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

WAIS

See Krol, Chapter 12

WAIS stands for Wide Area Information Server. WAIS provides the tools to create index files for fulltext databases. These index files can then be searched. It was developed by Brewster Kahle , who sold WAIS to AOL in 1995. Instead of becoming a wide area search tool, it's being used individually at many websites to index the information contained there (including gopher info.)

Examples

To see an original WAIS style session, telnet to

	sunsite.unc.edu
	login as swais
Be sure to enter vt100 when it prompts for a terminal type. Try to find some information on Mexico.

To see WAIS in action at a Website, visit

	http://lanic.utexas.edu
Try the "search" option.

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