertext. While focused on the particulars of WAIS evolution, MCNC will work closely with the developers of other tools toward providing compatibility and consistency, and, to the extent possible, convergence of the tools. The WAIS-specific activity will provide a central focus and forum for WAIS evolution and will minimize the divergence of individual WAIS-based implementations. In addition, the CNIDR will conduct a workshop, under the auspices of the Education and Human Resource (EHR) Applications of Advanced Technology Program. The purpose of the workshop will be to evaluate the state of the art in networked information retrieval as applied to the EHR materials development, teacher enhancement, network testbed, and dissemination projects, and to educate and support the NSF project investigators in the uses of networked information retrieval tools.
