software (actually anything classic computer related) directory

Some mention has been made on the list with regards to a "global" list of classic computer related artifacts, be those documents (manuals), software bits, other historical ephemera, etc. The concept I've been working with is defining a standard record format for interchange amongst those that wish to participate. Think of this as something like ANSI X.12 (Electronic Data Interchange). Each site who wants to participate would (in an automated fashion) periodically (nightly?) run a program or process that takes data about their collection items and puts it into this standard record format. The format has things like document name, title, description, document type, owner site, http vs. ftp, URL, FTP address, email contact, date, key words, categories, distribution allowed, etc. For example, a program could pretty easily be created that would take all the documents on bitsavers and puts them into this standard record format. Then the source systems send this record dump (or deltas from a previous dump) to the classiccmp server. The classiccmp server takes all these records from all the various sites and puts them together into a single database internally, and also provides a seamless mechanism (http, and yes... gopher, archie?) for people to search the database or browse based on given criteria. It looks like one database. But when a user tries to pull up one of the specific entries it is actually redirected to the sponsoring systems server to get the data. This way each system can keep their classic data (jpegs, pdfs, disk images, whatever) in the format they are already using without changing anything. They just need to have something that takes their format/sources and puts it into the standard format which is then sync'd to classiccmp.org. Provisions could be made to the standard record format to address all types of media, allow some items to be listed as "present" but "unavailable" for things that can't be released due to copyright issues (but at least people would know it had been preserved). I'd be happy to start a separate mailing list to discuss this record format, and if people are interested in participating. I'd hate to chew up cctalk/cctech bandwidth discussing project design :) Jay