Gopher

You have learned that Gopher is a program that enables you to search through public access databases on computers all over the world. A wonderful thing about it is that you can do this right from your own computer. When it's too cold to go to the library (if you lived where I do, that has real meaning!), you can just log on and search library databases from your office, dormitory, home, or wherever you use the computer. The most used Gopher address in the world is gopher.micro.umn.edu because it is the address of the University of Minnesota's Gopher server -- the birthplace of Gopher. You might want to keep that in mind for future reference; many other publicly accessible Gopher sites exist, and they are probably not as busy. In these exercises, you will see how to find a list of Gopher sites all over the world. These activities will also help you find some very useful information for foreign language teachers.

Gopher Activity I

For this exercise, we will be using the gopher address for the ERIC Database at Syracuse University. Other places offer public access to the ERIC database as well. For example, the University of Saskatchewan Library System offers the ERIC database from 1983 to the present. Harvard University offers the ERIC database, 1989 to the present.

1. Log on to your computer account¹ and type

gopher ericir.syr.edu

The ERIC home menu should appear.

2. From this menu, select ERIC Digests or ERIC Bibliographic Database (RIE and CIJE)/

which will take you to another level and a more specific menu that looks like this:

      1. ERIC Support Components/
--> 2. ERIC Clearinghouses/
      3. Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouses/


      Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu      Page: 1/1

3. As shown above, select item #2, ERIC Clearinghouses/

and proceed to the next level, which is a listing of all the ERIC Clearinghouses

4. Find the Clearinghouse most germane to you as a foreign language teacher and select it. This should take you to the following menu:

--> 1. ERIC Clearinghouse on Language and Linguistics/
      2. Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for ESL Literacy Education (NCLE)/
      3. Search ERIC/
      4. AskERIC/
      5. Center for Applied Linguistics/
      6. ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation/

      Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu      Page: 1/1

where you will select item #1.

5. The next menu should be

--> 1. ERIC/CLL Digests/
      2. ERIC/CLL Minibibs/

      Press ? for Help, q to Quit, u to go up a menu      Page: 1/1

and you should choose item #1 again; this will take you to a listing of Digests.

6. Pick a Digest, read it, and summarize it for your foreign language methods class.

Gopher Activity II

Follow the same steps as above, but find the list of Minibibs offered by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics (ERIC/CLL).

1. Look over the list and select one of interest to you. Follow the path to the minibib, select a recent article or ERIC document, and read it. You can probably find it in your local university library, but you might be able to find it on-line by doing a search of the ERIC database. Summarize the article for your foreign language methods class.

2. Suggest three additional topics which you would like to see researched and catalogued as ERIC/CLL minibibs in the future.

Gopher Activity III

1. Go to the ERIC menu at Syracuse University and go to the last item:  Gophers and Library Catalogs.
(Note: If you use the link provided here, you will be accessing the Gopher via the WWW and consequently will see a slightly different menu format than illustrated above: each category will be preceded by a folder icon indicating it is a link. If you use your gopher client on the mail system, your menus will most likely look like the ones above.)

2. See if you can find the following entry by following the menu links in Gopher:

2. ESPOL - Escuela Politecnica del Litoral, Guayaquil - Ecuador/

[Give-up button] Don't click on this until you have tried several times!

3. Now see if you can find the KIDLINK menu and read the General Information file in your L2 (or L3 or L4 . . . .). Hint: KIDLINK is an International Organization.

[Give-up button]