CNI White Paper on Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval

Outline: Chapter 2

Architectures and Technologies to Support the NIDR Process

Part I: The Machinery of Discovery

• targets for indexing; objects and information spaces

• the composition and subsumption of information spaces and the role of gateways among spaces

• defining collections and bounding searches

• the need for a modular indexing architecture (to allow introduction of new indexing methods)

• "push" vs. "pull" models: archie, veronica, webcrawlers, harvest.

• the central role of the "gatherer"; interactions with privacy, intellectual property, economics

• redistribution and aggregation of gathered indexing information -- index brokers and related proposals.

• protocol issues; interoperability, quality assurance, introduction of specialized extensions and new versions within an open architecture.

• the user side of discovery: "user history" databases. integration of multiple indexing systems. the mechanics of ranking and duplicate detection.

Part II: The Machinery of Retrieval

• characteristics and limits of current retrieval protocols

• "fetch and use" vs. "use across the net" models

• the URC framework for invoking retrieval

• the need to extend current retrieval protocols

• format conversion

• charging

• integrity issues

• browsing and sampling (thumbnails, derived data, sample data)

• component/subobject extraction and retrieval

• caching and replication; retrieving from managed distributed spaces

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nidrcall@cni.org