©1996, I. Borrás

Schedule	Bennington College

GOPHER

Gopher is a menu-driven information system with links to submenus, documents, binary files, graphics, or search utilities. The Internet Gopher protocol and the first Gopher software were developed by the Gopher Team at the University of Minnesota. Gopher was originally created as a fast and simple campus-wide information search and retrieval system.

Gopher exits in over 1,500 sites around the world. The network of Gopher sites is called "Gopherspace." One can access this network of Gopher servers from a Mac, PC, or workstation connected to the Internet. Gopher clients can also access FTP, USENET news, or WWW sites, either via gateway servers or by using helper applications.

• Accessing Gopher Sites
• Searching Gopher: Veronica
• Sites

Accessing Gopher Sites

To access a Gopher site, you have two options:

• Use TurboGopher. (See steps to follow in chapter 6 of your textbook).
• Use Netscape.If you take this option, just type the URL of the Gopher you want to visit into the location window of Netscape. A Gopher URL looks like a Web URL, except that it starts with gopher:// instead of http://.

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Veronica is a search engine, which looks like a "?" or as a pair of binoculars, It is designed to find resources in Gopherspace. To do so, Veronica either scans an automatically compiled index of Gopher titles (Jughead search), or examines Gopher document names as well as directory titles (Veronica search). To initiate a search, you have first to decide whether you are going to search directory titles or both document names and directory titles. Click on the link below and try by yourself:

By default, Veronica performs a case-insensitive search; if you type two or more words, Veronica ANDs them. In addition, Veronica performs whole-word searches, and allows the search of resources of a certain type, through the -t operator.

To restrict a search using the-t operator, you would type the text you are searching for followed by the -t operator, and the code of the type of resource you are looking for.

To learn more about how to perform Veronica searches, click on the link below:

Veronica

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Gopher: Home Try this site at the University of Minnesota for general information about Gopher.

Gopher Jewels List of hyperlinks to 2,300 Gopher sites classified by subject.

Online Curriculum Projects for K-12, andInternet Projects for the Classroom are two interesting Gophers in which you may find ideas for your classroom online activities.

The Common Knowledge Project: Pittsburgh Gopher A project aimed at providing wide area network services to the teachers and students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The site features an interesting Foreign Languages Gopher server.

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