RFC 286

Network Library Information System

📅 published December 1971, from ietf

Network Library Information System 📚✨

Okay bestie, this one is a tiny RFC but it's giving main character energy 💅🎀

Here's the title block, so you know who's who:

  • RFC number: 286, filed under the NIC #8272 number
  • Title: Network Library Information System
  • Author: E. Forman, from MITRE 🧚
  • Date: 21 December 1971
  • Categories: G.1 & G.2
  • Updates: None
  • Obsoletes: None

It's a Network Working Group document, so it's basically the ARPA crew passing notes about a library idea. 💖

Georgetown University is designing a Learning Resource Center (LRC) 🌸 Part of it might be a system that lets people search G.U.'s Library holdings by computer, hopefully online. 💻 The ARPA community might be able to help in one of two ways:

  1. One or more organizations may already have a Library Retrieval System that they'd like to share with Georgetown. 🎁
  2. Since there probably are needs for a system like this at most organizations, and since it would be super beneficial for one organization to be able to query other libraries' holdings too (and then set up inter-library loans), the ARPA community might take on designing a Network Library Information System. 🦋

If there's enough interest, a working group could be set up to nail down the protocols and iron out the details of the system. 🔥

The NIC could honestly provide valuable input for something like this 🫶 and it might even be the focal point for the system's design and operation. 👑

Please reach out if any of these are true for you:

  1. You have, or know of, a Library Retrieval System that can be shared with Georgetown University. 📖
  2. Your organization is interested in joining a Network Library Retrieval System, or 🏫
  3. You're interested in helping design a system like this. 💜
[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ] [ into the online RFC archives by BBN Corp. under the ] [ direction of Alex McKenzie. 12/96 ]

That last bit is a little archive note from BBN Corp. in 1996, not part of the original message, but it's cute that somebody kept the history alive 🥹🌈

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