INTER-MEDIA COLUMN

Internet Resources: Gopher



by Michael J. Albright
MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship, v2 no.1, Winter 1994:63-69.

This column is the first in what we hope will be a series related to the use of Internet resources by media personnel in higher education. Planned future columns will explore Internet "lists," Usenet, and documents available through file transfer protocol (ftp). Our initial effort will examine Gopher, one of the fastest growing and potentially one of the most useful of all Internet features.

WHAT IS GOPHER?

The developers of Gopher at the University of Minnesota (hence its name) define it as "software following a simple protocol for tunneling through a TCP/IP Internet." In plain English, Gopher is software that enables you to gain easy access to documents and databases worldwide, via the Internet, using your home or office computer.

Gopher was originally intended to serve as a Campus-Wide Information System (CWIS) for UM's main campus. It was to be a bulletin board providing on-line access to the university library, computing resources, and a variety of other information about the university and the Twin Cities area. This first Gopher became operational in 1991, and the idea spread like wildfire. As of the date of this manuscript, November 26, 1993, 1,073 Gopher sites had been established worldwide, with 714 in the United States alone. The manuscript date is significant because these figures will be grossly obsolete by the time this issue of MC Journal is distributed. The number of sites has more than tripled in 1993 alone, and new Gopher databases are coming on- line at the rate of about two per day.

Probably two-thirds to three-fourths of the Gopher sites in the U.S. are located on college and university campuses, most of

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which follow the original CWIS concept. Other Gopher databases are maintained by Federal Government agencies (e.g., Department of Education, Library of Congress, NASA, National Science Foundation, Occupational Health and Safety Administration); organizations (EDUCOM, Coalition of Networked Information, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Society); and commercial locations such as Apple, IBM, and a number of publishers. Gopher sites have also been established to provide data of specialized interest, for example the Earthquake Information Gopher, UFONet, the Soybean Gopher, the Nursing Gopher, the Anesthesiology Gopher, and the Notre Dame Football Gopher. (To quote Dave Barry, I am NOT making these up....)

HOW TO GAIN ACCESS TO GOPHER

If your college or university maintains its own Gopher database, you should be able to access it by simply typing the word "gopher" (without the quote marks) at your main prompt. On some campuses, the unique name for the Gopher file may be entered; i.e., "uhinfo" at the University of Hawaii. This command will access the "root menu" or primary menu for the Gopher database on your campus.

If your campus does not have its own Gopher file as yet, you have two alternatives for accessing the Gopher system. One is to obtain the Gopher software and install it on your own computer. The software is free by anonymous ftp from boombox.micro.umn.edu and is in the directory /pub/gopher. If you are unfamiliar with the anonymous ftp process, check with your campus systems consultant.

The other alternative is simpler. Just use the Telnet command to connect with another campus's Gopher server that allows public access. Any of the following should work. Except as noted, the login is "gopher" (without the quotes), and no password is required.

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telnet gopher.msu.edu
telnet wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (login "wsuinfo")
telnet sunsite.unc.edu
telnet ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
telnet panda.uiowa.edu
telnet consultant.micro.umn.edu (heavily used, last resort)
Once the root menu is reached, select the menu item that reads something like "Other Gopher servers in the world." (All root menus are different, so the terminology may vary.) This selection will lead to an "Other Gopher Servers in the World" subdirectory. Follow the path "North America" and "USA" through successive subdirectories to reach the wealth of Gopher servers currently available in the United States.

If a menu item ends in a period (.), that selection will lead to a document or text file. A menu item ending in a backslash (/) will lead to a subdirectory. The term indicates that the selection of that item will result in Telneting to another database. For connection to an IBM system, the term <3270> will be used.

Gopher is very user-friendly. Basic commands always appear at the bottom of the screen. The Help menu is very useful and may be accessed at virtually any time.

WHAT GENERAL INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE THROUGH GOPHER?

Gopher can be used in a wide variety of ways by media center personnel. For example, our own center once was asked by a faculty member to duplicate a videotape so he could send it to a colleague in Saipan. Since we were not sure where Saipan was or what standard it used, we accessed Gopher and read the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Fact Book via the University of Minnesota library. We learned that Saipan is a U.S. territory in the Western Pacific and therefore is NTSC. We could have checked our own library in person, but this process took about two minutes, and we never had to leave the office.

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Other Gopher sites and resources include the following. With the exception of the Institute for Academic Technology, all these sources are listed alphabetically in the subdirectory "All" (line #1) in the "USA" directory noted above. This is a *very* abbreviated list.

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It must be noted here that any text information accessed via Gopher, including full-text publications, may be downloaded easily to your own local directory by using the "save" command. The "print" command enables you to send a Gopher file directly to your own printer. The "mail" command allows you to send a Gopher file to any Internet address, including your own. And yet another handy feature is the use of "book marks" to provide quick and easy access to Gopher files frequently used.

HOW ARE MEDIA PERSONNEL USING GOPHER?

In addition to using Gopher to retrieve desired information, many college and university media personnel are providing information to their own customers via Gopher. One of the primary applications of interest to this readership is the on-line searching of nonprint collections. A recent survey by Carl Snow of Purdue University found that at least seven library-media centers are making their catalogs available via Gopher or Telnet, including Purdue and the Universities of Colorado, North Texas, South Florida, Wyoming, California at Santa Cruz, and Texas at Dallas.

Snow's own database at Purdue is an excellent example of how such a system works. Follow the path USA/Indiana/Purdue University Libraries/Library Catalogs and Gophers/Instructional Media Libraries/Purdue University IMC for Gopher access. Snow has also configured the Instructional Media Libraries subdirectory to provide access to the other six university catalogs listed above. In general, while searching can be conducted on-line, actual booking must be accomplished via separate e-mail messages, telephone, fax, or snail mail.

(It should be noted that a more efficient means of accessing the Purdue database may be to Telnet directly to thorplus.lib.purdue.edu and type "cwis" at the login prompt, rather than connecting via Gopher. Many other Gopher sites also provide direct access via Telnet or by incorporating their own

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addresses with the "gopher" command. For example, at your main prompt, type:

gopher chronicle.merit.edu

to gain direct access to the Chronicle of Higher Education Gopher server without the need to go through the normal Gopher access sequence.)

Several media centers have developed comprehensive Gopher files providing a wide variety of information to faculty and other customers. Typically included are guides to services available, staff directories, policies and procedures, price lists, classroom information, campus cable TV schedules, copyright guidelines, equipment operation instructions, and purchasing information, in addition to on-line catalog searching. For some excellent examples, follow these paths through successive subdirectories: