The purpose of this BOF is to gauge the interest in and begin discussions for formalizing the requirements of, and develop a protocol for a robust, secure, text-based directory service protocol. Experience with Internet-based, distributed, scalable search services, such as globally-accessible directories and searchable distributed document repositories, has demonstrated the continuing need for such a protocol. Existing protocols have one or several unresolvable limitations for such applications: limited security, limited query language facilities, high "barrier to entry" for client and server applications. The output of the BOF will be a to determine if there is sufficient interest to warrant a Working Group. If so, then a proposed charter, milestones and task assignments will be produced.