LIS 341. Summer, 1996. Gopher & Veronica

the university of texas at austin
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF LIBRARY & INFORMATION SCIENCE

Gopher & Veronica

See Krol, Chapter 11

Gopher is a menu based program that facilitates navigating through the Internet. Directories are shown as lists, you simply choose one to move into it. Gopher can link to other services, including telnet. It was developed at the University of Minnesota. To start the program, type gopher at the unix prompt.

Examples

Open a telnet session, login, and type

	gopher

You will see a menu. First try the help option, then try moving up and down the directories. We will start our exploration from the GSLIS gopher. If you are on the GSLIS cluster, you will see our menu by default. If you are not on the GSLIS server, start your gopher and then type

	o volvo.gslis.utexas.edu

Another good gopher site is

	cwis.usc.edu

Veronica is a tool that helps you search public-access gopher menus using keywords. Well, it really is a very easy rodent oriented net-wide index to computerized archives ;-)

	gopher veronica.scs.unr.edu

Select

	<12> Search all of gopherspace

Try a few simplified searches, option <6>

Exercises

Visit the "Mother Gopher" at the University of Minnesota:
```
	gopher tc.umn.edu
```
Locate the Voice of America news service here:
```
	gopher gopher.voa.gov
```
Is the information on this gopher uptodate? Why do you think is it kept in gopher format?
Use Veronica (as described above) to search for information on the topic you are developing as a final project. Try to find at least a few (two to six) gopher resources that look promising. Save these to a bookmark file (look at the help feature for instructions on doing this) You will submit these with the proposed topic you're researching for your final project.
Please email gpasch@gslis.utexas.edu if you have any questions.

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