isr.co.ro : glossary Gopher A text-based system for navigating through linked collections of document archives on the Internet and for retrieving files. Until overtaken in popularity by the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, gopher was the interface that made many remote document archives accessible to casual Internet users for the first time, and is still used extensively for text-based document collections in government and libraries. As with the World Wide Web, the search of the documents on any gopher server can act as a starting point for links to other gopher servers, and from there to other servers down the chain. Or, using special catalog servers that index document names and file directory headings ("Archie" and "Veronica"), you can search for documents in a master catalog of all known documents in "gopherspace." Once found, suitable documents can be viewed on screen and all documents can be downloaded. The name is a pun referring both to the mascot at the University of Minnesota where the program was developed and the program's function as an electronic "gofer" (go for).