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Recently, OCLC successfully completed a multi‐year network design, procurement, implementation, and user transition effort. At a cost of $70 million, this effort resulted in the implementation of a totally new telecommunications network. The packet‐switching nature of this new network has for the first time made it practical for OCLC to effectively address the risks imposed by the potential of major catastrophes within the telecommunications‐carrier infrastructure, and, for all practical purposes, to eliminate any resulting widespread service outages for OCLC users.

This article provides a broad overview of telecommunications and network‐related technologies. Topics covered include identification and review of network elements, analog and digital signals, synchronous and asynchronous transmission formats, transmission media and equipment, transmission techniques and characteristics, multiplexing, network types, access technologies, network architectures and topologies, local‐area network technologies and attributes, protocols and protocol issues, gateways, internetworking, local networking alternatives, equipment certification, and various aspects of network management. It is intended to provide the practicing professional in the field of library and information science with a broad, up‐to‐date technical review that might serve to support and facilitate further investigation of current developments in networks and networking. Although the broad range of topics is not treated in depth, numerous references are provided for further investigation.

The OCLC Network and its associated information processing facilities constitute the largest and most extensive network of its kind in the world. This article presents a technical overview of the existing OCLC telecommunications network, its use, and operation. It includes discussion of: the scope and magnitude of the network and its applications; its technical attributes, traffic, and facilities characteristics; its user types and demographics; the architecture and implementation of the network and its supporting OCLC computer systems; the terminals and workstations utilized; the protocols employed; other networks supported; gateways and linkages supported; costs incurred; diagnostic, maintenance, and operating goals and procedures; vendor service relationships; availability and performance levels achieved; and related network engineering and implementation.

This article reviews the telecommunications environment and infrastructure, discusses the major forces influencing change within this environment, and suggests certain likely outcomes, as seen by the author, that will have significant influences on the future telecommunications infrastructure. This information is then used as the basis for assessing likely impacts on various aspects of library and information systems, their providers and users. Specifically discussed are impacts foreseen for: 1) national online information providers; 2) local online information providers; 3) local and long‐distance telephone companies as providers of information; and 4) users of information. Impacts on library and information system‐related endeavors are seen to be generally unfavorable in the near term, with information delivery costs seen to rise significantly in the next three to five years. A more favorable prognosis, however, is seen for the longer term.

A multimedia computer system is one that can create, import, integrate, store, retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of media materials in digital form, such as audio, image, full‐motion video, and text information. This paper surveys four possible types of multimedia computer systems: hypermedia, multimedia database, multimedia message, and virtual reality systems. The primary focus is on advanced multimedia systems development projects and theoretical efforts that suggest long‐term trends in this increasingly important area.

Harvard University Library officials signed a six‐year, multimillion‐dollar contract with OCLC that will involve computer processing by OCLC of bibliographic records for some 5 million monograph and serial titles in Harvard's library collections.

In September 1990, the U.S. Department of Education's Library Technology and Cooperation Grants Program awarded a three‐year grant to the Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA), an agency of the Florida State University System, to develop software adhering to the ANSI Z39.50 Information Retrieval protocol standard. The Z39.50 software was to operate over the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) communications protocols and be integrated with FCLA's NOTIS system, which is shared by all nine state universities in Florida. In order to test the correctness of its Z39.50 software, FCLA sought out other library software developers who would be willing to develop Z39.50 systems of their own. As part of this process, FCLA helped to found the Z39.50 Implementors' Group (ZIG), which has since gone on to improve the standard and promote Z39.50 implementations throughout much of the North American library systems marketplace. Early on in the project, it became apparent that TCP/IP would be a more heavily used communications vehicle for Z39.50 messages than OSI. FCLA expanded its design to include TCP/IP and, by the end of the grant in September 1993, will have a working Z39.50 system that can communicate over both OSI and TCP/IP networks.