software, data and other information which can be copied and used without charge by anyone with connection to the Internet."

"The archie server automatically updates the listing information from each site about once a month, ensuring users that the information they receive is reasonably timely, without imposing an undue load on the archive sites or network bandwidth."

Unfortunately the archie server at McGill is currently out of service. Other sites are: archie.ans.net (USA [NY]) archie.rutgers.edu (USA [NJ]) archie.sura.net (USA [MD]) archie.funet.fi (Finland/Mainland Europe) archie.au (Australia/New Zealand) archie.doc.ic.ac.uk (Great Britain/Ireland)

More information avaiable from: UNIX Support Group Computing Centre McGill University Room 200 Burnside Hall 805 Sherbrooke Street West Montreal, Quebec CANADA H3A 2K6 514/398-3709 [email protected]

Internet Gopher
Gopher (or go-fer): someone who fetches necessary items from many locations.

Login as gopher after you telnet to consultant.micro.umn.edu and enjoy having a computer do all the work for you. Almost. Gopher is still in experimental mode at many gopherized sites. Still, it is one of the best ways to locate information on and in the Internet.

Besides archie, the gopher at consultant.micro.umn.edu includes fun and games, humor, libraries (including reference books such as the Hacker's Dictionary, Roget's 1911 Thesaurus, and the CIA World Fact Book), gateways to other US and foreign gophers, news, and gateways to other systems.

VERONICA: Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives.

Very new on the scene is VERONICA.
Here is some information from Steve Foster about it.

"Veronica offers a keyword search of most gopher-server menus in the entire gopher web. As Archie is to ftp archives, Veronica is to gopherspace. Unlike Archie, the search results can connect you directly to the data source. Imagine an Archie search that lets you select the data, not just the host sites, directly from a menu. Because Veronica is accessed through a gopher client, it is easy to use, and gives access to all types of data supported by the gopher protocol."

"Veronica was designed as a response to the problem of resource discovery in the rapidly-expanding gopher web. Frustrated comments in the net news- groups have recently reflected the need for such a service. Additional motivation came from the comments of naive gopher users, several of whom assumed that a simple-touse service would provide a means to find resources `without having to know where they are.'"

"The result of a Veronica search is an automatically-generated gopher menu, customized according to the user's keyword specification. Items on this menu may be drawn from many gopher servers. These are functional gopher items, immediately accessible via the gopher client just double- click to open directories, read files, or perform other searches — across hundreds of gopher servers. You need never know which server is actually involved in filling your request for information. Items that are appear particularly interesting can be saved in the user's bookmark list."

"Notice that these are NOT full-text searches of data at gopher-server sites, just as Archie does not index the contents of ftp sites, but only the names of files at those sites. Veronica indexes the TITLES on all levels of the menus, for most gopher sites in the Internet. 258 gophers are indexed by Veronica on Nov. 17, 1992; we have discovered over 500 servers and will index the full set in the near future. We hope that Veronica will encourage gopher administrators to use very descriptive titles on their menus."

"To try Veronica, select it from the `Other Gophers' menu on Minnesota's
gopher server (consultant.micro.umn.edu), or point your gopher at:
Name=Veronica (search menu items in most of GopherSpace)
Type=1
Port=70
Path=1/Veronica Host=futique.scs.unr.edu"

"Veronica is an experimental service, developed by Steve Foster and Fred Barrie at University of Nevada. As we expect that the load will soon outgrow our hardware, we will distribute the Veronica service across other sites in the near future."

"Please address comments to: [email protected]"

Is this the new world order of automated librarianship?

WAIS

Wide Area Information Servers (pronounced ways) allows users to get information from a variety of hosts by means of a "client". The user tells the client, in plain English, what to look for out in dataspace. The client then searches various WAIS servers around the globe. The user tells the client how relevant each hit is, and the client can be sent out on the same quest again and again to find new documents. Client software is available for many different types of computers.

WAIStation is an easy to use Macintosh implementation of a WAIS client. It can be downloaded from think.com as well as a self-running MediaTracks demo of WAIStation in action. Kahle also moderates a thoughtful WAIS newsletter and discussion group, often speculating about the future of libraries and librarians.

Info from: Brewster Kahle, Project Leader Wide Area Information Servers Thinking Machines Corporation 1010 El Camino Real Menlo Park, CA 94025 415/329-9300 x228 [email protected]

WorldWideWeb

Tim Berners-Lee describes the Web this way: "The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. The WWW world consists of documents, and links. Indexes are special documents which, rather than being read, may be searched. The result of such a search is another (`virtual') document containing links to the documents found. The Web contains documents in many formats. Those documents which are hypertext, (real or virtual) contain links to other documents, or places within documents. All documents, whether real, virtual or indexes, look similar to the reader and are contained within the same addressing scheme. To follow a link, a reader clicks with a mouse (or types in a number if he or she has no mouse). To search and index, a reader gives keywords (or other search criteria). These are the only operations necessary to access the entire world of data."

Info from: Tim Berners-Lee WorldWideWeb project CERN 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Tel: +41(22)767 3755 FAX:+41(22)767 7155 email:[email protected]

Hytelnet

Peter Scott, the creator of HYTELNET, sends this recent update: "HYTELNET version 6.3, the utility which gives an IBM-PC user instant- access to all Internetaccessible library catalogs, FREE-NETS, CWISs, BBSs, Gophers, WAIS, etc. is now available. You can get it via anonymous ftp from: access.usask.ca in the pub/hytelnet/pc subdirectory. It is listed as HYTELN63.ZIP."

"Version 6.3 is a major upgrade. Much redundant information has been deleted, and errors have been corrected. New subdirectories have been added, which has meant that many files now have a more meaningful home. Also all the new/updated files created since Version 6.2 were incorporated."

"Note: the UNZIPPED files total over 1.2 mb but remember, you can always edit out any information you do not need, in order to save space. Information from Roy Tennant follows, slightly edited, describing how to obtain HYTELNET 6.3 from the ftp site (thanks Roy)::"

"TO RETRIEVE HYTELNET:
At your system prompt, enter:
ftp access.usask.ca or ftp 128.233.3.1
When you receive the Name