In Internet terminology, a popular client/server application used to facilitate information searches on the Internet. Essentially, Gopher—typically provided by an Internet service provider—presents all Internet resources as a series of menus, and despite the fact that many different IP addresses and access methods are represented, the user is oblivious to this. The menus that Gopher presents can contain viewable documents or downloadable files. Alternately, the user may be able to jump directly to a selected Gopher server and view that server's directory of files. All the resources avialable via Gopher is collectively known as Gopherspace. The term itself derives from the common colloquialism gopher, referring to an individual who "goes fer" things. Hypertext linking on the World Wide Web is supplanting Gopher to a large degree.
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