Was:Anatomy of a netscam/ Organizing Web Information -Reply

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

The evolving focus on the idea of a place to park all this stuff is so very 
felicitous.  

Where I work, we are doing something "locally" that I'd like to see
"globally"... we're preparing to create a database of our Internet
resources. (Yet another local attempt to provide quality resources for a
user community.)  Something in Oracle, vaguely MARCish, a bit
GILSish and maybe Z39.50ish; a collaborative project between the
Computer People and the Library Folks.  We have a crude hand-wrought
index, called Yoo-Hoo!, up on the library site (well, the Library Folk
made it, but the Computer People liked it and pointed to it) because there
IS no really good by-the-people-for-the-people environmental index.  It's
one of these out-of-desperation sites we consider a place to park and
roughly organize fodder for a real catalog.

How nice to dream about a central spot where we could export our index
records once they have been created!  Where would it be?  Who would
house it?  What standards would we use?  What governing body would
ensure it was a single index toward heterogenous resources (and that it
didn't look like one very large virtual ransom note)?

Karen G. Schneider/ US EPA Region 2 Library/
http://www.epa.gov/Region2/html/library/
schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
opinions mine alone