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 virtual reality 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 Internet 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