The FIND and MAKE commands provide users with access to their data in a device, medium and location independent manner. The user simply specifies a generic name and logical unit on which they wish to read or write. The FATMEN system will then associate this logical name with the data, either directly, if the data are on disk, or via the tape staging system, if it is a tape dataset. In a future version, the data may reside on a remote disk or tape and a server process will provide record level access with on-the-fly data conversion.