Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

Collab orative Information Retrieval Gopher from MOO



Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

creating a national network of information su Abstract

p erhighways Vice President Gore claimed that

Thereare two visions of how use of the global

one such application would b e to allowa scho ol

network wil l evolve in the future First individ

child to come home after class and plug

uals wil l use the network as a resource provid

into a digital library that has color moving

ing access to material from libraries and other

graphics that resp ond interactively to that childs

suppliers of information and entertainment Sec

curiosity

ond in addition to communicating with these

Atypical description of the electronic library

data sources people wil l communicate with each

is that users will have access to the contents of a

other using a variety of interactive text audio

lo cal library from home or work larger sources

and videoconferencing methods

right up to the Library of Congress could b e con

This paper is about a system that combines

sulted as needed The primary technology ele

the two uses adding an information retrieval tool

ments prop osed for funding in the development

Gopher to a text based environ

of electronic libraries are in the areas of input

ment MOO The combination al lows informal

scanning character recognition retrieval and

col laboration using information retrieval to hap

presentation The entire technology emphasis is

pen across the network

on collecting material and making it available to

individuals

I Intro duction

However a library is more than just a pile of

There are two visions of how use of the global

books Libraries are also so cial spaces Treat

network will evolve in the future First individ

ing the electronic library of the future as an in

uals will use the network as an information and

formation rep ository ignores many of the roles

entertainment resource providing access to ma

played by current institutions where library

terial from libraries and other suppliers of infor

users interact with their friends colleagues and

mation and entertainment Second in addition

professionals to nding material that is relevant

to communicating with these data sources p eo

for them

ple will communicate with each other using a

yofinteractive text audio and video con variet

In the distributed world of informa

ferencing metho ds

tion resources where users at home or work inter

act with online library resources where are the

Although these visions have usually b een pur

librarians How can those who know lead those

sued separatelyitislikely that applications will

who do not Only the most aggressive informa

evolve that combine elements of b oth The intro

tion seekers sp end time scouring the Internet for

duction of an information retrieval to ol Gopher

interesting information People most frequently

into a so cial network environment MOO allows

rely on the most useful form of information re

exploration of some of the forms such a combina

trieval ask someone who knows

tion mighttake

Of course some interactions of this typ e can

IA Electronic Libraries

b e mediated by electronic mail and newsgroups

However these asynchronous metho ds are not in

One of the most commonly discussed

teractive theres little opp ortunitytowatchoth

metaphors for electronic information retrieval is

ers interact with the system to say p olitelythat

that of the electronic library Most of the cur

you dont understand or to engage in the other

rent conceptions of electronic libraries describ e

kinds of b ehavior that go along with interactive

information rep ositories of online material and

learning

retrieval to ols to help individual users nd their

way through this material In a commenton

The currentmechanisms for distributed in

formation in the InternetWorldWide Web

Larry MasinterisattheXeroxPalo Alto Research

WAIS Gopherdo not directly provide any

Center Coyote Hill Road Palo Alto CA

mechanisms for collab oration The system de

masinterparcxeroxcom

scrib ed in this pap er MOOGopher shows how

Erik Ostrom is at Gustavus Adolphus College He

an information retrieval system designed for soli

may b e reached at eostromnicgacedu

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

connect Guest tary users can b ecome a part of a so cial and col

to connect to a guest character

lab orativeenvironment

who to see whos logged in right now

IB Computerbased conferencing

After youve logged in type

Over the last few decades a numb er of sys

help for documentation

tems have b een devised for allowing p eople to

connect guest talk to each other over computer systems The

earliest mechanisms were p ersontop erson com

You connect as a guest on JaysHouse When you rst

munication systems but even in the early s

connect you see a description of the room you are

multip erson conferencing systems were b eing

in

develop ed Out of this work evolved a vari

Underground

ety of systems including forums in CompuServe

This is a dark cramped space It appears

bulletinb oard systems and more recentlyIRC

to be very crowded in here you keep

and MUDs These services allowmultiple users

bumping into what feels like drainage

to communicate with each other realtime

pipes alligators and other people

apparently sleeping One useful thing

MOO the conferencing system for whichwe

that youve discovered in your bumbling

develop ed MOOGopher is a MUD that is its

about is a manhole cover above you

Dont forget to take a look at the

a software program that accepts

newspaper Type news to see it

connections from multiple users

across some kind of network eg

up

telephone lines or the Internet and

provides to each user access to a

Simple directioncommands move you through the

MUD world

shared database of ro oms exits

and other ob jects Each user browses

Hwy

and manipulates this database from

A swath of blacktop scything through the

inside one of those ro oms see

forest to the west and farmland to the

ing only those ob jects that are in

east Trucks rumble past accelerated to

dangerous speeds by wildeyed drivers on

the same ro om and moving from

dangerous amphetamines cars scream past as

ro om to ro om mostly via the exits

well most piloted by alcoholmad college

that connect them A MUD there

students driven over the edge by one too

fore is a kind of virtual realityan

many calculus midterms This is a dangerous

electronicallyrepresented place that

place to be A small driveway dips into

users can visit

the woods to the west here and you notice

strangely enough a manhole cover in the

MUDs were originally develop ed as games

middle of the highway

they grew out of attempts to build multiplayer

versions of textbased environments such as Dun

MOOfor MUD Ob jectOrientedis a typ e

geon Adventure and Zork This part of their

of MUD that is particularly extensible provid

heritage is evident in the nameMUD was orig

ing an ob jectoriented dynamic language and a

inally derived from MultiUser Dungeon al

readymade collection of useful ob jects MOO

ve b een suggested as though other D words ha

includes its own scheduling mechanism where

replacements They are considered by some to

programs can schedule asyncronous activities to

b e frivolous use of computer systemssome uni

o ccur at a later time The MOO language also

versities havetaken to prohibiting use of MUDs

includes constructs for creating network connec

as a recreational activitythatwastes system

tions which can b e used to provide access to

resources However the idea b ehind MUD

external information sources it features a novel

multiuser interaction in a simulated settingis a

p ermissions system which allows multiple users

powerful one with many applications

to develop elements of the simulation completely

indep endentlyConventional MUD ob jects like

A session with a MUD might b egin likethis

ro oms exits and notes are other utilities such

taken from JaysHouse the MOO where MOO

as a help system to ols for collab oration on pro

Gopher was implemented

gramming pro jects and a mail system are all im

telnet jayshouseccsneuedu

plemented within the MOO language

Welcome to JaysHouse

MOO like all MUDs is also a so cial envi

ronment MUDs allow individuals to converse

Type

with each other All the participants in the same

connect charactername password

ro om hear what others in the ro om sayItis to connect to your character

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

Larry says welcome p ossible to whisp er to another user privately

or sp eak aloud Co ordination of communication

look at gopher slate

happ ens using familiar metaphors to talk to sp e

cic p eople you go to the ro om where those p eo

The look at command lets you examine objects

ple are

Gopher Slate

In addition to conversational interactions in

The U of I Weather Machine menu

Electronic Frontier Foundation archivesmenu

MOO it is common for MOO users to con

parcftp MOO anonymous FTP informationmenu

struct things for use by others a cuisinart

Gopher sites for biology menu

in the kitchen an op erational game Scrabble

Movie reviews menu

MOOnop oly a refrigerator for leaving notes for

Mankato State University menu

your friends It is common for MOO program

MSEN inc menu

mers to extend the environment in p ersonal in

The gopher slate looks like it has a familiar Gopher

teresting and unexp ected ways

menu on it

IIGopherinMOO

I came to try out gopher

The implementation of Gopher in MOO is an

You say I came to try out gopher

example of merging computermediated confer

Larry says What did you want to look for

encing and online information retrieval It is

an emb edding of an information retrieval sys

A favorite gopher for biologists is at

ftpbioindianaedu tem Gopher in the setting of a computerbased

communication system MOO that is extensi

You say A favorite gopher for biologists is

ble exible and allows users and groups to tailor

at ftpbioindianaedu

their own environment

Larry jumps to ftpbioindianaedu socket

The initial motivation b ehind MOOGopher

on Gopher Slate

was to provide access from MOO to real world

look at slate data outside the MOO environment This would

allow virtual reality ob jects to interact with

Gopher Slate ftpbioindianaedu jump

data that exists outside of the world but

AboutIUBioArchive Dec kb

under the programmable control of the inhabi

AboutNewFeatures menu

tants of the MOO world

Flybase menu

A sample session in MOOGopher illustrates

GenbankSequences menu

IUBioSoftwareData menu

the nature of the interaction In this transcript

Molecula rBiology menu

youve just made your way to the library at

NetworkNews menu

JaysHouse

OtherBioGophersEtc menu

Library

OtherGophersEtc menu

A small library It is lit by several small

Species menu

lamps A big oak bookcase stands against a

ThisGopher menu

wall

Tunnel to Gopher door of IUBio menu

You see the slate dispenser a Rogets

You talk to Larry about some favorite places and he

Thesaurus a treatise on why are not a

points the slate at it

waste a note about MOOclient protocol a

dictionary a Sample Help Text a note

Larry says everytime someone moves the

called help movement and the Gopher

gopher pointer the slates description

Slate here

changes

Larry goes back up a level on Gopher Slate

ealotofobjects You arrive at the library Therear

Larry picks Electronic Frontier

here

Foundation archives menu on Gopher Slate

Larry says so now look at the slate again

Larry arrives

Larry says Hello

look at slate

Larry comes into the room and greets you You talk

back

Gopher Slate gopherefforg Electronic

Frontier Foundation archives

hello

About the Electronic Frontier Foundations

Gopher Service

You say hello

About the Electronic Frontier Foundation

You typeinthecommand hello to communicate

Electronic Frontier Foundation Files

Jay arrives Information menu

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

sion means bugs can b e xed and new features Computers Academic Freedom mailing list

archives info menu

and to ols added very quickly It is usually dif

EFFAustin Gopher Service menu

cult for the implementor of a software to ol to

Other Gopher and Information Servers

observe rst hand how the to ol is b eing used

menu

In MOO this kind of interaction is frequent by

Larry says if you want to choose an item

observing the errors and misunderstandings of

just say pick number on slate

novice users the implementor can see the ways in

which a user interface is confusing or awkward

pick on slate

Its often hard for an ordinary user of a piece

Now choose a menu item

of software to provide adequate information for

the programmer to lo cate a bug But in MOO

You pick About the Electronic Frontier

sessions the users can talk ab out problems the

Foundation on Gopher Slate

develop ers can work with them p ossibly adding

debugging information to the co de as its b eing

General Information about the Electronic

used to gure out what exactly is going on And

Frontier Foundation

often the problems can b e lo cated and xed on

the y in a matter of a few minutes

The Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF was

founded in July to assure freedom of

IIA WhyGopher

expression in digital media with a

Of the p opular systems for network informa

particular emphasis on applying the

tion retrieval Gopher had three advantages for

principles embodied in the Constitutionand

the Bill of Rights to computerbased

MOO implementation there is a large supply of

communication

information available from Gopher servers across

of next on Gopher Slate for more

the internet most information in Gopher servers

is provided as plain text and the proto col is very

I did it ahah

simple

Retrieving a piece of information with Go

You say I did it ahah

Larry claps

pher requires a stateless transaction the client

op ens a telnet connection to a given so cket at

The virtual asp ect of MOO allows the of

the server send a selector string and collects the

ten daunting mass of available information to b e

resp onse one connection one singleline com

emb edded in more familiar metaphors ro oms

mand one arbitrarylength resp onse All Go

pieces of pap er a jukeboxwhichplays song

pher interactions are based on this simple mecha

lyrics Instead of simply providing an additional

nism whether doing a search fetching text or an

set of commands for lo cating and retrieving infor

image or getting back a directory in a hierarchy

mation or a gateway to a traditional client MOO

makes it p ossible to t information services into

I IB MOO implementation of Gopher

the comfortable semirealistic interface that the

The Gopher interface in MOO can b e divided

rest of the MOO provides

into two parts One part is a single ob ject which

The multiuser asp ect of MOO has several sig

provides raw programmatic access to arbitrary

es it easy for nicant implications First it mak

Gopher data the other is a set of ob jects which

p eople to work together When using an informa

provide user interfaces to Gopher data or in some

tion resource privately the user has to b e lucky

cases sp ecic subsets of that data

enough to have a helpful p erson around or may

end up mailing out a plea for help to some mailing

I IB Getting at the data

list or newsgroup When using MOO the user is

The centerpiece of MOOGopher is an ob ject

fairly likely to nd direct interaction with some

which acts as the shared programmatic interface

one helpful In addition MOO providesaway

between all other MOO ob jects and the data ac

for p eople who are simply after the same kind of

cessible through Gopher byany pro cess or user

information to work together to nd it This is

of course simple enough for p eople physically lo

In order to improve eciency the Gopher im

cated in the same ro om but collab oration across

plementation do es cachingit keeps trackofre

a greater distance can b e very dicult

cent requests and the time they o ccurred and

just returns the old data if it isnt to o old The

Second the fact that MOO provides easy in

cache is global

teraction b etween p eople and that MOO infor

mation to ols programmed in MOO co de can b e This provides only a programmatic interface

easily manipulated from within an interactive ses to Gopherthat is it provides data in a form that

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

from Gopher This was an attempt to allow can b e passed around by MOO programs but

p ermanent ob jects on the MOOas opp osed to cant b e easily used or even seen by ordinary

the ro oms whichcontained constantly changing users In order to b e useful MOOGopher needed

informationthat contained virtually or meta user interface ob jectsob jects whichprovide the

virtually stored text Notes had the advantage user with a view on some part of Gopher space

that they could b e picked up carried around These haveevolved over time from our initial

shown to p eople in other ro oms and essentially exp eriments with Gopher ro oms to our current

handled as semirealistic ob jectsdieren Gopher slates and other ob jects t from

the abstract feel of the ro om

I IB Gopher ro oms

I IB Gopher lists

The rst visible interface built was a Gopher

ro om The idea was that the users of the MOO

Many Gopher clients let the user makea list

Gopher system would b e in a ro om Anyone in

of b o okmarks or things to rememb er so you

the ro om could issue commands to manipulate can easily get back to a place that you thought

the state of the Gopher interface The choice of a was interesting The rst attempt at providing

ro om was to allowmultiple participants to share some kind of memory in Gopher to ok the form

a common exp erience and to make the manipu

of a list like a note that you could copy Gopher

lation of the Gopher interface as muchlikean

no des onto from a ro om A player could then

conventional Gopher interface as p ossible Many

carry that around show it to p eople or takeit

dierent Gopher ro oms could op erate simulta to a Gopher ro om and use it to guide a jump to

neouslysothatdierent conversations could b e a site referred to by the list

held

I IB Gopher slates

The Gopher Ro om worked very muchlikea

traditional Gopher client in its command struc

After a while it b ecame clear that the ro om

ture As with most MOO things state is p erma

metaphor while convenient in terms of command

nent if you leave the MOO and come backan

line syntax was awkward to use It was inconve

other day the ro om will b e in the same state you

nienttohave to b e in a sp ecial kind of ro om just

left it unless someone else came in and changed

to access Gopher When you were in a Gopher

it

ro om it didnt feel like a ro om it felt like a Go

pher client with p eople in it The Gopher ro om

The Gopher ro om keeps track of a stack of

idea to ok advantage of the collab orative nature

visited no des When you pick a menuchoice or

of MOO but not its ability to present informa

jump to an unrelated Gopher no de the Go

tion to p eople in a familiar setting Notes were a

pher ro oms state changes to p oint at the new

familiar kind of ob ject and you could use them

u but the old menuiskept on the stack You men

in familiar sorts of ways reading a note as op

can then p op the stacktogoback to where you

p osed to picking an item from a list however

picked from Picking a text no de was dierentit

they were a lot less exible so they lost most of

would show the text to you and no one else but

the advantage of actually having the full Gopher

not change the state of the ro om

service b ehind them You couldnt navigate your

In the initial design everyone in the ro om saw way around Gopher with a note you could only

all changes to the ro om but there were some

put something on it and then have p eople read

complaintsp eople didnt want to see the various it

state changes if they werent interested but did

This led to the development of a Gopher

want to talk to those who did the retrievals Also

slate Wewanted something that was p ortable

anyone in the ro om could change the state at any

like the notes but also allowed the user to move

time This b ecame a problem if two p eople were

through Gopher space like the ro oms The ini

trying to work togetherthey could accidentally

tial idea was a sort of chalkb oard that you could

stumble over each others commands A simple

carry around and show to p eople What we ended

interlo ckwas added you couldnt pick a line

up with was a laptop computer since its rare

unless you had seen the current menu

that you p oint at something on a chalkb oard and

the whole chalkb oard erases itself and replaces

I IB Gopher notes

the text with some dierent piece of text The

The idea b ehind Gopher notes was to make laptop was a straightforward translation of Go

something that lo oked and acted likearegu pher into MOO terms You use a computer which

lar MOO notea piece of pap er that could b e has a Gopher client not in so manywords and

carried around and that stored information that manipulate it in various ways This wasnt as

could b e readexcept that it got its data directly intuitive as the Gopher notes again but it car

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

teorologist uses A user can turn the map to a ried out the function that the Gopher ro oms had

given state press buttons to get forecasts for sp e handled while also b eing p ortable

cic cities or set the typ e of information it pro

One problem with moving from ro oms to

vides temp erature pressure and so on In this

slates wasalossofconvenience With manyGo

wayyou can nd out the weather without go

pher clients you can get around by simple one

ing through a series of menus Theres also a

keystrokeorpointandclick commands Given

jukeboxwhichprints out the lyrics to the songs

the MOO environment we couldnt easily do

selected Users can cho ose to listen casually or

that The shortest commands p ossible are two

intently to the jukebox or just ignore it com

keystrokesone letter and the enter key In the

pletely Users who listen casually tend to miss a

Gopher ro oms though we could still use fairly

lot and of course users who ignore it miss every

short commands one or twowords like p op or

thing Both of these ob jects illustrate the use

pick Once wewent to the slates metaphor

of data available via Gopher to enrich the text

b ecause of the way the usual MOO parser works

based world of the MOO

we had to use commands like pick on slate

always sp ecifying the ob ject wewantedtowork

I IB Text forwarding linking MOO

with If there was more than one slate in the

Gopher and electronic mail

ro om wewould have to sp ecify further pick

on jonnys slate After a while weworked out

When you use MOOGopher to read a text

a system where you could work with Jonnys

youre forced to use the MOOs limited internal

slate and then the slate commands would b e ab

textreading facilities MOO is set up for simple

breviated to the form they had in ro omspick

linebyline communications as such its not a

and so on The long forms were still avail

great environment for reading a lengthy piece of

able if you wanted to do something quickly with

text p ossibly moving back and forth within the

a slate without formally starting to work with it

text

Several users of the early MOOGopher ob

I IB Gopher noteb o oks

jects said that they would liketohave the things

The next general Gopher navigation to ol we

they found emailed to them This would allow

plan is a noteb o ok The noteb o ok will b e

them to keep the texts around in a more p er

a lo oseleaf binder lled with pages of various

manent form to more easily cut and paste for

sizes arranged so that each Gopher directory

example to quote in another text and of course

page is followed by a series of smaller pages each

to use their regular to ols just to read the text

of them an entry from the directory Search items

We implemented this through a mailme com

will take the form of indexes in whichyoull

mand users could ask the MOO to mail them

b e able to lo ok something up and get a reference

notes or selections from slates or ro oms

Rememb ering items will b e represented as writ

This textforwarding facility comes in handy

ing them down in a table of contents at the

frequently for example when one of us was lo ok

b eginning of the noteb o ok It should b e p ossible

ing for the registration form for the Gopher

to copy a page from a noteb o ok automatically

conference and happ ened to b e logged on to the

creating a Gopher note and to insert a note

MOO he used MOOGopher to nd the form

in another noteb o ok adding it to the noteb o oks

and had the MOO mail it to him so he could

table of contents

print it out and send it in

We hop e that the noteb o oks will bridge the

Textforwarding is also useful for items that

gap b etween the exibility of the ro om and slate

arent meant to b e read as at ASCI I MOO cur

and the familiarity of the Gopher note It re

rently cant deal with binary Gopher items how

mains to b e seen whether we can make the page

ever there are a numb er of formats that are com

size representation clear enough to make this fa

p osed of printable ASCI I characters but arent es

miliaritywork out

p ecially readable in that primitive form TeX and

I IB Other ob jects

Postscript are two examples When a user nds

a do cument in one of these formats the simplest

Besides these general ways of navigating

waytoreaditistohave it mailed and then read

around Gopher space programmers havebeen

it with a TeX or Postscript viewer lo cally

writing sp ecic ob jects that use individual Go

pher sites but provide a realistic interface to When the Gopher ob ject is p ointed towards a

them using a physical analogy for information rather than a piece of text the mailed directory

space For example in JaysHouse there is a form is somewhat dierent A directory is mailed

retargetable weather map in the Living Ro om as a sequence of Gopher no des in the standard

imagine something like the one a television me Gopher b o okmark formatthese can then b e

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

edited into a le and some clients will understand Hunt The Internet Scavenger Hunt is a monthly

theseasalistofinteresting Gopher items This contest to nd information that is publically

allows us to bridge a gap b etween MOOGopher available over the network The team worked to

and lo cal Gopher clients gether on MOO to collab orate on nding the

answers to the questions p osed They used Go

A less clumsy way to bridge that gap is to use

pher slates extensively although not exclusively

sp ecialized clients Weworked out a proto col in

as a way to help each other

which the MOO sends a string to the client and

the clientinvokes a lo cal Gopher client to bring

People involved in that exp erience found that

up the indicated item

MOO makes it easier to brainstorm ab out

w to nd a desired piece of informa ho

I I I Users and communities

tion The scavengers could pick up on each

After the initial Gopher ro om was working

others ideas and take them in dierentdi

we advertised its existence on the

rections as opp osed to just searching inde

compinfosystemsgopher newsgroup There was

p endently

a fair amount of resp onse from that announce

MOO by b eing a semirealistic environ

ment in particular one user logged on lo oked

ment made it easier to communicate re

around and wrote a review that he p osted on

sults to one another It feels more comfort

netnews this broughta wave of biologists to

able to show a note to someone than to

the MOO A group of biologists is currently build

supply a Gopher address

ing an electronic meeting center designed for vir

tual conferences but also for informal discussions

Of course these advantages would hold for a

group working together in physical space as well

Although Gopher was the initial attraction for

The dierence is that the MOO scavenger hunt

the biologists it isnt central to their plans for the

team could work together while situated in oces

conference center the nature of MOO in general

and computer labs in such disparate lo cations as

lends itself to the virtual conference idea by

Boston Palo Alto and Oxford

b eing interactive and providing a somewhat fa

miliar environmentro oms p eople tables and so

on as opp osed to the more abstract forms of

IV Related Work

say Usenet email and IRC However Gopher

The Astro VR pro ject was conceived as a way

provides them with some useful to ols

to allow astronomers to hold virtual conferences

At a conference its p ossible for a sp eaker to

using MOO Its creators b elieved that MUDs

show slides or overhead pro jections In the con

could b e used to provide an intuitiveinterface

text of a MOO conference this would takethe

in a closed cyb erspace In AstroVR a sp e

form of information available via Gopher The

cial client program is used to deco de commands

sp eaker would prepare ahead of time by making

sentby the mo derator of a conference Many

a slide that p oints to a given item in Gopher

systems CompuServe BBS systems are discov

space then during the presentation the act of

ering novel ways to combine interactivecommu

showing the slide would cause a message to b e

nication with information retrieval

printed to the audiences client programs indi

cating that this item should b e retrieved and dis

V Conclusions

played Fortunately many biological resources

The Gopher interface in MOO is evolving

are already available via Gopher so theres some

The environment of MOO provides a rich active

degree of Gopher sophistication in the commu

environment for exploring a variety of user in

nity

hing terfaces to information retrieval to ols Watc

In less formal settings p eople use MOO

users attempt to explore current to ols provides

Gopher not for showing prepared slides but

insightinto how the to ols mightevolve

for collab orative exploration of Gopher space

Information retrieval without collab oration

usually with the intent of solving a problem or

lacks an imp ortant elementofhow p eople interact

nding the answer to a question Manyofour

with information MOOGopher is an eective

users have Gopher clients lo cally so whydothey

means of bringing information retrieval intoacol

use MOOGopher instead Mostly b ecause MOO

lab orativeenvironment Friends and colleagues

oers a collab orative medium for information re

use MOOGopher together brainstorming ways

trieval as opp osed to the isolated feel of other

to nd needed resources

Gopher clients

In the online setting information access tends For example recently a team of six MOO

to b e far less formal than what happ ens in a phys ers at JaysHouse entered the Internet Scavenger

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

B Clinton and A Gore Remarks bythe ical library Online information is used for gath

President and Vice President to Silicon ering small bits of information a word in a dic

Graphics Employees Executive Oce of tionary or encyclop edia an article in a database

the President The White House Oce of while library use tends to b e structured more

the Press SecretaryFebruary around formal research

There is much more p eer collab oration in on

gopherwiretapspiescom

line information access than there is in a physical

Clintonprezsilicon

library those who maintain their sites informa

tion rep ositories ll the role of librarians but cur

P Curtis Lamb daMOO Programmers

rently do not interact as strongly with the user

Manual Octob er

community

ftpparcftpxeroxcom

pubMOOProgrammersManualps

Acknowledgments

P Curtis Mudding So cial Phenomena in

Thanks to Michele Evard Kent

TextBased Virtual Realities in the Pro

Pitman Marilyn Carter and Amy Bruckman for

ceedings of the Conference on the Di

their comments on this pap er Thanks to Jay

rections and Implications of Advanced Com

Carlson who runs JaysHouse and to Northeast

puting Berk eleyMay Also available

ern University where it runs JaysHouse is acces

as XeroxPARC technical rep ort CSL

sible from the Internet at jayshouseccsneuedu

p ort

ftpparcftpxeroxcom

pubMOOpapersDIACps

Note references available over the Internet

are fol lowed by a Uniform ResourceLocator

P Curtis and D Nichols MUDs GrowUp

pointing to the source of the reference

So cial Virtual RealityintheRealWorld

unpublished rep ort May

References

ftpparcftpxeroxcom

F Anklesaria M McCahill et al The In

pubMOOpapersMUDsGrowUptxt

ternet Gopher Proto col RFC Univer

sity of Minnesota March

R Harp er For Such Times As These Bio

ftpnicddnmilrfcrfcps

Naut Newsletter No August

newsFebnicfunetfi

T BernersLee Uniform Resource Lo ca

or gopheractlabrtfutexasedu

tors working draft CERN March

MUDResearchNotesgopher

ftpinfocernch

pubietfurlps

J Hartmanis and H Lin eds Computing

the Future a Broader Agenda for Com

T BernersLee R Cailliau JF Gro

puter Science and Engineering National

B Pollermann CERN WorldWide Web

Academic Press Washington DC

erse in Electronic The Information Univ

Networking Research Applications and

J Marko The staggering scop e of the In

PolicyVol No Spring Meckler

ternet a thicket of networks wound round

Publishing Westp ort CT USA

the glob e Digital Media A Seybold Re

portvol issue N April

S Bhargava Hit the stacksWithout Leav

ing The Dorm Business Week p

J McCormick Library of Congress Wants

March

to Charge for Electronic Records News

Byte newswire Clarinet News Service

R Bretz J Carlisle et al A Teleconference

NBclarinetcomFebruary

on TELECONFERENCING Working Pa

p er ISIWP USC Information Sciences

newsNBclarinetcom

Institute Septemb er

S Brinker Corp orate bulletin b oard sys vetz Astronomers to Chat in Virtual K Sa

tems customer supp ort and more in RealityUnique software based on MOO

the s Telecommunications LambdaMOOspaper Volume Issue June

Novemb er

Gopher from MOO Pro c INET Larry Masinter Erik Ostrom

telnet lambdaparcxeroxcom ever having met communicating only via MOO

then connect guest and read on and electronic mail

paper

You join Michele

Michele says Hi

R Stein Browsing through Terabytes

waves

Widearea information servers op en a new

Grump waves

frontier in p ersonal and corp orate infor

JoeFeedback tried to just stay in one place

mation services Byte May

made a shortened transcript but it is

too long still

Grump made a shortened transcript but it is

PTrounstine Clintons HighTech Initia

too long still

tive He Prop oses Sp ending Billions To

JoeFeedback is too

Keep US on Cutting Edge San Jose Mer

JoeFeedback says Maybe not

cury News p A February

JoeFeedback says Send it to me

Michele says Transcript Oh right

B Verser Network utilization byMUD

added an introduction

players was Re Gaming In Comput

Grump added an introduction

ers And Academic Freedom Newsletterv

at least Mickey thought we should talk

n Dec

more about the second thing

gophergopherefforg

You say at least Mickey thought we should

academicnewscafvn

talk more about the second thing

JoeFeedback says exporting

Technology for Americas Eco

JoeFeedback hsm

nomic Growth A New Direction to Build

JoeFeedback nods

Economic Strength White Pap er White

JoeFeedback says Its too bad we dont

House Press ReleaseFebruary

have more to say about it

gopherwiretapspiescom

oh we can make stuff up

Clintonpreztech

Michele rereads combining bringing

You say oh we can make stuff up

Undated discussion on PACSL Bit

JoeFeedback says Actually we have some

net group P ACSLUHUPVMBITNET

stuff but its not clear in the beginning

topic virtual libraries

that were going to talk about it

JoeFeedback says Oh good

Author Information

changes combining bringing

Grump changes combining bringing

Larry Masinter is at the XeroxPalo Alto

wonders if we should include a transcript

Research Center where he currently works on

of talking about the paper

pro jects relating to do cument managementand

Grump wonders if we should include a

information access He has worked on program

transcript of talking about the paper

ming environments and development to ols and

grins

received the ACM Software System Award

Grump grins

for his work on the Interlisp system He re

JoeFeedback thought that was a significant

ceived his BA from Rice University in

part of Mickeys commentsthat we should

and his PhD in Computer Science from Stan

say in the beginning why people should be

ford University in He is known as Larry on

interested

JaysHouse and Grump on Lamb daMOO

JoeFeedback picks up bonker

Erik Ostrom is a studentatGustavus Adol

I tell people Im working on a paper with

phus College where he is studying computer sci

someone that Ive never met who goes by

ence and religion He has worked on a varietyof

Joe Feedback and they dont believe me

pro jects related to textbased simulated environ

JoeFeedback bonks Grump with bonker

ments primarily MOO and hyp ertext informa

Grump says Oif

tion access jtext and more recently Hyp erG

You say I tell people Im working on a

He is known as Jo e Feedback or Erik on assorted

paper with someone that Ive never met who

MOOs

goes by Joe Feedback and they dont

believe me

Epilogue

Michele grins

JoeFeedback laughs

The authors developed MOOGopher together

and wrote the rst draft of this paper without