A library's decisions about the acquisition and management of electronic journals depend to some extent upon the organization of computing facilities at the library's parent institution; it is important, therefore, to set the stage for the following reports by briefly describing what that organization consists of at MIT. The MIT Libraries function within MIT's distributed computing environment, a campuswide UNIX-based network (MITnet) of which Athena, one of several smaller networks, is a part. Access to Athena is possible both on specialized Athena workstations and through dial-up access from a PC.

Athena provides the MIT Libraries' staff with their access to the Internet and offers a variety of information resources, including an e-mail component that uses mhmail, and a campuswide online public information service called TechInfo. (TechInfo is accessible via telnet to techinfo.mit.edu.) TechInfo includes a range of materials such as schedules of campus events and classes, policy documents, and information about library services.