<othercredit role="translator"><firstname>Malcolm</firstname><surname>Hunter</surname><affiliation><address><email>malcolm.hunter@gmx.co.uk</email></address></affiliation><contrib>Conversion to British English</contrib></othercredit>
<para><command>gopher</command> began as a distributed campus information service at the University of Minnesota. Gopher allows the user to access information on Gopher servers running on Internet hosts.</para>
<para>Gopher is an Internet information browsing service that uses a menu-driven interface. Users select information from menus, which may return another menu or display a text file. An item may reside on a Gopher server you originally queried, or it may be on another Gopher server (or another host). Gopher can <quote>tunnel</quote> from one Gopher to another without the user knowing that the server and/or host machine have changed. Gopher keeps the exact location of computers hidden from the user, providing the <quote>illusion</quote> of a single, large set of interconnected menus. </para>
<para>Gopher permits the user to record an item's location in a <quote>bookmark</quote> thereby allowing users to follow a <quote>bookmark</quote> directly to a particular item without searching the menu system. Gopher menus are not standardised, inasmuch as each Gopher server is individually determined. </para>
