CD‐ROM Accessible on a Wide Area Network

The Library and Computer Services of the Polytechnic of Central London have since August 1988 successfully offered a new service to their users, namely access via the Polytechnic's network to Whitaker's Bookbank on CD‐ROM. PCL has a CASE DCX network linking 8 sites of the institution; other networks, such as ETHERNET and DECNET, are also used where appropriate in local circumstances, though all interconnect to the CASE. An IBM‐PC 286 with Hitachi CD‐ROM drive has been set up as a host on the CASE network. All hosts at PCL, incidentally, are identified by animal names, which gives them an identity independent of the physical machine on which they are running. This means that hardware can be changed without affecting the names of the hosts from the user's viewpoint. LIBERTAS, for example, sits on YAK; the host for the CD‐ROM is HEDGEHOG.