Organizing Web Information -Reply

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

I think Marc's concept of decentralized, publicly-accessible indices, vs
the OCLC feebased monolith, really has some validity.

In my head, I keep returning to old Z39.50.  It hasn't caught on the way
it would need to, but the idea of searching distributed databases through a
common interface needs to be explored and revisited.  After all, if Marc
and I each maintain our e-catalogs, and we're compliant with *a*
standard, then we can point to each other's resources through an interface
that makes sense to our communities.  This also gives us the structured,
access-point searching we need, and gives us the local catalog valuable to
our users.

Karen / opinions mine alone