Guide 2: Gopher

Guide 2: Gopher

No, not a relation of Gordon.  Gopher gives you access to part of the
wondrous place that is... the Internet.  Cyberspace.  Call it whatever you
want.  Gopher pretty much explains itself.  Just type in gopher at the
Unix prompt (or info at the (to) prompt) and have a look round. 
Basically, Gopher consists of many links to other places, which in turn
have links to other places and so on.  Gopher is not, however, the same
thing as the World Wide Web and is purely text based, unlike the Web.  The
University's Gopher server (which incorporates DUCIS: Durham University
Campus Information System) contains useful information about the
University on a local level, but the other links from the first page give
you scope for having a look at various pieces of information worldwide. 
The one piece of advice I will give you about Gopher concerns Veronica, a
very powerful search tool.  If you follow a Veronica path to its
conclusion you can start a search for items on the Gopher network
containing your chosen keyword or words.  This will typically bring up
dozens of articles for you to browse through or mail to yourself for
reading at a later date.  Just go for it!  (Geddit?!)

Written by Andy Thomas, A.G.Thomas@durham.ac.uk