Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 10:20:32 PST
Original-To: gopher-news@boombox.micro.umn.edu
From: cook%bluemoon@hub.ucsb.edu (Steve Cook x4753)
Subject: Re: Veronica:  an Archie for Gopher
Original-Cc: gophadm@futique.scs.unr.edu, rog@bluemoon.ucsb.edu
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gopher
Distribution: comp

Hello gopher folks:

I just ran a search for the word 'humanities' on Veronica.  The
search worked, as best as I can tell, but I have several thoughts
on how this process will affect gopher providers and searchers:

  1) this will facilitate locating items in gopherspace to
     the extent that the titles reflect the content of the
     files in gopher.  This is a reiteration of the facts
     stated in the Veronica announcement.

  2) there may be a problem with cross-listed materials in that
     it is not clear how many duplicate items were returned to
     me in the search.  The search returned matches on the term
     humanities, but it does not reflect unique occurences of the
     found items.  As you know, gopher providers (myself included)
     place pointers to others' stuff (avoiding duplication of stuff
     and space on the local server), but Veronica does not eliminate
     these duplications - I think;

  3) Veronica does not point out the parentage of the items.  This
     could be a problem because people often want to know the
     source of the things they are getting.  However, it is possible
     to display the technical information with some of the gopher
     clients, and this feature would show parentage.  It does mean
     that novice gopher users will need to learn how to decipher
     the technical information, and it means that all gopher clients
     should have this feature.

Another seperate problem that we've had here is maintaining the list
of gopher servers on our server: it takes time and continuing effort.
It looks like the Veronica creators have figured out how to automate
the process of logging into the various gopher servers therby validating
the addresses, and also getting the secondary addresses.  This would
be a very much desired feature to implement on our gopher server.

Finally, I would like to say that this is the closest I've seen
anyone get to implementing the 'ask the reference librarian' function
on the network yet -- good work!


Extract from humanities search:

 Search many (250) Internet gopher menus by single keyword : humanities

          1.  Social Sciences and Humanities/
          2.  Miscellaneous Humanities Lists.
          3.  Norwegian Computing Centre for the Humanities, Bergen,
Norway/
          4.  Network Info for Social Science, Arts & Humanities
Researchers <?>
          5.  Humanities Journals & Newsletters/
          6.  Arts and Humanities/
          7.  Humanities.
   -->    8.  Humanities.
          9.  Interdisciplinary Humanities.
          10. Computers in the Humanities.
          11. Humanities/
          12. Humanities Publications/
          13. 140:043 Humanities I  .
          14. 140:045 Humanities III  .
          15. 039:019 Asian Humanities China  .
          16. 032:009 Asian Humanities: China  .

Steve Cook
Computing Coordinator
College of Letters and Science
UC Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara,  CA  93106
cook@bluemoon.ucsb.edu
805 893-4753