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.