[Web4lib] First library gophers?

[Michael McCulley]

Three pretty decent pointers..

1) Gopher orgins - Timeline (UMn)
http://www.lib.umn.edu/site/timeline.phtml
"1991 - Gopher released by Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill from the
University of Minnesota, Libraries and OIT work together to create first
Gopher-based database implementation, Current Contents."

2) Origins - from Back to School BCK2SKOL
http://www.sc.edu/bck2skol/fall/lesson14.html
"Two of the first gopher sites to organize in the "subject tree" format were
the Go M-Link gopher, pioneered by librarian Sue Davidsen at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor (my undergraduate alma mater -- "Go BLUE!"), and the
"Library without Walls" gopher, developed by librarian Eric Lease Morgan at
North Carolina State University, Raleigh."

3) Newsletter item, NCSU on Morgan's gopher catalog project..
http://wwwnew.lib.ncsu.edu/publications/ncln/ncln-v20n10-ulmschneider-ncsu.t
xt
"In the fall of 1992, Eric Morgan (Library Systems) initiated an 
intriguing experiment that has achieved national recognition 
for its vision and creativity.  Employing metaphors and an 
intellectual structuring of knowledge drawn from principles of 
librarianship, he created a unique library-based gopher server, 
the first in the state and one of the first in the country."

Disclaimer: Google helped find these.. didn't try using "gopher://"

Best,
Michael

-- 
P. Michael McCulley aka DrWeb
mailto:drweb at san.rr.com
San Diego, CA 
http://drweb.typepad.com/

Quote of the Moment:
 Perform random acts of kindness & senseless beauty.
Monday, July 10, 2006 9:57:03 PM 
 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org 
>[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Richard Wiggins
>Sent: Monday, July 10, 2006 9:12 PM
>To: kgs at bluehighways.com
>Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
>Subject: Re: [Web4lib] First library gophers?
>
>Some of the very early activity related to Gopher and 
>libraries concerned
>Peter Scott and his database of library catalogs.  A colleague 
>at Michigan
>State took Peter's catalogs corpus and Gopherized it -- not 
>sure if that was
>the first effort.
>
>Sue Davidsen at U Michigan and colleagues launched Go M-Link 
>early on, led
>to other pioneering efforts.  The Yahoo guys contacted her not 
>much later
>proposing to catalog the Internet.   Get hold of Sue to hear the tale.
>
>I wrote a piece summarizing Gopher's role in 1992 for PACS... Not a
>chronology per se but it might have some dates.
>http://www.infomotions.com/serials/pacsr/pr-v4n02-wiggins.txt
>
>/rich
>
>On 7/10/06, K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm trying to pinpoint when the first library gophers became 
>available. I
>> know gopher launched in the spring of 1991; I'm trying to construct a
>> reasonable chronology for some popular library services. I looked at
>> PACS-L... what a blast through the past... but really 
>couldn't get a good
>> feel for the answer.
>>
>> K. G. Schneider
>> kgs at bluehighways.com