Gophering INFORM, The ADN Computer Center Document Library

Wow, have times changed! Gopher is obsolete, and so is the first Inform on the Web. See The new Inform on the Web to catch up. -- Ed, March, 1998]
 

• This is What They're Good For
• Starting Gopher
• The ADN Gopher Main Menu
• Seminars: Gophering INFORM with Keywords
• PC Information: Gophering the INFORM Menus
• Getting Out of Gopher
• Please Help!

Using computers reliably and efficiently means getting your questions answered quickly. Having an omniscient expert at your elbow is not always practical, but consulting appropriate online documentation can be the next best thing. At UIC, we have such documentation; the access program is available all over campus, and has a very gentle learning curve. It's the general Internet tool, Gopher.

Gopher is available on Internet sites all over the world, including CMS and the public personal computer labs. (If your computer has an ADN-ii connection, you can have it on your desk, too.) It's a general tool that can extract information from servers in Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and points in between. But for this article, we'll stay closer to home and see how to get information about UIC and about the ADN the easy way. Information is available about the class timetable, the faculty/staff phonebook, campus events, and even The ADN Connection and UIC News articles. At UIC, Gopher is the best way to get our documentation about both CMS and personal computers, without having to log onto the mainframe.

This "Tech Tip" explains how to use Gopher to read ADN online computer-related information. There are two specific examples. First, do you want to see the Computer Center seminar schedule for this semester? Here's how to use Gopher to do a keyword search of INFORM. Or how about finding out what's available on INFORM about personal computers? In this case, we'll gopher the INFORM menus.

Gopher is an example of client-server software. This means that it comes in two parts: a server, which may be located anywhere on the Internet, and client software, which is located on your local machine. Easy to use gopher clients are available on the public personal computers and on the UICVM mainframe system. These clients begin gophering with the ADN Gopher server (named gopher.uic.edu), but select a menu item or two and you can be off using the multitude of other gopher servers out there on the Internet.

Gopher client software is available for almost any type of computer or workstation. If you have a personal computer or workstation that is on the ADN-ii (the ethernet part of the ADN network) and you're interested in gophering from it, let us know. Send a note to gopher@uic.edu or contact the Client Service Office (Room 2267 SEL, (312) 413-0003, or at consult@uic.edu).

Your gopher session begins by displaying the main or root menu of the ADN Gopher server.

What does "select" mean here? On personal computers, you often point and click with a mouse to select items. But when you can't use a mouse, you can use the arrow keys to move your cursor to the item (often this will highlight the item), and then press: Enter. This is how to select an item in Gopher and INFORM, both on CMS and on the public PCs.

Search the UIC Campus and Beyond:

This leads to many types of searches; "beyond" here is everywhere, worldwide. Of particular interest is the menu of Veronica searches. Veronica services maintain an index of the titles of gopher items, typically taken from the menus of hundreds of gopher servers (perhaps even all of the announced gopher servers), and allow you to do keyword searches on those titles.

The Campus:

Items of local interest on this menu include UIC Campus Events maintained by SINC, the Student Information Network Center, and UIC News, online copies of the weekly university newspaper. The Netnews item provides access through Gopher to Usenet conferences, news services, etc. Access to Netnews is limited to gopher clients located on the UIC campus.

The Classroom:

This includes online listings of the Timetable information, including final exam schedules and lists of closed courses.

The Computer:

There is local computer information on this menu, including BULLETIN, The ADN Connection, INFORM, and a menu of giving the current print queues for the Computer Center printers. But this is Gopher, so there are national and international topics here too.

The Researcher:

This menu is organized by subject matter, currently 31 subjects of academic interest, arranged alphabetically from Aerospace to Weather, Climate and Meteorology. (Look for Zoology under Biology.) Each topic includes a variety of information, including research data, books, grant information from NSF and NIH, preprints, announcements, and much more.

You can explore the INFORM topic menus and document lists just as you can explore any other menu on Gopher: browse through the displayed menus and select whichever topics you find relevant or interesting. That's a good way to find out what sorts of things are available through INFORM. But in this case, we're looking for a specific thing: a listing of current Computer Center seminars. Naturally, you'd expect to find a seminar schedule indexed under "seminars."

We'll take the direct route to the seminar schedule by searching INFORM for the keyword seminars. The second item in the INFORM main menu is UIC INFORM database search server. Select that. Gopher then asks for search keyword(s). Type: seminars
(or another keyword or keywords separated by blanks), and press: Enter.

A list of items indexed under "seminars", including the schedule, will be displayed. Select the one you'd like to read and you're off.

Want to Explore Some More? Try searching INFORM with these keywords:

go gopherin'

for a short course on gophering that was recently conducted via gopher and email by Richard Smith from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and Jim Gerland from State University of New York at Buffalo.

internet resources

for information on a wide range of Internet services

computer center resume

for short summaries of ADN services

quick facts wordperfect

to see the Computer Center document Quick Facts for WordPerfect, a brief introduction to WordPerfect on the public PCs

quick facts documents

for a list of available Quick Facts documents

To do this, go to the INFORM main menu. (From the Gopher main menu, select "The Computer", then select "INFORM Document Library".) Microcomputers is several pages down in the INFORM main menu. To page down in Gopher, use: F8 on CMS, or press: PgDn on the public PCs. When you get to the page with "Microcomputers", use the arrow keys to move your cursor to it and press: Enter to select it. A menu of microcomputer-related topics is displayed.

To go back one step (to the previous menu):

• For Gopher on CMS, use: F3 ("Back")
• For Gopher on a public DOS personal computer: If there is a "Go Back" button displayed, press: K to activate it; if there isn't a "Go Back" button (and only if there isn't one), then press: Alt-F3

To leave Gopher entirely:

• For Gopher on CMS: Use: F12 ("Quit")
• For Gopher on a public DOS personal computer: Press: Alt-X

• Electronic mail: gopher@uic.edu and connect@uic.edu.
• US Mail: Computer Center Documentation, ADN Computer Center (M/C 135), Room 124 Benjamin Goldberg Research Center, The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1940 West Taylor, Chicago, Illinois 60612-7352.
• Fax: (312) 996-6834.

Comments are appreciated; send them to
Judith Grobe Sachs, judygs@uic.edu