Your Internet Consultant - The FAQs of Life Online

7.1. What are the tools I'll need to find information?

The initial answer to this question is that there are two: Gopher and WAIS. In fact, though, there are a variety of different possibilities. The searching tool within Gopher is Veronica (which stands for very easy rodent-oriented net-wise index to computerized archives. Really!). Veronica is almost always a great starting point for any information search. Next on the list is WAIS, the Wide Area Information Server. If you're looking for a specific file, program, or document, you can always try your luck with Archie, the searching tool for the many FTP archives on the Internet. (Archie is covered in Chapter 6, ""How Can I Find and Use Software (and Other Stuff)?" Those are the easy ones.

Other possibilities include looking through the plethora of Frequently Asked Questions documents distributed through the Usenet community, and, of course, searching within Usenet itself. As a last resort, you can always identify an appropriate Usenet group or mailing list and post a question to the group regarding the information you seek.

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