Wide Area Information Servers (WAIS) Bibliography

Barbara Lincoln (barbara@think.com)

10/15/91

Hard copies of the following documents are available. Some documents are available electronically, as stated, but contain figures which are not reproduced in the ascii version. Email, fax, mail or phone your name, address and phone number to: Barbara Lincoln, Thinking Machines Corp., 1010 El Camino Real, Suite 310, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, phone: 415-329-9300, fax: 415-329-9329, email:barbara@think.com

WAIS Documents

"Wide Area Information Servers", (overview sheet) Brewster Kahle,

Thinking Machines, April, 1991. One page overview of the Internet release of WAIS. Available via anonymous ftp:

/pub/wais/wais-discussion/wais-overview.txt@quake.think.com or

WAIS server wais-discussion-archive.src

"An Information System for Corporate Users: Wide Area Information

Servers", Brewster Kahle, April, 1991. Thinking Machines technical

report TMC-199. Also in ONLINE Magazine Aug 1991.

Report on the system constructed for Peat Marwick and other corporate

users. Has screen shots of WAIStation.

Available via anonymous ftp:

/pub/wais/doc/wais-corp.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS server

wais-docs.src

- "WAIS Bibliography", Barbara Lincoln, Thinking Machines, October,

1991.

Available via anonymous ftp:

/pub/wais/wais-discussion/bibliography.txt@quake.think.com or

WAIS server wais-discussion-archive.src

- "Wide Area Information Servers Concepts", Brewster Kahle,

November, 1989,Thinking Machines technical report TMC-202.

Early draft of paper outlining how a Wide Area Information System

could grow.

Available via anonymous ftp:

/pub/wais/doc/wais-concepts.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS

server wais-docs.src

- "Wide Area Information Servers: A SuperComputer on Every Desk", Brewster

Kahle, Thinking Machines, August 1991. This is a set of overview

presentation slides for WAIS.

- "WAIStation, A User Interface for WAIS", February 1991, Thinking Machines technical report TMC-203. User interface documentation with screen shots. Available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais/doc/wais_users_guide.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS

server wais-docs.src

WAIS-related articles/publications

"For the PC User, Vast Libraries", New York Times, pg.C1 John Markoff, July 3, 1991. Overview of WAIS Internet experiment.

"Browsing Through Terabytes", Byte Magazine, Richard Stein, May 1991, pp157-164. Readable article on what a large WAIS system looks like.

"WAIS Promises Easy Text Retrieval", MacWeek, Henry Norr, May

14, 1991, pg22. Report on the Peat Marwick WAIS system.

"Release 1.0", Esther Dyson, April 1991, entire issue. In-depth article on commercial systems and protocols, featuring WAIS.

"Network to Unite Data Bases", San Jose Mercury News, John Markoff, July 21, 1991, page 1F. Rewriting of the "For the PC User, Vast Libraries," New York Times article with emphasis on Apple component.

"Designing a Desktop Information System: Observations and Issues", Thomas Erickson & Gitta Salomon. Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI '91 Conference Proceedings (pp. 49-54) April 1991, New Orleans. New York: ACM, 1991. Early paper on the Apple interface for WAIS.

- "Z39.50-1988: Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specification for Library Applications". National Information Standards Organization (Z39), P.O. Box 1056, Bethesda, MD 20817. (301) 975-2814. Available from Document Center, Belmont, CA. Telephone 415-591-7600.

- "Z39.50-1991 Version 2", May 1991. Electronic version of the working copy of the Z39.50 implementors group. Anonymous FTP: /pub/wais/doc/z3950-spec.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS server wais-docs.

- "The Z39.50 Information Retrieval Protocol: An Overview and Status Report", Clifford Lynch, Computer Communication Review ACM SIGCOMM Introduction to the the protocol of WAIS.

- "WAIS Interface Protocol, Prototype Functional Specification", April 1990. Our Changes to the Z39.50-1988 specification. Anonymous FTP: /pub/wais/doc/protspec.txt or WAIS server wais-docs.

Thinking Machines Technical Reports

"Parallel Free-Text Search on the Connection Machine System", C. Stanfill and B. Kahle, 1986. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-72. Communications of the ACM, Volume 29, Number 12, December 1986. How a signature system can be used on a parallel machine.

"Massively Parallel Information Retrieval for Wide Area Information Servers", C. Stanfill, Thinking Machines, October, 1991. Paper presented at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics. Charlottesville, Virginia. Technical paper on Connection Machine servers on the WAIS system. Postscript copy available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais/doc/cm-servers.ps@quake.think.com or WAIS server wais-docs.

"A Parallel Indexed Algorithm for Information Retrieval", C. Stanfill, R. Thau, December 1990. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-67. Appeared in Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval SIGIR-89.

"Extracting Content Bearing Terms in Parallel on the Connection Machine", S. Smith, 1987. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-71. Submitted to ACL.

"Very Large Database Applications of the Connection Machine System", D. Waltz, C. Stanfill, S. Smith, R. Thau, 1987. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-70. Appeared in AFIPS/1987 NCC Proceedings, July 1987.

"Parallel Computing for Information Retrieval: Recent Developments", C. Stanfill, January, 1988. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-69.

"An Analysis of the Effects of Data Corruption on Text Retrieval Performance", S. Smith, C. Stanfill, December 1988. Thinking Machine technical report TMC-68.

"Information Retrieval on the Connection Machine: 1 to 8192 Gigabytes", C. Stanfill, R. Thau, December 1990. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-66. To appear in Information Processing and Management, 1991.

"WAIStation, A User Interface for WAIS", February 1991, Thinking Machines technical report TMC-203. User interface documentation with screen shots.

Available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais/doc/wais_users_guide.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS server wais-docs.src

"An Information System for Corporate Users: Wide Area Information Servers", Brewster Kahle, April, 1991. Thinking Machines technical report TMC-199. Also in ONLINE Magazine Aug 1991. Report on the system constructed for Peat Marwick and other corporate users. Has screen shots of WAIStation.

Available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais/doc/wais-corp.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS server wais-docs.src

- "Wide Area Information Servers Concepts", Brewster Kahle, November, 1989,Thinking Machines technical report TMC-202. Early draft of paper outlining how a Wide Area Information System could grow.

Available via anonymous ftp: /pub/wais/doc/wais-concepts.txt@quake.think.com or WAIS server wais-docs.src

Electronic Services

wais-discussion@think.com:
Weekly digest of mail from users anddevelopers on Electronic Publishing (includes all wais-interest postings).Requests to wais-discussion-request@think.com.Anonymous FTP access to archives: /pub/wais/wais-discussion/*@quake.think.com
wais-interest@think.com:
announcements of new releases for the internet environment. A message every month or so. Requests to wais-interest-request@think.com. Anonymous FTP access to archives: /pub/wais/wais-discussion/*@quake.think.com
wais-talk@think.com: interactive list of developers.
A couple notes a week. Requests to wais-talk-request@think.com. Archivesare available on WAIS server wais-talk-archives.src
alt.wais:
a netnews discussion group on WAIS issues. All postings to wais-discussion@Think.COM and wais-interest@think.com go to that group as well.
WAIS Unix Release:
Freeware release of client code (X and gnu-emacs),protocol code, and server code for accessing existing servers or starting new servers. Available via anonymous FTP: /public/wais/wais-8-b2.tar.Z@think.com
WAIStation Macintosh program:
Freeware client program for accessingservers over tcp/ip. See WAIStation documentation above (included in the release). Available via anonymous FTP: /public/wais/WAIStation-0-62.sit.hqx@think.com
Macintosh demostration screen-movie:
Steve Cisler put together a shortscreen-recorder movie for seeing some of what WAIStation does. Available via anonymous FTP: /public/wais/WAIStation-Canned-Demo.sit.hqx@think.com