Administrators will learn to develop and improve interlibrary cooperative programs on the local, regional, and national levels with this timely book. The contributors--all chosen for their expertise and representation of a broad spectrum of librarianship--offer valuable discussions on networking concerns such as governance, planning, economic and legal problems, leadership needs, appropriate products and services, improving the political environment, and more. They address many of the reservations about interlibrary cooperative programs that are privately expressed by some administrators--the need for reliance on other institutions, the loss of autonomy, and the cost, benefits, and feasibility of such commitments. This book's valuable contributions-- reflecting the changed environment for library administrators--provide a variety of different perspectives and respond to pertinent management issues.

This book, first published in 1988, offers valuable discussions on networking concerns such as governance, planning, economic and legal problems, leadership needs, appropriate products and services, improving the political environment, and more. They address many of the reservations about interlibrary cooperative programs that are privately expressed by some administrators - the need for reliance on other institutions, the loss of autonomy, and the cost, benefits, and feasibility of such commitments. This book's valuable contributions - reflecting the changed environment for library administrators - provide a variety of different perspectives and respond to pertinent management issues.

Computer networking is broadly considered to include hardware, software, procedures, and people. Networking encompasses many activities: creation of network products, distribution processes, user activities, and supporting services like marketing, documentation, information services, and maintenance. Network management covers both the establishment of networking operations and actual operation of the network facilities. It includes all management functions performed at such network nodes as computing centers, documentation facilities, and service distribution centers. In order to survey the problems facing development of network management, user requirements and system requirements are outlined in a qualitative manner. Examples of political, economic, and legal constraints are summarized, such as the economic impact of extended networks on regional and local computing activities. Critical issues for networking management, and other areas of significant management concern are outlined. Organizational alternatives a reconceived in terms of a four layer organization model . Conclusions deal with continuing problem areas, the need for a structural model for network management, critical experiments and tasks to be undertaken to further networking capabilities, and a suggestion to establish planning teams to initiate some of the steps required for further networking development.

A real-world approach to describing the fundamental operation of Policy-Based Network Management (PBNM) that enables practitioners to develop and implement PBNM systems.

Active networking is an exciting new paradigm in digital networking that has the potential to revolutionize the manner in which communication takes place. It is an emerging technology, one in which new ideas are constantly being formulated and new topics of research are springing up even as this book is being written. This technology is very likely to appeal to a broad spectrum of users from academia and industry. Therefore, this book was written in a way that enables all these groups to understand the impact of active networking in their sphere of interest. Information services managers, network administrators, and e-commerce developers would like to know the potential benefits of the new technology to their businesses, networks, and applications. The book introduces the basic active networking paradigm and its potential impacts on the future of information handling in general and on communications in particular. This is useful for forward-looking businesses that wish to actively participate in the development of active networks and ensure a head start in the integration of the technology in their future products, be they applications or networks. Areas in which active networking is likely to make significant impact are identified, and the reader is pointed to any related ongoing research efforts in the area. The book also provides a deeper insight into the active networking model for students and researchers, who seek challenging topics that define or extend frontiers of the technology. It describes basic components of the model, explains some of the terms used by the active networking community, and provides the reader with taxonomy of the research being conducted at the time this book was written. Current efforts are classified based on typical research areas such as mobility, security, and management. The intent is to introduce the serious reader to the background regarding some of the models adopted by the community, to outline outstanding issues concerning active networking, and to provide a snapshot of the fast-changing landscape in active networking research. Management is a very important issue in active networks because of its open nature. The latter half of the book explains the architectural concepts of a model for managing active networks and the motivation for a reference model that addresses limitations of the current network management framework by leveraging the powerful features of active networking to develop an integrated framework. It also describes a novel application enabled by active network technology called the Active Virtual Network Management Prediction (AVNMP) algorithm. AVNMP is a pro-active management system; in other words, it provides the ability to solve a potential problem before it impacts the system by modeling network devices within the network itself and running that model ahead of real time.