'official' versions of university documents

[R124C41 at aol.com]

In regard to the business of keeping paper copies of university catalogs with
dates on them so they are available for archive purposes, I would like to
comment that paper is not a necessity for archival (though it may be the
cheapest way to go if one is already handling a lot of it for other archival
purposes).  

To the extent that such catalogs are electronic to begin with, it may be
better to go electronic archival route.

The talk by David Bayer, Electronic Publishing Products Manager, Information
Dimensions, Inc., titled  "Strategic Considerations for Electronic
Publishing:  SGML, Document Management, and the World Wide Web", which was
given at the Interlab'95 Conference

(http://www.nrel.gov/hot-stuff/interlab95/agenda.html)

in May 1995 made the point that once you have more than 50 to 150 web pages,
you begin to need the power of a document management system to help you
manage the web offerings.

Part of the management function that such a system provides is the archiving
and retrieving of web pages and/or web documents as required (say, in
response to a patron wanting to see the university catalog from three years
ago).

Of course, since the speaker was representing a document management outfit
(which is a subsidary of OCLC by the way), one may suspect a certain slant.
 However, I heard the talk and thought it a well reasoned discussion without
a lot of imbedded marketing stuff.  Unfortunately, it is not on the web as
near as I can tell so this summary is about the best I can do.

Finally, in regards to documents constructed dynamically out of a course
database, there is a parallel with what we are doing as regards documents
constructed from a database on the MISCOMP project. 

We have established the concept of a "snapshot" which is the document
constructed from the database at a certain point in time (i.e. a print-out or
something that might have once been a print-out).  That document is then (it
is intended) automatically checked into the electronic document management
system.

This avoids having to design a database which allows a user to "roll-back" to
its situation at any point in time.

For an overview of the MISCOMP project, see:

(http://www-dbi.fnal.gov/dbi/dbi_dept/presentations/oit95/OIT95.html)

--David Ritchie
--Naperville, IL 

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