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Human Genome Project Information Archive
1990–2003

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Human Genome News, September 1993; 5(3)

HGN Available on JHU Gopher

Current and back issues of Human Genome News are now available in searchable format on the Johns Hopkins University Computational Biology Gopher system. This will allow much quicker access to newsletter text than with mail distribution. Detailed instructions on electronic searching follow. (To obtain a Gopher client, see Obtaining a Gopher Client).

Accessing and Using Gopher
If Internet and Gopher capabilities are present, point the gopher client at gopher.gdb.org (Port 70) and select "5" for "Genome Project" followed by "2" for "Human Genome News." The following menu will then appear:

  1. About the Human Genome Newsletter.
  2. Search All Issues of the Human Genome Newsletter?
  3. Browse the Current Human Genome Newsletter
  4. Browse Through All Issues of the Human Genome Newsletter/

Searching Help (For Selection 2: Search All Issues). To search all HGN issues, a word or series of words can be entered and articles containing at least one of the words will be listed. The search can be further refined by connecting the words with the Boolean terms and, or, and not. When search words are connected with and, records containing all the words will be listed. Use of or usually yields more results and will produce records containing one word or the other. Using not will show records containing the first but not succeeding words. Wildcards (*) may be used to search for partial words. For example, to search for genome, genomes, genomic, or genomics, use genom*. For very restrictive searching, a phrase (e.g., cDNA sequencing) may be used.

Users without a Gopher client can obtain access through telnet. At the system prompt, type telnet, then consultant.micro.umn.edu. Use gopher as login. When the menu appears, select:

  • (#8) Other Gopher and Information Servers, followed by
  • (#8) North America,
  • (#3) USA,
  • (#20) Maryland,
  • (#1) Computational Biology (Welchlab-Johns Hopkins University).

The Gopher version of HGN was developed by Dan Jacobson at Johns Hopkins University. For more information, e-mail to danj@mail.gdb.org.


What Is Gopher, Anyway?
Gopher was born as a distributed campus information system at the University of Minnesota (home of the "Golden Gophers"). The online service was designed so each university entity (e.g., administration office, athletic department, academic departments) could have control over its own data and server. Gopher's developers organized the university's individual databases by topic into a system resembling one large database; they then created a special application to guide users to the information they wanted.

With the Internet to connect servers all over the world, the Gopher concept was enlarged to an international system that began with 1 site in May 1991 and has grown to around 2000 sites. Gopher's main function is to "go fer" things, making its name even more appropriate.

[Information taken from The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog by Ed Krol (O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.; 103 Morris Street, Suite A: Sebastopol, CA 95472 (800/998-9938 or 707/829-0515, Internet: nuts@ora.com or uunet!ora!nuts).]


Obtaining a Gopher Client
Users on the Internet are encouraged to obtain a Gopher client for direct use from the desk top. A Gopher client program runs on the user's local PC, Macintosh, workstation, or mainframe; it uses custom features of the local machine, allows the display of images, and takes advantage of features such as mouse, scroll bars, local printers, and local hard disk. Gopher client programs for Macintosh, DOS, Windows, OS/2, VAX/VMS, NeXTstep, X Windows (including Motif), UNIX, and several other systems are available without charge by anonymous FTP from boombox.micro.umn.edu in the pub/gopher directory.


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The electronic form of the newsletter may be cited in the following style:
Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, Human Genome News (v5n3).

Human Genome Project 1990–2003

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international 13-year effort, 1990 to 2003. Primary goals were to discover the complete set of human genes and make them accessible for further biological study, and determine the complete sequence of DNA bases in the human genome. See Timeline for more HGP history.

Human Genome News

Published from 1989 until 2002, this newsletter facilitated HGP communication, helped prevent duplication of research effort, and informed persons interested in genome research.