Gopher

About Gopher

Gopher is a menu driven software that will help you find information on the Internet. Refer to Internet Tools for more details regarding gopher. You should also be familiar with the style of these tutorials.

Using Veronica to Search Gopherspace

Veronica is a tool that can be accessed through gopher, that searches all the gopher servers to find information you are looking for, using a keyword search. First we must access gopher.

  1. To access gopher from the % prompt type: gopher [RET]
You will see a menu. To choose an option, you can use the cursor key to move to your choice and press [RET]. To move back up a menu (return to the preceding menu) press u. To quit gopher at any time press q, then [RET]. We are going to find veronica.

  1. Move the cursor down to "Off-Campus Information Services/", press [RET]
  2. Move the cursor down to "Search Gopherspace using veronica/", press [RET]
  3. You are now at the menu that gives you your veronica options, i.e., which veronica server to use. You should select one of the "Search Gopherspace by Title word(s)......" options. If you cannot access the one you select, try another one, they all search the same information. If you are still having problems, you should try at another time.
  4. Now enter the keyword that you want to use to search. For example, if you were looking for MBA programs, type mba [RET]. You are now presented with a list (could be more than one page) of entries that fit your search.
  5. To find Delaware's MBA program entry, you can use the / search command. Type: / delaware [RET]. The arrow should now be pointing at the Delaware entry. Alternatively, you can use the arrow keys to browse through the entries.
  6. Press: [RET] to access the entry that interests you.

Using Bookmarks to Manage Your Gopher Queries

For frequently accessed information, you may wish to create a bookmark, this "moves" the information to your own gopher menu. We are going to illustrate this by accessing the Online Career Center and creating a bookmark for easy retrieval.

  1. At the % prompt type: gopher [RET]
  2. Move the cursor down to "Off-Campus Information Services/", press: [RET]
  3. Move the cursor down to "Online Career Center (Indianapolis, IN)/", press: [RET]
  4. You now have several choices. If you want to search for a job, move the cursor down to "* Search Jobs/" [RET]
  5. Again, you have many options, chose the one appropriate to you. The purpose for us at this time is to make this information easily accessible for you in the future. When you have finished, press: u (this moves you up one menu level), repeat this until the menu appears with the "Online Career Center.../", when you are at this menu press: a (the letter a), [RET].
  6. Now quit gopher, press: q [RET]
  7. You have two options to access your bookmark(s). At the % prompt type: gopher -b [RET] This will take you straight to your bookmark menu. Alternatively you can access your bookmark menu in gopher, press: v

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The University of Delaware
August, 1996