JANET and the Librarian

JANET(the Joint Academic Network) is a wide‐area network linking together computers and users in British universities, polytechnics, establishments of the research councils, and the British Library. It provides for interactive working, file transfer, electronic mail and job transfer. Online access is possible to many catalogues of university and polytechnic libraries, the British Library's BLAISE‐LINE and ARTel services, and various bibliographic and numeric databases held on university computers. Users registered for electronic mail can use Janet to send this kind of mail to other sites in Britain, or overseas through the EARN, BITNET, and NORTHNET combined network. There are two‐way gateways between Janet and British Telecom network PDN, allowing access to commercial online hosts in Great Britain or overseas. These gateways can provide a faster and cheaper alternative to dial‐up use of PDN.