| BER | Basic Encoding Rules (ISO) |
| BOF | Birds Of a Feather (informal discussion session) |
| DISW | Distributed Indexing and Searching Workshop (this workshop) |
| EID | Engine Identifier |
| GILS | Government Information Locator Service |
| PICS | Platform for Internet Content Selections (content rating standard) |
| RDM | Resource Description Message (Netscape extension/wrapper to SOIF) |
| REP | Robot Exclusion Protocol (aka "robots.txt", aka SRE) |
| RFC | Request For Comments |
| SGML | Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO standard) |
| SOIF | Summary Object Interchange Format (defined by the Harvest Project) |
| SRE | Standard for Robot Exclusion (aka "robots.txt", aka REP) |
| TREC | Text Retrieval Conference (e.g., here's a recent Call For Participation) |
| URC | Uniform Resource Characteristics (IETF) |
| URI | Uniform Resource Identifier (IETF. Also, Upper Respiratory Infection) |
| URN | Uniform Resource Name (IETF) |
| VSL | Virtual Software Library (c|net) |
| Z39.50 | ISO application layer standard for network information retrieval |