In addition, gopher can be used to burrow through large collections of information, looking for what the user wants, just like the gopher animal that burrows through the ground. The University of Minnesota Computer Center designed gopher in 1991 so that each campus department could control and provide access to the data on their computers. Students and other university community members could then access this data by using a simple menu structure to find answers to their questions. Today there are thousands of gopher servers or providers and millions of gopher users worldwide. Students and other university community members could then access this data by using a simple menu structure to find answers to their questions.
Today there are thousands of gopher servers or providers and millions of gopher users worldwide.
As you have seen in earlier chapters, there are many different ways to receive and send information through the Internet. Gopher is different from these other Internet services. Although you may need to know the address of a gopher server to start, once there, you can traverse the Internet by selecting sites from a menu. Each option in the menu will either direct you to information on this server or will contain a link to another server somewhere else in the world. By selecting that option from the menu, you will move to this other location.