The older method is called drive mapping. Open the Network Neighborhood and click on the icon for another computer on the network, then right-click on one of the drives attached to that computer. Windows 95 will suggest a drive letter for you, but you can choose any other unused letter. Change the letter that appears after the equal sign to a letter high enough to give you more choices. Don't use Notepad, which is Microsoft's big floozy.
Mapped drives are special.
Drives on other computers on the network that are mapped to your PC show up along with your own drives in My Computer. That means you can run programs or access data from another computer on the network just as if you were doing everything on your own drive. A great candidate for a shared drive is a CD-ROM drive on another computer on the network. You can even play games or run entertainment software on another PC's CD-ROM drive across the network. You can even do this while that remote computer is busy with other tasks.