The many‐headed Hydra: Information networking at LAA

Modern information provision is making increasingly unique demands on existing providers. At Lilydale Adventist Academy, a small and conservative secondary college near Melbourne, we have had to confront a limited budget, greatly increased demand and even greater expectation with a system that offers flexibility and the greatest degree of automation. The system is a fully integrated one accessing all forms of current and expected media with a minimum of teacher‐librarian intervention. Student workstations have access to all materials and to all available programs at the same workstations. Cost effective set‐ups allow reasonable control and some degree of cost recovery as regards consumables. Throughout this exercise students have been actively encouraged to provide input both as regards their needs as well as actually performing some of the establishment work. The whole exercise has been a serious effort to establish a system which reflects expressed needs as well as implementing some degree of future capacity. In its attempt to meet such a wide variety of needs it is not unlike that mythical beast slain by Ulysses. His Hydra with its many heads is very much like the technology installed at Lilydale to cater for the many needs.