Obviously, a simple DIR wouldn't be very useful. A variety of resources are available on the Internet to aid in locating information.
Many Internet sites are archie servers .
Some Internet sites are gopher servers . Gopher provides automatic searches to identify relevant archie sites, usually through a menu system. There are a growing number of veronica servers on the Internet. Veronica provides an automatic keyword search of selected gopher menus, to identify potentially relevant gopher menu lines. A collection of servers supporting keyword search, with scored searching through successive narrowing of queries.