The Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval or CNIDR was an organization funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation from 1993 to 1997 and based at the Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) in Research Triangle Park. [1] [2] CNIDR was active in the research and development of open source software and open standards, centered on information discovery and retrieval, in the emerging Internet.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about US$7.8 billion, the NSF funds approximately 24% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing.
Research Triangle Park (RTP) is the largest research park in the United States. It is named for its location relative to the three surrounding cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, or more properly, for the three major research universities in them. The Research Triangle region of North Carolina received its name as an extension of the name of the park. Besides the three anchor cities, the park is also bounded by the communities of Morrisville and Cary. Approximately one fourth of the Park's territory lies in Wake County, but the majority of its land is in Durham County.
Among the software developed at CNIDR were Isite, an open source Z39.50 implementation and successor to the free version of WAIS, [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] and Isearch, an open source text retrieval system. CNIDR staff were involved in the development of open standards in the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Z39.50 Implementors Group and Dublin Core. [8] [9] [10]
Z39.50 is an international standard client–server, application layer communications protocol for searching and retrieving information from a database over a TCP/IP computer network. It is covered by ANSI/NISO standard Z39.50, and ISO standard 23950. The standard's maintenance agency is the Library of Congress.
Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) is a client–server text searching system that uses the ANSI Standard Z39.50 Information Retrieval Service Definition and Protocol Specifications for Library Applications" (Z39.50:1988) to search index databases on remote computers. It was developed in the late 1980s as a project of Thinking Machines, Apple Computer, Dow Jones, and KPMG Peat Marwick.
Isearch is open-source text retrieval software first developed in 1994 by Nassib Nassar as part of the Isite Z39.50 information framework. The project started at the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval (CNIDR) of the North Carolina supercomputing center MCNC and funded by the National Science Foundation to follow in the track of WAIS and develop prototype systems for distributed information networks encompassing Internet applications, library catalogs and other information resources.
CNIDR collaborated with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to develop the USPTO's first Internet-based patent search systems. One of these provided full text searching and images of medical patents related to the research and treatment of HIV/AIDS and issued by the US, Japanese and European patent offices. Another system, known as the US Patent Bibliographic Database, provided searching of "front page" bibliographic information for all US patents since 1976. [11] [12] [13] [14]
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.
