A LIBRARY IMPLEMENTATION OF A LAN

Though Local Area Networks (LANs) have been much talked about over the past two or three years, their role in libraries has, with a few exceptions, been in the realms of speculation rather than active examples. The commonest way in which libraries encounter LANs is for the parent organisation to introduce the LAN and for the library to be included as part of that campus or organisational network: applications are, therefore, most often directed towards communicating with other departments and sharing common facilities such as electronic mail rather than towards the traditional automation activities of library housekeeping. This is not to say that LANs have no potential for housekeeping: Mel Collier in his introduction to LANs notes a number of ways in which LAN technology may be of direct benefit in a library environment; and the OKAPI online‐public access catalogue project at PCL (see pp 3–13)originated as an investigation into the potential of LANs for specific library‐housekeeping applications. What this preamble is leading up to is the news that Reading University Library has installed a LAN within the library with the intention of using it for library housekeeping operations. However, before going on to look at Reading's implementation in some detail, a little background on LANs may be useful.