[ih] Copy of first web page discovered

[John Day]

That is good to know.  I have only taken a cursory glance at it 
since.  There were some good people in that first effort.  I did come 
across it again when they wanted to use it for Museums, but that is 
another story.
John

At 3:20 PM -0400 5/31/13, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>John Day wrote:
>>>
>>>Z39.50, at least as of a couple of years ago, is still the bases 
>>>for federated search among library catalogs worldwide - "limited" 
>>>is not the word I'd use.
>>
>>Yes, I am afraid Z39 is still out there in force and heavily used 
>>in the library world primarily because LC uses it.  I have to take 
>>some of the blame for setting that off.  It was quite an 
>>interesting sociological study.  In the mid-70s, there was a 
>>National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.  One of 
>>the recommendations was that enacted was to develop a library 
>>protocol.  I was asked (I don't remember how it came to us) if I 
>>would advise them.  This happen in 1975/6, just as I was moving to 
>>Houston for my wife to post-doc and was working at Univ of Illinois 
>>and commuting over the 'Net. (Telenet from Houston to Multics; 
>>ARPANET back to Illinois).
>
>Interesting sociology lesson.
>
>Having said that, Z39 is nothing to be ashamed of - if anything, 
>just the opposite.  It's a reasonably well designed protocol, it 
>does the job, and it seems to have scaled and evolved reasonably 
>well (and begat things like CQL, which is a perfectly reasonable 
>query language for library metadata).  [Though the protocol 
>documentation leaves a bit to be desired - like explicit sections on 
>each PDU type, and a good state diagram.]
>
>Miles
>
>
>
>--
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra