HUBNET - WIDE AREA NETWORK UTILIZATION OF LOCAL-AREA NETWORK MEDICAL REFERENCE AND COMMUNICATION RESOURCES

The State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Bio medical Sciences and its associated teaching sites have developed and partially implemented a regional Wide Area Network (WAN) in Buffalo an d Western New York. The school wishes to use this WAN to deliver refer ence and communication resources to students, residents and faculty. T he richest pool of easy to use reference and communication resources a re PC software programs that are intended for individual workstations or at best, client - server, Local Area Network (LAN) implementation. HUBNET (Hospitals and University at Buffalo Library Resource Network), a project of the School of Medicine and the Library Consortium of Hea lth Institutions in Buffalo offers integrated presentation of many suc h LAN resources over this regional WAN. The system crosses many instit utional boundaries and reaches physically remote sites in a complex mi x of information systems environments with few issues related to perfo rmance. The system design provides a level of ease of use that has bro ught many new users into active computer use while addressing integrat ion into diverse information systems settings and networking environme nts.