Wais (Wide Area Information Server) is a set of programs developed originally at Thinking Machines Corp. automating the search and retrieval of electronic information over a wide area network. They allow simultaneous searches of several databases, using a query language that resembles English. There are public domain implementations of these programs, e.g. freeWAIS-sf. >> how to access mp_arc by using wais once wais is installed on your local system: It suffices to put source description files mp_arc-abstractsYY.src and mp_arc- papersYY.src (where YY stands for a year like 91,92,...) into the (personal or public) wais-sources directory on your system. Then wais can be used for keyword searches. The content of mp_arc-papers91.src is (:source :version 3 :ip-address "146.6.139.126" :ip-name "wais.ma.utexas.edu" :tcp-port 210 :database-name "mp_arc-papers91" :cost 0.00 :cost-unit :free :maintainer "mp_arc@wais.ma.utexas.edu" :description "1991 Papers from mp_arc (Mathematical Physics Archive)" ) and similarly for the other source description files.