Finding Your Way on the Internet: The InfoSlug System at the University of California, Santa Cruz

by Steven G. Watkins

T he development and free distribu- tion of the Internet Gopher and Wide Area Information Server

(WAIS) software represented a major breakthrough in the attempt to organize and harness the vast amount of data and information scattered across the Internet. Much of this information was previously available only to those intrepid souls who were conversant with Telnet and the FTP file transfer protocols and knew on which computer the information of interest was housed. Now, with Gopher as an easy, front-end, menu-driven interface, a pow- erful client/server platform is widely available for building information systems like InfoSlug, which not only provides information for and about the Santa Cruz campus, but also links users with the diverse resources of Gopher-based sys- tems around the world.

The meteoric proliferation of Gopher systems over the past two years has shown that there was, indeed, a latent demand for better access to these resources. While there were fewer than 75 Gopher servers in operation when InfoSlug went public in the spring of 1992, there are now well over 3,000 worldwide.

Background The project that was to become

InfoSlug was set in motion with the imple- mentation by the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) Science Library of the WAIS software developed at Thinking Machines, Inc. Because it supports key- word indexing of full-text documents and the ability to readily distribute access to them over the Internet, WAIS was intended to serve as a means for dissemi-

Steven Watkins, Assistant Head of the

Science Library and Electronic Information

Resources Librarian, The Universiv of

California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064.

nating files produced at UCSC, such as the full text of the technical reports series pub- lished by the Computer Science and Engi- neering department.

The Gopher software was installed soon after, with the invaluable technical assis- tance of campus Communication and Technology Services (CATS), which formed an informal partnership with the library to promote the system. InfoSlug soon developed into a “collection” of elec- tronic information from a broad range of sources, organized into a hierarchical structure that attempted to gather related resources into logical menus for users. It is significant that InfoSlug was the first Gopher-based system to be based in and administered by a library, rather than a computer center or research unit. From the outset, CATS relied on the library for expertise and leadership in designing the organization and presentation of the infor- mation and the system remains primarily under the direction of the library today.

A wide variety of types of resources can now be incorporated into systems based on the Internet Gopher+ software, from plain text to images, word-processing docu- ments, sound, and video, if the user has the necessary hardware and network connec- tion to display them. In addition to incor- porating searchable WAIS databases into Gopher systems, sophisticated distributed hypertext documents can be developed using Worldwide Web. Innovative viewing software, such as Mosaic from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, puts an interface to all these systems onto the user’s desktop. The fact that all of these software packages are made available free of charge reflects very positively on the organizations and individuals responsible for the cooperative development effort behind them, who recognized their poten- tial as a set of information tools that truly serve the public interest.

Campus users have access to the InfoSlug system from terminals and com- puter stations in both campus libraries, from stations in the various instructional computing labs on campus, on many indi- vidual faculty workstations in offices and laboratories, and via all campus comput- ing accounts on the host systems offered by CATS. In addition, unrestricted public Telnet access to InfoSlug is offered to Internet users, accounting for about one- third of the 250,000 queries logged by the system each month.

The InfoSlug Menu Structure The success of a Gopher menu hierar-

chy, which consists essentially of a classi- fication scheme into which all identified sources are placed, relies heavily on the organization of the top-level menu to help users select the appropriate branch of the hierarchy in which the information they seek is likely to be found.

InfoSlug was based on a model that uses place names, such as “The Class- room” and “The Library,” as metaphors for the types of information that can be found there. Other Gopher systems have adopted different models to meet the chal- lenge of presenting such a huge number of information resources in a usable context. A brief tour of the InfoSlug main menu provides a framework for highlighting the range of materials that a Gopher system designer can provide to his or her local users:

Welcome to InfoSlug at UC Santa Cruz

1. About UCSC InfoSlug

2. Index to the InfoSlug Menu Tree

3. The Academic Divisions

4. The Campus

5. The Classroom

6. The Community

7. The Computer Center

March 1994 25

The maze of Gopher information on In foSlug relies on the effective use ofsignposts to leadone to the desired destination, while attempting to avoid overwhelming the user with too many choices.

Electronic files ofjob announcements have

large+ replaced the vertical files. Limited

hours and high demand at the begin-

ning of each quarter forces students to

crowd into the Stu- dent Employment

Ofice. Plans are underway to accept and process student

job listings and appli- cations in an entirely

electronic format that would reap campus-

wide benefits.

8. The Library

9. The Researcher

10. The Student Center

11. The World

1. About UCSC InfoSlug. This introduc- tory section, a useful feature of most Gopher servers, provides general informa- tion about the content, organization, and use of InfoSlug and the Gopher interface. A file located here lists the entire InfoSlug menu hierarchy and what is new on the system. Policy guidelines are provided for campus units and student groups that wish to become information providers, along with hints for converting their existing files for mounting on the system.

While a number of units have decided to implement their own Gopher servers, the library makes disk space and accounts freely available to departments wishing to load tiles directly into the main server. Most of the departmental Gopher servers are integrated seamlessly into the main InfoSlug menu structure to provide users with uniform presentation and organiza- tion.

2. Index to the InfoSlug Menu Tree. Because the InfoSlug menus now contain over 4,000 individual entries, an index to the menus themselves is produced every night to help users find where resources reside in the hierarchy.

3. The Academic Divisions. Contained here is information about the academic Divisions and Boards of Studies at UCSC, including faculty interests, course offer- ings, class schedules, and departmental information files. A joint project is under- way with the Office of the Registrar to make advance course information avail- able to students via InfoSlug, including syllabi, reading lists, and potentially even brief video clips highlighting instructors’ teaching styles.

4. The Campus. This branch of the InfoSlug hierarchy serves as a catchall for information about the UCSC campus and is slated for a major reorganization due to the fast-growing collection of local infor- mation resources that has resulted from a dramatic increase in participation by cam- pus units during 1993. Campus directories and telephone books are listed here, along with everything from health center hours to campus crime reports. Job listings and career information are now offered for staff and student positions as well as fac- ulty and academic openings. Personnel policy and procedures manuals are put

26 The Journal of Academic Librarianship

Makingcampuspublicationsandcourse information available on InfoSlughas meantthatmany informationalquestions can beansweredonline, helping to shorten lines at the Registrar’s window Increasing numbers ofpublished materials that have print equivalents in the library are show- ing up on the Internet; including the newsletters and monographs shown above. The majoritv are in the public domain, includinggovernment documen&, but commercial publishers are beginning to make their presence felt as well.

into the system along with statistical data about the campus and a variety of plan- ning documents.

By distributing these types of docu- ments electronically via InfoSlug, units are beginning to reduce the large numbers of paper copies that are copied and mailed across campus. This trend will hopefully continue. One of the most promising projects is a plan to accept and process stu- dent job listings and applications in an entirely electronic process that would reap campus-wide benefits.

5. The Classroom. The UCSC Course Catalog, schedule of classes, and other resources of interest to students and instructors are mounted here. A faculty member can consult InfoSlug to determine whether the necessary audiovisual equip- ment is present in a classroom or lecture hall. Students can “shop” for classes that fit into their schedules or meet certain requirements. Students will soon be able to obtain 24-hour access to noncopyright reserve readings incorporated into InfoSlug as scanned image files that can either be displayed and read on the screen, or printed on any campus network printer.

6. The Community. Items of general interest or information about the UCSC and Santa Cruz community that may be of interest to UCSC students, faculty, and staff have been collected here. For exam- ple, there are recipes, movie reviews, and information on bicycling and alternative transportation. Of particular note is the Guide To Government section, which pro- vides local, regional, state, and federal

government information resources, including links to the fast-growing num- bers of Gopher systems being imple- mented by U.S. government agencies. One unique resource is the set of informational tiles and newsletters being provided to InfoSlug by local Costanoan and Ohlone Native American groups.

7. The Computer Center. This portion of the InfoSlug tree is managed by CATS as a means of making available help files, training schedules, directories of campus computing labs, documentation, and sources of software offered by campus computing services, as well as information about Internet network resources.

8. The Library. Users looking for a book or article to read, or a reference source to consult, can browse in “The Library.” Consistently among the most heavily used InfoSlug menu branches, it constitutes a collection of electronic journals, books, newspapers, and reference sources; research guides, bibliographies and bro- chures; course reserve lists; UCSC faculty publication lists; and the local film/video catalog.

Internet links to the online catalogs and Gopher servers at other libraries around the world are made accessible here, as is a union catalog of serials holdings for marine science libraries.

While selected full-text publications are collected and archived on the InfoSlug system, most actually reside on remote Gopher systems and comprise a “virtual library” in the sense that the collection does not reside in one physical location,

but appears that way to users. Due to the efforts of organizations such as CICNet, which have assumed the responsibility to gather comprehensive collections in spe- cific formats or subject areas, to which others can provide Gopher links, the world of Gopher resources represents probably the largest voluntary cooperative collec- tion development and resource sharing effort ever undertaken.

9. The Researcher. Complementing the resources under The Libravy which are arranged predominantly by format, is this collection of access points to a wide range of data and primary information resources; Gopher, WAIS, and Worldwide Web servers; research centers; and grant funding agencies-all arranged by subject discipline.

10. The Student Center. Informational files from student organizations and resources of general interest to UCSC stu- dents are posted here. These files have become an important part of student involvement in university governance, where position papers, meeting minutes, announcements, and archives of electronic discussion groups are made available to the entire campus.

11. The World. Partly because public Tel- net access to InfoSlug is available, the sys- tem serves as a very active gateway to other Internet Gopher and WAIS servers around the world, with far-flung connec- tions to other types of Internet resources, weather reports, and more.

March 1994 27

The Role of Libraries in the Management of Internet Resources While Gopher- and WAIS-based sys-

tems, such as InfoSlug, have brought increased organization and accessibility to diverse and dispersed information resources, they represent only the first step toward truly effective information man- agement and retrieval tools for the Inter- net. Libraries and librarians have an important role to play in this emerging frontier, which stands to benefit from our expertise in evaluating, collecting, and organizing recorded knowledge in a wide range of formats, and in providing ser- vices to information users.

An hour spent navigating the web of Gopher systems and comparing their menus will readily produce numerous examples that might benefit from the par- ticipation of library information profes- sionals in their design. Libraries have an opportunity to make a large impact on the evolving means and patterns of distribut- ing scholarly electronic resources with a modest investment in hardware and time-an opportunity that should be seized with enthusiasm by the profession.

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the invalu-

able assistance of Terri Wieteska and Lee David Jaffe.

28 The Journal of Academic Librarianship