The NIH Gopher Server maintained by DCRT will be retiring on January 15, 1998. During five years of service, Gopher has faithfully provided information about NIH and its programs to people in the NIH community and around the world.
Gopher reached its greatest "popularity" in 1995. However in the last few years, the World Wide Web has undergone explosive growth. As the number of Gopher servers has decreased, so has the number of web browsers that work with Gopher. This trend—which will most certainly continue—has been the primary reason that new services have not been added to the NIH Gopher server in the past year.
Many of the services that were offered on Gopher have already moved to a web server. As additional services move, their new web addresses are being posted on the Gopher server.
"Current Contents" has been one of the more popular items on the NIH Gopher Server. We are committed to continuing to provide access to this type of bibliographic data for the NIH community. Before Gopher is retired, we will have a replacement ready. In conjunction with the NIH Library, DCRT is testing the ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) "Web of Science" as a possible replacement for the Gopher-based "Current Contents." When the replacement is ready, announcements will be made on both the NIH Gopher Server and the NIH webpage.
The NIH Guide to Grants and Contracts, another popular Gopher item, has already moved to a web-based format and can be found at the web address http://www.nih.gov/grants/guide/.
If you have questions concerning the NIH Gopher server, please send e-mail to gopher@gopher.nih.gov.
Interface 203 (December 15, 1997)