[rfc-i] accessibility for the series, RE: Some questions on the model and the motivations

[Glenn Kowack]

On Jan 7, 2011, at 8:29 PM, John Levine wrote:

>> That is certainly interesting.  I wonder that if the library search
>> tool doesn't find RFCs, then it probably doesn't find most of the
>> content on the Internet that is not related to print media.  If that
>> is true, then this looks like a bigger problem for the library search
>> tool than for the RFC series.
> 
> Not really.  Library catalogs show the stuff that people have taken
> the effort to catalog.  There are plenty of online journals that are
> cataloged, and it seems kind of odd that we went to the effort to get
> an ISSN for the RFC series but haven't done the incremental work to
> get them cataloged.  It might involve joining OCLC directly or finding
> a member library that will list them for us.

John,
   if you go to, for example, the online card catalog at the University of Illinois,
http://vufind.carli.illinois.edu/vf-uiu/   and enter "request for comments",
you'll find a reference to the Series which then points you to the RFC Editor
home page.   As I mentioned in my reports, several months ago we
discovered the Series was not cataloged, and took 5 minutes to contact
old colleagues at the U of I.  It took them a few a few minutes for them to
enter the Series. (You'll also note there are plenty of errors. Craig Partridge
and the Citations Committee are working to correct that.)

Now the the U of I Library has cataloged the Series, it's available in other
OCLC catalogs.  WorldCat, OCLC's on-line version (http://www.worldcat.org/),
lists it as well. FYI, there's also a hit for "Network Working Group" and others,
but I have no knowledge of the story behind those.

regards,
Glenn
__

> I agree this isn't an enormous issue, but it does suggest that if we
> agree that it's a good idea for RFCs to be easily findable and
> citable, understanding the issues and making that happen should be
> part of someone's job.
> 
> R's,
> John
> 
> 
> 
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