postings organized by topic.  Full details can be found in the archive
announcement (posted to the newsgroup every 30 days and archived at the
rtfm.mit.edu FTP site, see question 5.2.1).
        Before you post a question to alt.backrubs you are advised to check
in the archive to see if it has already been answered.  You might be
pleasantly surprised by the breadth of topics and depth of detail.

        The archive is cross-referenced and crudely indexed.  You can read
the details in both the archive announcement and the archive's `00README'
file.  The files are in mailbox format (so you can read them as ordinary
text files or use any standard mail reader to treat them as a list of mail
messages).
        The file Archive.Index is an easily searched list of 21 categories
and filenames.  The index doesn't include all files or categories.  The
`Abstracts' file is a list of brief descriptions of all the files which the
maintainer uses to decide where postings should be archived.  Here is the
current list of categories in the `Archive.Index' file:
   Archive                          Back Pain/Knots/Pain
   Certification/Exam/Registration  Clothed
   Disease/Illness                  Exchange/Partners
   General                          Getting Started
   Massage Tables                   Oils/Scents/Aromatherapy
   Problems                         Professional
   Psychological Aspects            References
   Self Massage                     Sex & Massage
   Sexual Massage/Foreplay          Specific Problem/Body Part
   Technique                        Tools/Devices
   Usenet-related/Newsgroup         

        Essential details about the archive follow.  Copies of the
alt.backrubs archive are kept at four anonymous FTP sites: a main site and
two mirror sites.  The main site is ftp.csd.UWO.ca, which has (or had)  IP
address 129.100.11.252.  Please connect during off-peak hours, i.e. between
7pm and 7am Eastern time, the server is 5 hours behind GMT during standard
time (it is in Ontario, Canada).  The files are in the directory
`pub/news/alt.backrubs'.  The archive is mirrored in the USA, Japan, and
Sweden.
        The USA mirror is at the sunsite.unc.edu anonymous FTP
site which has (or had) IP address 198.86.40.81.  The sunsite copy of the 
archive is in directory
`pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/massage-therapy/alt.backrubs'.
        The anonymous FTP site in Japan is sunsite.sut.ac.jp which has (or
had) IP address 133.31.180.200.  The files are in the directory
`pub/academic/medicine/alternative-healthcare/massage-therapy/alt.backrubs.'
        The anonymous FTP site in Sweden is ftp.lysator.liu.se which has
(or had) IP address 130.236.254.64.

        Most of the files in the archive have been compressed by the Free
Software Foundation's (`the GNU people') gzip program.  The compressed
files all have `.gz' at the end of their names.  The ftp.csd.uwo.ca FTP
site provides a method to decode files as they are being sent.  For
information about the special transfer features (including automatic
decoding) at ftp.csd.uwo.ca read the file ~ftp/pub/README at that site --
the file is only at that site because it is not part of the alt.backrubs
archive.
        If you want to transfer the compressed versions of the files to
your site for decoding, the transfer must be in binary form and you'll need
to use a decoding program (often called an uncompress program) before you
can read the files normally.  The GNU unzip, `gunzip', works fine.  The
file `00README' in the archive contains information about where you can
obtain an uncompress program.  It is the only file in the archive that is
not compressed or solely for indexing.

        World Wide Web access to the archive is available from any of the
addresses below.  The file `alt.backrubs.archive.info.html' contains a
version of the archive announcement as first posted in mid-August 1995.
Currently the WWW interface consists of hypertext versions of the category
index and the file abstracts.

  WWW: <URL:ftp://ftp.csd.uwo.ca/pub/news/alt.backrubs/WWW/README.html>
  WWW: <URL:http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/academic/medicine/
            alternative-healthcare/massage-therapy/alt.backrubs/WWW/
            README.html> 
  WWW: <URL:http://sunsite.sut.ac.jp/pub/academic/medicine/
            alternative-healthcare/massage-therapy/alt.backrubs/WWW/
            README.html>
  WWW: <URL:ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/news/alt.backrubs/WWW/README.html>

        The archive is maintained by J. Blustein <jamie@csd.uwo.ca>.  

[This question last updated on 9 Feb 1998.]