CHAPTER 8: GOPHERS AND WAISs

8.1 GOPHERS

Even with tools like Hytelnet and archie, telnet and ftp can still be
frustrating. There are all those telnet and ftp addresses to remember.
Telnet services often have their own unique commands. And, oh, those
weird directory and file names!

But now that the Net has become a rich repository of information, people
are developing ways to make it far easier to find and retrieve
information and files. Gophers and Wide-Area Information Servers (WAISs)
are two services that are helping to make the internet far easier to
use.

Both gophers and WAISs essentially take a request for information and
then scan the Net for it, so you don't have to. Both also work through
menus -- instead of typing in some long sequence of characters, you just
move a cursor to your choice and hit enter. Gophers even let you select
files and programs from ftp sites this way.

Let's first look at gophers (named for the official mascot of thE
University of Minnesota, where the system was developed). Most
public-access sites now have gophers online. To use one, type

gopher

at the command prompt and hit enter. If you know your site does not have
a gopher, or if nothing happens when you type that, telnet to

consultant.micro.umn.edu

At the login prompt, type

gopher

and hit enter. You'll be asked what type of terminal emulation you're
using, after which you'll see something like this:

Internet Gopher Information Client v1.03

Root gopher server: gopher.micro.umn.edu

--> 1. Information About Gopher/
2. Computer Information/
3. Discussion Groups/
4. Fun & Games/
5. Internet file server (ftp) sites/
6. Libraries/
7. News/
8. Other Gopher and Information Servers/
9. Phone Books/
10. Search lots of places at the U of M <?>
11. University of Minnesota Campus Information/

Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1

Assuming you're using VT100 or some other VT emulation, you'll be able to
move among the choices with your up and down arrow keys. When you have
your cursor on an entry that looks interesting, just hit enter, and
you'll either get a new menu of choices, a database entry form, or a text
file, depending on what the menu entry is linked to (more on how to tell
which you'll get in a moment).

Gophers are great for exploring the resources of the Net. Just keep
making choices to see what pops up. Play with it; see where it takes
you. Some choices will be documents. When you read one of these and
either come to the end or hit a lower-case q to quit reading it, you'll
be given the choice of saving a copy to your home directory or e-mailing
it to yourself. Other choices are simple databases that let you enter a
word to look for in a particular database. To get back to where you
started on a gopher, hit your u key at a menu prompt, which will move you
back "up" through the gopher menu structure (much like "cd .." in ftp).

Notice that one of your choices above is "Internet file server (ftp)
sites." Choose this, and you'll be connected to a modified archie
program -- an archie with a difference. When you search for a file
through a gopher archie, you'll get a menu of sites that have the file
you're looking for, just as with the old archie. Only now, instead of
having to write down or remember an ftp address and directory, all you
have to do is position the cursor next to one of the numbers in the menu
and hit enter. You'll be connected to the ftp site, from which you can
then choose the file you want. This time, move the cursor to the file
you want and hit a lower-case s. You'll be asked for a name in your home
directory to use for the file, after which the file will be copied to
your home system. Unfortunately, this file-transfer process does not yet
work with all public-access sites for computer programs and compressed
files. If it doesn't work with yours, you'll have to get the file the
old-fashioned way, via anonymous ftp.

In addition to ftp sites, there are hundreds of databases and libraries
around the world accessible through gophers. There is not yet a common
gopher interface for library catalogs, so be prepared to follow the
online directions more closely when you use gopher to connect to one.

Gopher menu entries that end in a / are gateways to another menu of
options. Entries that end in a period are text, graphics or program
files, which you can retrieve to your home directory (or e-mail to
yourself or to somebody else). A line that ends in <?> or <CSO>
represents a request you can make to a database for information. The
difference is that <?> entries call up one-line interfaces in which you
can search for a keyword or words, while <CSO> brings up an electronic
form with several fields for you to fill out (you might see this in
online "White Pages" directories at colleges).

Gophers actually let you perform some relatively sophisticated Boolean
searches. For example, if you want to search only for files that contain
the words "MS-DOS" and "Macintosh," you'd type

ms-dos and macintosh

(gophers are not case-sensitive) in the keyword field. Alternately, if
you want to get a list of files that mention either "MS-DOS" or
"Macintosh," you'd type

ms-dos or macintosh

8.2 BURROWING DEEPER

As fascinating as it can be to explore "gopherspace," you might one day
want to quickly retrieve some information or a file. Or you might grow
tired of calling up endless menus to get to the one you want.
Fortunately, there are ways to make even gophers easier to use.

One is with archie's friend, veronica (it allegedly is an acronym, but
don't believe that for a second), who does for gopherspace what archie
does for ftp sites.

In most gophers, you'll find veronica by selecting "Other gopher and
information services" at the main menu and then "Searching through
gopherspace using veronica." Select this and you'll get something like
this:

Internet Gopher Information Client v1.1

Search titles in Gopherspace using veronica

--> 1. .
2. FAQ: Frequently-Asked Questions about veronica (1993/08/23).
3. How to compose veronica queries (NEW June 24) READ ME!!.
4. Search Gopher Directory Titles at PSINet <?>
5. Search Gopher Directory Titles at SUNET <?>
6. Search Gopher Directory Titles at U. of Manitoba <?>
7. Search Gopher Directory Titles at University of Cologne <?>
8. Search gopherspace at PSINet <?>
9. Search gopherspace at SUNET <?>
10. Search gopherspace at U. of Manitoba <?>
11. Search gopherspace at University of Cologne <?>

Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu Page: 1/1

A few choices there! First, the difference between searching directory
titles and just plain ol' gopherspace. If you already know the sort of
directory you're looking for (say a directory containing MS-DOS
programs), do a directory-title search. But if you're not sure what kind
of directory your information might be in, then do a general gopherspace
search. In general, it doesn't matter which of the particular veronicas
you use -- they should all be able to produce the same results. The
reason there is more than one is because the Internet has become so
popular that only one veronica (or one gopher or one of almost anything)
would quickly be overwhelmed by all the information requests from around
the world.

You can use veronica to search for almost anything. Want to find museums
that might have online displays from their exhibits? Try searching for
"museum." Looking for a copy of the Declaration of Independence? Try
"declaration."

In many cases, your search will bring up a new gopher menu of choices to
try.

Say you want to impress those guests coming over for dinner on Friday by
cooking cherries flambe. If you were to call up veronica and type in
"flambe" after calling up veronica, you would soon get a menu listing
several flambe recipes, including one called "dessert flambe." Put your
cursor on that line of the menu and hit enter, and you'll find it's a
menu for cherries flambe. Then hit your q key to quit, and gopher will
ask you if you want to save the file in your home directory on your
public-access site or whether you want to e-mail it somewhere.

As you can see, you can use veronica as an alternative to archie, which,
because of the Internet's growing popularity, seems to take longer and
longer to work.

In addition to archie and veronica, we now also have jugheads (no bettys
yet, though). These work the same as veronicas, but their searches are
limited to the specific gopher systems on which they reside.

If there are particular gopher resources you use frequently, there are a
couple of ways to get to them even more directly.

One is to use gopher in a manner similar to the way you can use telnet.
If you know a particular gopher's Internet address (often the same as its
telnet or ftp address), you can connect to it directly, rather than going
through menus. For example, say you want to use the gopher at
info.umd.edu. If your public-access site has a gopher system installed,
type this

gopher info.umd.edu

at your command prompt and you'll be connected.

But even that can get tedious if there are several gophers you use
frequently. That's where bookmarks come in. Gophers let you create a
list of your favorite gopher sites and even database queries. Then,
instead of digging ever deeper into the gopher directory structure, you
just call up your bookmark list and select the service you want.

To create a bookmark for a particular gopher site, first call up gopher.
Then go through all the gopher menus until you get to the menu you want.
Type a capital A. You'll be given a suggested name for the bookmark enty,
which you can change if you want by backspacing over the suggestion and
typing in your own. When done, hit enter. Now, whenever you're in
gopherspace and want to zip back to that particular gopher service, just
hit your V key (upper- or lower-case; in this instance, gopher doesn't
care) anywhere within gopher. This will bring up a list of your
bookmarks. Move to the one you want and hit enter, and you'll be
connected.

Using a capital A is also good for saving particular database or veronica
queries that you use frequently (for example, searching for news stories
on a particular topic if your public-access site maintains an indexed
archive of wire-service news).

Instead of a capital A, you can also hit a lower-case a. This will bring
you to the particular line within a menu, rather than show you the entire
menu.

If you ever want to delete a bookmark, hit V within gopher, select the
item you want to get rid of, and then hit your D key.

One more hint:

If you want to find the address of a particular gopher service, hit your
= key after you've highlighted its entry in a gopher menu. You'll get
back a couple of lines, most of which will be technicalese of no
immediate value to most folks, but some of which will consist of the
site's address.

8.3 GOPHER COMMANDS

a Add a line in a gopher menu to your bookmark list.

A Add an entire gopher menu or a database query to your bookmark
list.

d Delete an entry from your bookmark list (you have to hit v
first).

q Quit, or exit, a gopher. You'll be asked if you really want to.

Q Quit, or exit, a gopher without being asked if you're sure.

s Save a highlighted file to your home directory.

u Move back up a gopher menu structure

v View your bookmark list.

= Get information on the originating site of a gopher entry.

> Move ahead one screen in a gopher menu.

< Move back one screen in a gopher menu.

8.4 SOME INTERESTING GOPHERS

There are now hundreds of gopher sites around the world. What follows is
a list of some of them. Assuming your site has a gopher "client"
installed, you can reach them by typing

gopher sitename

at your command prompt. Can't find what you're looking for? Remember to
use veronica to look up categories and topics!

AGRICULTURE

cyfer.esusda.gov More agricultural statistics and regulations
most people will ever need.

usda.mannlib.cornell.edu More than 140 different types of agricultural
data, most in Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet format.

ANIMALS

saimiri.primate.wisc.edu Information on primates and animal-welfare
laws.

ARCHITECTURE

libra.arch.umich.edu Maintains online exhibits of a variety of
architectural images.

ART

marvel.loc.gov The Library of Congress runs several online
"galleries" of images from exhibits at the
library. Many of these pictures, in GIF or JPEG
format, are HUGE, so be careful what you get
first. Exhibits include works of art from the
Vatican, copies of once secret Soviet documents
and pictures of artifacts related to Columbus's
1492 voyage. At the main menu, select 2 and then
"Exhibits."

galaxy.ucr.edu The California Museum of Photography maintains its
own online galery here. At the main menu,
select "Campus Events," then "California
Museum of Photography," then "Network Ex-
hibitions."

ASTRONOMY

cast0.ast.cam.ac.uk A gopher devoted to astronomy, run by the
Institute of Astronomy and the Royal Greenwich
Observatory, Cambridge, England.

CENSUS

bigcat.missouri.edu You'll find detailed federal census data for
communities of more than 10,000 people, as well
as for states and counties here. At the main
menu, select "Reference and Information Center,"
then "United States and Missouri Census
Information" and "United States Census."

COMPUTERS

wuarchive.wustl.edu Dozens of directories with software for all sorts
of computers. Most programs have to be
"un-compressed" before you can use them.

sumex-aim.stanford.edu A similar type of system, with the emphasis on
Macintosh programs and files.

DISABILITY

val-dor.cc.buffalo.edu The Cornucopia of Disability Information carries
numerous information resources on disability issues
and links to other disability-related services.

ENVIRONMENT

ecosys.drdr.virginia.edu Copies of Environmental Protection Agency
factsheets on hundreds of chemicals, searchable
by keyword. Select "Education" and then
"Environmental fact sheets."

envirolink.org Dozens of documents and files related to
environmental activism around the world.

ENTOMOLOGY

spider.ento.csiro.au All about creepy-crawly things, both the good
and the bad ones.

GEOLOGY

gopher.stolaf.edu Select "Internet Resources" and then "Weather
and geography" for information on recent
earthquakes.

GOVERNMENT

marvel.loc.gov Run by the Library of Congress, this site
provides numerous resources, including access
to the Library card catalog and all manner of
information about the U.S. Congress.

gopher.lib.umich.edu Wide variety of government information, from
Congressional committee assignments to economic
statistics and NAFTA information.

ecix.doc.gov Information on conversion of military
installations to private uses.

sunsite.unc.edu Copies of current and past federal budgets can
be found by selecting "Sunsite archives," then
"Politics," then "Sunsite politcal science
archives."

wiretap.spies.com Documents related to Canadian government can be
found in the "Government docs" menu.

stis.nih.gov Select the "Other U.S. government gopher
servers" for access to numerous other federal
gophers.

HEALTH

odie.niaid.nih.gov National Institutes of Health databases on AIDS,
in the "AIDS related information" menu.

helix.nih.gov For National Cancer Institute factsheets on
different cancers, select "Health and clinical
information" and then "Cancernet information."

nysernet.org Look for information on breast cancer in the
"Special Collections: Breast Cancer" menu.

welchlink.welch.jhu.edu This is Johns Hopkins University's medical
gopher.

HISTORY

See under Art.

INTERNET

gopher.lib.umich.edu Home to several guides to Internet resources
in specific fields, for example, social
sciences. Select "What's New & Featured
Resources" and then "Clearinghouse."

ISRAEL

jerusalem1.datasrv.co.il This Israeli system offers numerous documents
on Israel and Jewish life.

JAPAN

gopher.ncc.go.jp Look in the "Japan information" menu for
documents related to Japanese life and culture.

MUSIC

mtv.com Run by Adam Curry, an MTV video jock, this site
has music news and Curry's daily "Cybersleaze"
celebrity report.

NATURE

ucmp1.berkeley.edu The University of California at Berkeley's
Museum of Paleontology runs several online
exhibits here. You can obtain GIF images of
plants and animals from the "Remote Nature" menu.
The "Origin of the Species" menu lets you read
Darwin's work or search it by keyword.

SPORTS

culine.colorado.edu Look up schedules for teams in various professional
sports leagues here, under "Professional Sports
Schedules."

WEATHER

wx.atmos.uiuc.edu Look up weather forecasts for North America or
bone up on your weather facts.

8.5 WIDE-AREA INFORMATION SERVERS

Now you know there are hundreds of databases and library catalogs
you can search through. But as you look, you begin to realize that each
seems to have its own unique method for searching. If you connect to
several, this can become a pain. Gophers reduce this problem somewhat.

Wide-area information servers promise another way to zero in on
information hidden on the Net. In a WAIS, the user sees only one
interface -- the program worries about how to access information on
dozens, even hundreds, of different databases. You tell give a WAIS a
word and it scours the net looking for places where it's mentioned. You
get a menu of documents, each ranked according to how relevant to your
search the WAIS thinks it is.

Like gophers, WAIS "client" programs can already be found on many public-
access Internet sites. If your system has a WAIS client, type

swais

at the command prompt and hit enter (the "s" stands for "simple"). If it
doesn't, telnet to bbs.oit.unc.edu, which is run by the University of
North Carolina At the "login:" prompt, type

bbs

and hit enter. You'll be asked to register and will then get a list of
"bulletins,'' which are various files explaining how the system works.
When done with those, hit your Q key and you'll get another menu. Hit 4
for the "simple WAIS client," and you'll see something like this:

SWAIS Source Selection Sources: 23#
Server Source Cost
001: [ archie.au] aarnet-resource-guide Free
002: [ archive.orst.edu] aeronautics Free
003: [nostromo.oes.orst.ed] agricultural-market-news Free
004: [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt-sys-sun Free
005: [ archive.orst.edu] alt.drugs Free
006: [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.gopher Free
007: [sun-wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.sys.sun Free
008: [ wais.oit.unc.edu] alt.wais Free
009: [ archive.orst.edu] archie-orst.edu Free
010: [ archie.au] archie.au-amiga-readmes Free
011: [ archie.au] archie.au-ls-lRt Free
012: [ archie.au] archie.au-mac-readmes Free
013: [ archie.au] archie.au-pc-readmes Free
014: [ pc2.pc.maricopa.edu] ascd-education Free
015: [ archie.au] ¡au-directory-of-servers Free
016: [ cirm2.univ-mrs.fr] bib-cirm Free
017: [ cmns-sun.think.com] bible Free
018: [ zenon.inria.fr] bibs-zenon-inria-fr Free

Keywords:

<space> selects, w for keywords, arrows move, <return> searches, q quits, or ?

Each line represents a different database (the .au at the end of some of
them means they are in Australia; the .fr on the last line represents a
database in France). And this is just the first page! If you type a
capital K, you'll go to the next page (there are several pages).
Hitting a capital J will move you back a page.

The first thing you want to do is tell the WAIS program which databases
you want searched. To select a database, move the cursor bar over the
line you want (using your down and up arrow keys) and hit your space bar.
An asterisk will appear next to the line number. Repeat this until
you've selected all of the databases you want searched. Then hit your W
key, after which you'll be prompted for the key words you're looking for.
You can type in an entire line of these words -- separate each with a
space, not a comma.

Hit return, and the search begins.

Let's say you're utterly fascinated with wheat. So you might select
agricultural-market-news to find its current world price. But you also
want to see if it has any religious implications, so you choose the Bible
and the Book of Mormon. What do you do with the stuff? Select recipes
and usenet-cookbook. Are there any recent Supreme Court decisions
involving the plant? Chose supreme-court. How about synonyms? Try roget-
thesaurus and just plain thesaurus.

Now hit w and type in wheat. Hit enter, and the WAIS program begins its
search. As it looks, it tells you whether any of the databases are
offline, and if so, when they might be ready for a search. In about a
minute, the program tells you how many hits it's found. Then you get a
new menu, that looks something like this:

Keywords:

# Score SourceTitleLines
001: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #465. [results of comparison. 1] Di 19
002: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #609. Choice. -- N. choice, option; 36
003: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #465. [results of comparison. 1] Di 19
004: [1000] (roget-thesaurus) #609. Choice. -- N. choice, option; 36
005: [1000] (recipes) aem@mthvax Re: MONTHLY: Rec.Food.Recipes 425
006: [1000] ( Book_of_Mormon) Mosiah 9:96
007: [1000] ( Book_of_Mormon) 3 Nephi 18:185
008: [1000] (agricultural-ma) Re: JO GR115, WEEKLY GRAIN82
009: [ 822] (agricultural-ma) Re: WA CB351 PROSPECTIVE PLANTINGS 552
010: [ 800] ( recipes) kms@apss.a Re: REQUEST: Wheat-free, Suga 35
011: [ 750] (agricultural-ma) Re: WA CB101 CROP PRODUCTION258
012: [ 643] (agricultural-ma) Re: SJ GR850 DAILY NAT GRN SUM72
013: [ 400] ( recipes) pat@jaamer Re: VEGAN: Honey Granola63
014: [ 400] ( recipes) jrtrint@pa Re: OVO-LACTO: Sourdough/Trit 142

Each of these represents an article or citing that contains the word wheat,
or some related word. Move the cursor bar (with the down and up arrow
keys) to the one you want to see, hit enter, and it will begin to appear
on your screen. The "score" is a WAIS attempt to gauge how closely the
citing matches your request. Doesn't look like the Supreme Court has had
anything to say about the plant of late!

Now think of how much time you would have spent logging onto various
databases just to find these relatively trivial examples.

8.6 WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

As the Internet grows ever more popular, its resources come under more of
a strain. If you try to use gopher in the middle of the day, at least on
the East Coast of the U.S., you'll sometimes notice that it takes a very
long time for particular menus or database searches to come up.
Sometimes, you'll even get a message that there are too many people
connected to whichever service you're trying to use and so you can't get
in. The only alternative is to either try again in 20 minutes or so, or
wait until later in the day, when the load might be lower. When this
happens in veronica, try one of the other veronica entries.

When you retrieve a file through gopher, you'll sometimes be asked if you
want to store it under some ludicrously long name (there go our friends
the system administrators again, using 128 characters just because Unix
lets them). With certain MS-DOS communications programs, if that name is
longer than one line, you won't be able to backspace all the way back to
the first line if you want to give it a simpler name. Backspace as far
as you can. Then, when you get ready to download it to your home
computer, remember that the file name will be truncated on your end,
because of MS-DOS's file-naming limitations. Worse, your computer might
even reject the whole thing. What to do? Instead of saving it to your
home directory, mail it to yourself. It should show up in your mail by
the time you exit gopher. Then, use your mail command for saving it to
your home directory -- at which point you can name it anything you want.
Now you can download it.

8.7 FYI

David Riggins maintains a list of gophers by type and category. You can
find the most recent one at the ftp site ftp.einet.net, in the pub
directory. Look for a file with a name like "gopher-jewels.txt."
Alternately, you can get on a mailing list to get the latest version sent
to your e-mailbox automatically. Send a mail message to gopherjewelslist-
request@tpis.cactus.org (yep, that first part is all one word). Leave
the "subject:" line blank, and as a message, write SUBSCRIBE.

Blake Gumprecht maintains a list of gopher and telnet sites related to,
or run by, the government. He posts it every three weeks to the
news.answers and soc.answers newsgroups on Usenet. It can also be
obtained via anonymous ftp from rtfm.mit.edu, as
/pub/usenet/news.answers/us-govt-net-pointers.

Students at the University of Michigan's School of Information and
Library Studies, recently compiled separate lists of Internet resources
in 11 specific areas, from aeronautics to theater. They can be obtained
via gopher at gopher.lib.umich.edu, in the "What's New and Featured
Resources" menu.

The Usenet newsgroups comp.infosystems.gopher and comp.infosystems.wais
are places to go for technical discussions about gophers and WAISs
respectively.