A protocol and server for a distributed digital technical reportlibrary

Abstract

This paper describes {\bf Dienst} -- a Distributed Interactive Extensible Network Server for Techreports. The Dienst protocol is based on the World Wide Web protocol HTTP, and provides an object-oriented interface to a document model. The document model allows one to access the document as a whole or by named sub-parts and it supports multiple formats for the document. We have also implemented a gateway from a Web server that supports the Dienst protocol. Using a World Wide Web client (e.g. Mosaic), a user may search for documents at distributed sites, browse "thumbnail" (very small page) images, view the full documents, and print them.