Computer Science Technical Reports Project

M. I. T. node

Overview

The Computer Science Technical Reports (CS-TR) project is a now-completed cooperative venture of

Carnegie-Mellon University,
Cornell University,
Stanford University,
The University of California at Berkeley,
M. I. T., and
The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (prime contractor for ARPA)

to create a prototype on-line library of scanned images of technical reports. The M. I. T. part of this venture was a joint activity of the Library 2000 group of the M. I. T. Laboratory for Computer Science and the M. I. T. Libraries. This joint activity scanned in high resolution more than 1,000 M. I. T. Computer Science Technical reports, archived the images to CD-ROM, and placed processed versions of most of the reports on-line for public access.

In 1995 the project was expanded to encompass many other university sources world-wide, under the name Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library (NCSTRL). NCSTRL is now a production service with several entry points. The M. I. T. entry point is managed by the M.I.T. Libraries. The M. I. T. technical reports are also available via an FTP service at host ncstrl-ftp.mit.edu, in the directory "/pub/cstr/".

Details

The Corporation for National Research Initiatives maintains a page of further information about CS-TR.
M. I. T. The Library 2000 group, now dormant, maintains a web site containing an historical record of its activities, publications, and demonstrations. When the project was active, Library 2000 provided a number of experimental services, such as a DNS-based name service for all CSTR sites. These experimental services have been discontinued.
Cornell University developed a distributed CS-TR access system, named Dienst, which is used as the basis for NCSTRL, for which Cornell provides a central index. They also provide a contact point for more information about NCSTRL and a CS-TR design page. Cornell's 1993 Annual Report.
At one time, Carnegie-Mellon University's Project Mercury provided a different interface for the CS-TR materials, but now they provide access via their own NCSTRL entry point as well as FTP. CMU's 1993 Annual Report.
Stanford University has an entry point to NCSTRL and they also developed GLOSS, a system that suggests which sources to send queries to, and SIFT, an awareness and filtering service. Stanford's 1993 Annual Report.
Although they are working on a database interface, at the moment the University of California at Berkeley provides access to their TR's via an NCSTRL entry point. Berkeley's 1993 Annual Report.
The CS-TR project developed a standard bibliographic record with most fields optional, to demonstrate the gap between standard cataloguing practice and the requirements of a digital library. It was first described in network RFC-1357 and later revised in RFC-1807. (Alternate source).

Last update: 2/25/1998, by jhs

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