Gopher Servers as a Point of Access
Contents
1. word sid appears in the author field It found the letters or characters s i d in the word President and in Sidney It is expected that gopher based searching will improve in the future If not then some other internet tool will take gopher s place Find documents containing these words Fig 12 Gopher Search Dialog Box Fall Winter 1994 23 Results of your search AUTH Benjamini Eli Leskowitz Sidney TITL Immunology a short course T PLPU Hew York PUBL Wiley Liss DATE 1991 DESC Immunology Allergy and Immunology lmmunity AUTH Ochs ajdney TITL Elements of neurophysiology PLPU Mew York PUBL J Wiley DATE 1965 DESC Neurophysiolagy Excitation Physiology Neurophysiology AUTH United States President 1993 Clintoni Clinton Bill Do Council 0 5 4 gj TITL Health security the President s report to the American peopl PLPU Washington D C PUBL The Council Supt of Docs U S G F O DATE 1993 Fig 13 Results of Searching for Sid in the Author Field of the Reserve Collection Database Internet Responsibility It is not enough to just mount a database on the internet It is necesary to take responsibility for it and for the gopher server on which it resides There are a number of points to keep in mind when setting up and maintaining servers on the internet Keep your server up and running No one can use your data if your server or your2. Gopher Servers as a Point of Access by Julie A Fore Assistant Automation Librarian Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library This paper will discuss why and how to use gopher servers on the internet to provide access to locally developed data This includes formatting the data and establishing the links to the data on the server The responsibilities involved with providing information on the internet will also be discussed Reasons to Mount Data on the Internet The internet is a vast source of information and chaos why would anyone want to add to it Some possible reasons for mounting data on the internet include The internet allows remote access to the data The data and its users are not limited to physical locations This means that people from other institutions as well as your own can get to your data The internet allows 24 hours a day 7 days a week access to your data barring the usual network outages or maintenance down time for the data server By providing the data on the internet it is by definition in electronic format This allows for further manipulation or massaging of the data It allows users to take advantage of the computer s abilities such as searching and sorting The internet allows for quick and easy publishing or updating of your data Reasons Not to Mount Data on the Internet Most of the reasons for not mounting data on the internet are based on privacy and legal issues The data is
3. file that they could browse through It was decided that the dBASE database format was not very easy to browse fig 13 nor was it in a file format that most people could use once they had it back at their own computer The double slash marks in the author field are left over formatting codes from Pro Cite These codes will be removed the next time the database needs significant updating 22 IASSIST Quarterly RLML Reserves Collection List Abbas Abul Ko 4Lichtman Andrew H A Paber Jordan 5 Cellular and molecular immunology Philadelphia Saunders 1991 Abdellah Faye G Fatient centered approaches to nursing New York Macmillan 1960 Abdellah Faye G Bailey June T New directions in patient centered nursing guidelines for systems af service education and research New York Macmillan 1973 Fig 11 Browsing the RLML Reserves Collection List Option The KA9Q gopher server search capabilities are currently string or character based searches This means that when Search the Reserve Collection by AUTHOR is selected off the Medical Library Reserve List menu a dialog box will appear asking the user to enter the words to be searched for in the author field of the database In the example illustrated by figures 12 and 13 the user asked the gopher to search for all occurrences of the word sid in the author field As the results of the search show fig 13 the gopher does not care where the
4. network is down When not if you take your server down for routine maintenance i e on a routine schedule post this information on your server 24 IASSIST Quarterly If there are limitations to your server or your data post this on your server and on any public announcements you send out about your server Some examples of limitations might include access only during non business hours like 5 p m 6 a m EST a limited number of simultaneous users the fact that passwords are required for access to certain files or services or that only users from a certain place campus university etc are permitted access to a resource Keep your data current and accurate If this is not possible indicate on the server that the data is old out of date or not necessarily accurate If you move your resource to a new internet site or remove it from the internet announce this Place a notice stating the new location of the resource in the old location of the resource Post announcements to appropriate LISTSERVs and newsgroups If you are keeping copies mirrors of your resource at more that one location keep them current and announce their locations as well Technical Information about the Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server URL gopher gopher medlib iupui edu port 70 The IU RLML Gopher Server is currently running on a Gateway 2000 386 25 MHz processor with 4 MB of RAM The computer has a 300 MB Hard Disk of whic
5. Library to provide a number of different printouts for the library patrons to use The Reserve Collection is shelved mainly in title order Pro Cite allows the Library to generate printouts of the collection in shelflist title order as well as lists sorted by author or subject heading fig 1 The Library patrons make great use of these printouts as do the Library Circulation Staff RESERVES Collection by AUTHOR Abbas Abul K Cellular and molecular immunology Abdellah Faye G Patient centered approaches to nursing New directions in patient centered nursing guidelines for systems of service education and research Ackermann Uwe Essentials of human physiology Fig 1 Reserve Collection by Author Printout from Pro Cite The Permanent Reserve Collection database is small at about 225 records This made it a perfect pilot for testing how well the Library s various Pro Cite databases would make the transition from in house use only to internet accessible information The pilot project started with an analysis of the data and data fields already in the Pro Cite database fig 2 Rec 780 Auth Abbas Abul K Lichtman Andrew H Pober Jordan S Titl Cellular and molecular immunology PlPu Philadelphia Publ Saunders Date 1991 Extn xi 417 p ISBN 0721630324 Call QW 568 A122c 1991 Desc Cellular immunity Immunity Molecular aspects Immunity Cellular Lymphocytes i
6. NFO files which possibly stands for gopher information or gopher index file For every menu on the server seen by a gopher client there is a corresponding directory on the hard drive of the gopher server and in that directory a GINFO file The GINFO file contains five elements 1 the text shown on the menu to a gopher client 2 a code for the type of resource that is being pointed to text file database directory Macintosh Binhexed file uuencoded file GIF file etc 3 the name and path of that resource for example server reserve db reserves dbf 4 the internet address of the gopher server that provides the resource for example gopher medlib iupui edu and finally 5 the port for that gopher server usually port 70 An example of a GINFO file is seen in figure 6 The GINFO file is were the telnet or ftp links to other internet sites are described 1Medical Library Reserve List 1c server reserve db gopher medlib iupuiedu 70 1Medical Library Information 1c server gopher medlib iupui edu 70 1Medical Library Journal Holdings 1c pub gopher medlib iupui edu 70 1Indiana University Libraries Catalog 1c pop catalog gopher medlib iupui edu 70 10ther Libraries Catalogs 1 Libraries yaleinfo yale edu 7000 1CARL Journal Title Index 1c library CARL gopher medlib iupui edu 70 1First Search Indexes password required 1c library FIRST 134 68 85 17 70 Fig 6 GINFO File for the Library Indexes Menu
7. ask to be added to the mailing list This address is an individual so be nice KA9Q Manual The User Manual is available via gopher from the following site cases pubaf washington edu port 70 in 1c manual University of Minnesota The Top Gopher gopher gopher tc umn edu port 70 Questions or Comments for the Gopher development team send e mail to gopher boombox micro umn edu News about new gopher servers and software subcribe to the gopher news mailing list gopher news request boombox micro umn edu The most recent releases of gopher software is available via anonymous ftp from boombox micro umn edu in the pub gopher directory 1 Paper presented at ASSIST 94 in San Francisco May 1994
8. copyrighted and can not be re distributed The data is of sensitive nature and should not be accessible to just anyone i e the world The data is already out on the internet in a number of different places The internet location for your data is unreliable or not maintained by anyone Why Use a Gopher Server Currently gopher clients are widely distributed across the internet community and are available for most types of computer hardware and operating systems Most gopher client and gopher server software does not require high level computers on which to run unlike other internet tools such as Mosaic Gopher clients as a rule are easy to use They provide a common interface to many different types of resources The Gopher protocol provides the capability to perform searches on databases and files Currently this is mostly primitive string or character by character searches Gopher servers have the ability to link or point to other Gopher servers This linking ability makes it relatively easy to create subject oriented gopher servers Fall Winter 1994 17 Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server Pilot Project The Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library has been maintaining a database of its Permanent Reserve Collection holdings using a bibliographic database management system called Pro Cite made by Personal Bibliographic Systems PBS The Library uses Pro Cite to keep this database because the software allows the
9. eld The GINFO file for this menu determines which function is performed on which file There are only three files in the directory for this menu The GINFO file the actual database file called reserves dbf and the text file bibliography called reserves txt fig 9 Fall Winter 1994 21 Volume in drive M is BVOL Directory of M GOPHER SERVER RESERVE DB RESERVES DBF 156 160 04 21 94 3 46p RESERVES TXT 30 989 04 25 94 4 17p GINFO 530 05 21 94 2 12p 4 file s 188 210 bytes 191 299 584 bytes free Fig 9 Directory listing of the RESERVE DB subdirectory Figure 10 illustrates the GINFO file for the Medical Library Reserve List menu ORLML Reserves Collection List Oc server reserve db reserves txt gopher medlib iupui edu 70 5Get Reserves Collection List Text File 5C SERVER reserve db reserves txt gopher medlib iupui edu 70 7Search the Reserves Collection by TITLE qc SERVER reserve db reserves dbf TITL gopher medlib iupui edu 70 7Search the Reserves Collection by AUTHOR qc server reserve db reserves dbf AUTH gopher medlib iupui edu 70 7Search the Reserves Collection by Keyword qc server reserve db reserves dbf DESC gopher medlib iupui edu 70 Fig 10 GINFO for Medical Library Reserve List menu Figure 11 shows what the text file bibliography looks like when viewed by a gopher client The bibliography file was created so that the users could have access to a formatted
10. h approximately 50 MB is being used The computer is running DOS Version 5 0 and is attached to a 4 Mbps Token Ring LAN The Server is backed up weekly to a Novell Netware 3 11 file server The Gopher Server Operating System is KA9Q NOS a DOS based Network Operating System KA9Q supports Gopher POP2 POP3 and SMTP mail server protocols ftp anonymous ftp telnet and finger CSO Name Server functions NTP time Server functions and WWW Server functions The Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library currently is not supporting the mail server functions but is experimenting with the other capabilities of the KA9Q software In the future the Indiana University Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server will be switched to a 10 Mbps Ethernet LAN It MAY be switched to a UNIX based computer and it may be given additional WorldWideWeb WWW or W3 functionality and resources Places to find more information Newsgroups for gophers and other information servers comp infosystems gopher comp infosystems www comp infosystems wais Frequently Asked Question FAQ Gopher FAQ can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from the following site rtfm mit edu pub usenet news answers gopher faq or via gopher from 129 130 10 5 port 70 path 0 Frequently Asked Questions FAQ gopher faq KA9Q NOS Network Operating System DOS based Gopher Server Software KA9Q Mailing List send an email to Ashok Fall Winter 1994 25 ashok biochemistry cwru edu and
11. he pilot program A database structure was created in dBASE III using the six fields exported from the Pro Cite database To keep things simple the Pro Cite field labels were used as the field labels in the dBASE database While Pro Cite for the most part does not use fixed field lengths BASE requires fixed field lengths We made educated guesstimates on what the dBASE field lengths should be Figure 4 shows the final structure for the Reserves dBASE database Structure for Database C RESERVES DBF Number of Data Records 225 Date of Last Update 4 21 94 Field Field Name Type Width Dec 1 Auth Character 130 2 Titl Character 200 3 PlPu Character 50 4 Publ Character 50 5 Date Character 8 6 Desc Character 254 Total 693 Fig 4 Final dBASE III File Structure The dBASE III import function was used to convert the Pro Cite produced comma delimited file into a dBASE II database A paper report of the new database was then created to verify two things First that the data was correctly transmitted from Pro Cite to dBASE HI Second to verify that the data itself was correct and complete The data had indeed transferred correctly but it was found that some of the records in the original database contained incomplete information Once the dBASE database had been cleaned up and an ascii text file bibliography was generated from it using R amp R Report Writer by Concentric Data Systems the data was read
12. mmunology Fig 2 Example of a bibliographic record in Pro Cite 18 IASSIST Quarterly After the evaluation of the electronic data a decision was made as to which data elements would be most valuable to a person accessing the database over the internet I decided to use basic bibliographic citation fields i e author title place of publication publisher and date as well as the subject heading information The data from these six fields were then exported from Pro Cite using Pro Cite s import export utilities Pro Cite created a standard comma delimited file fig 3 Abbas Abul K Lichtman Andrew H Pober Jordan S Cellular and molecular immunology Philadelphia Saunders 1991 Cellular immunity Immunity Molecular aspects Immunity Cellular Lymphocytes immunology Abdellah Faye G Patient centered approaches to nursing New York Macmillan lt 1960 gt Nurse patient relations Education Nursing Fig 3 Sample of Pro Cite Export File in Comma Delimited Format The Gopher Server software being used by the Ruth Lilly Medical Library KA9Q NOS requires database files to be in dBASE III or dBASE IV format While most current database management programs such as Paradox by Borland and R BASE by Microrim can save data in dBASE III format we chose to use the dBASE II program for the next part of t
13. of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server 20 IASSIST Quarterly Figure 7 illustrates what might be found in a directory on a gopher server note the presence of the GINFO file Volume in drive M is BVOL Directory of M GOPHER LIBRARY GINFO 523 05 13 94 8 48p CARL lt DIR gt 05 23 94 10 35a FIRST lt DIR gt 05 23 94 10 35a 3 file s 523 bytes 191 299 584 bytes free Fig 7 Listing of the files in the Sub Directory containing the GINFO file from Figure 6 The second line of the GINFO file shown in figure 6 is the pointer to the Library s Reserve Collection Menu As one moves through the Gopher s menu structure the Medical Library Reserve List Menu eventually appears fig 8 Medical Library Reserve List Internet Gopher 21991 1993 University of Minnesota ae Reserves Collection List em Get Reserves Collection List Text File C Search the Reserves Collection by TITLE C Search the Reserves Collection by AUTHOR C Search the Reserves Collection by Keyword Fig 8 Medical Library Reserve List Menu of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server The Medical Library Reserve List menu allows a gopher client to browse or page through a text file bibliography of the Reserve Collection ftp file transfer protocol the bibliography back to the user or perform a character search on the database either using the title field the author field or the descriptor fi
14. y to be transferred to the actual microcomputer running the gopher server software In the case of the Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher Server this meant taking down the gopher Fall Winter 1994 19 server that is exit out of the server program Then using the DOS copy command to move the files from the Library s Novell file server to the gopher server s DOS based microcomputer Once the actual files were residing on the gopher server s hard drive a suitable access point in the gopher s menu structure had to be found Finally the gopher server s menu configuration files had to be edited to include the pointers to the files The most logical place to include the reserve collection information was in the menu with all the other files specific to the Ruth Lilly Medical Library i e the files containing the Library s hours policies journal holdings etc fig 5 Library Indexes Catalogs and Information Internet Gopher 21991 1993 University of Minnesota Medical Library Journal Holdings Ao Library Reserve List Cimedical Library Information Ci indiana University Libraries Catalog Other Libraries Catalogs CARL Journal Title Index CoFirst Search Indexes password required Fig 5 Library Indexes Catalogs and Information Menu from Ruth Lilly Medical Library Gopher In the KA9Q gopher server software the menus are designed using directories and subdirectories on the server s hard drive and GI
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