[1315] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Community Networks and ALOT 1993 (part I)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Cisler)
Fri Sep 25 14:02:09 1992
Date: Fri, 25 Sep 1992 12:49:22 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
<This is a brief essay on Community Networks and a call for
proposals for Apple Library of Tomorrow for 1993>
Community Networks and ALOT for 1993
Steve Cisler
Apple Library
10381 Bandley Drive, MS8C
Cupertino, CA 95014
sac@apple.com
408-974-3258
In 1986, when I worked in Contra Costa County Library near San
Francisco, Pacific Bell invested in a large-scale telecommunications test
called Project Victoria. Using technology developed at the phone company,
users with Macintoshes could access a wide variety of commercial
information sources as well as a community bulletin board running on a
DEC MicroVax and offering information from the library, city hall,
chamber of commerce, non-profit groups, and other area organizations. It
used the metaphor of an electronic city, and it was the second most popular
feature during the test.
After the conclusion of the test, our library began investigating how the
system might be integrated into the automated library system that we were
buying in 1987. I tried and was unable to get an LSCA grant from the state
library to continue the project, but during my research I met two pioneers in
community networks, Tom Grundner of Cleveland Free Net and Ken
Phillips of the planned Santa Monica Public Electronic Network. Both have
a strong belief in public telecommunications systems, and each has taken a
different path to building their own. Grundner has spread the gospel of
public access telecomputing through National Public Telecomputing
Network and American Cybercasting to distribute the software and build
grass-roots support for this movement. Groups in these towns (and others
not listed) have already started systems: Santa Monica, California;
Cleveland, Youngstown, Cincinnati, and Lorain County, Ohio; Peoria,
Illinois; Community Memory in Berkeley, California, and Big Sky
Telegraph serving Dillon, Montana, and much of the state.
In 1992 it can honestly be called a movement. CPSR hosted a successful
conference on civic (and rural) networks. In many people's minds the model
of a citizens-based, geographically delimited community information
system has taken hold. There are plans or rumors of systems being started
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Denver, Colorado; Buffalo, New York; Portland,
Oregon; South Central Los Angeles; Seattle, Washington;
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, Wellington, New Zealand, and CapAccess, in
Washington, D.C. will be online soon.
Other experiments involve multi-line bulletin board systems run by cities
(Colorado Springs, Colorado), interactive kiosks to dispense information
on government services (Sacramento and Tulare County, California),
broadband multimedia systems combining commercial and public
information (Blacksburg Electronic Village in Virginia) and some states
such as Vermont are engaging citizens in very basic studies or planning
sessions on statewide systems.
Interest in the NREN spread from researchers and academics to all kinds of
librarians, commercial interests, proponents of electronic democracy, and
unaffiliated users who wanted access to the Internet. Some of these groups
now see the community networks as a natural way to provide local
onramps while providing relevant information to a diverse group of users.
During September, 1992, I attended two conferences to learn about and
discuss community information networks. The Library Information
Technology Association conference in Denver, Colorado, included a
session with Bill Erbes, an official from the Illinois Valley Library System
who described their involvement with Heartland Free Net in Peoria,
Illinois. The library community learned about the project in the newspaper,
and was not approached as a potential partner in the venture. He also
presented some statistics on the accuracy of information provided and the
turn around time in response to questions from callers. In general, the Free
Net answers were less accurate (if they were even answered) and were less
timely than those from the library. It was clear that the public liked asking
questions via electronic mail, but the library's attempt to field questions
failed because the backlog grew, and the system did not have the resources
to handle that much traffic in electronic form. In addition, it is hard to
conduct a reference interview by electronic mail. Real time interaction by
phone or by being in the same room is important. Still, the library is an
important part of Heartland Free Net.
The keynote speaker for the conference, Michael Schrage, wondered why
so few libraries had electronic bulletin boards for their users in addition to
the online catalogs that are so popular. He believed strongly that libraries
should foster relationships between members of their communities, and he
suggested substituting Trelationships' for Tinformation' in job titles,
planning reports, and organization charts. I guess that would make Paul
Peters Matchmaker of the Coalition for Networked Relationships, and I
would work on relationships retrieval projects and my colleagues in the
Apple library would be relationships specialists. This is stretching the
library's role too much, but Shrage's emphasis on building community is
certainly related to the growth of interest in community information
networks.
By chance I had planned to have an ad hoc meeting on this subject during a
lunch break at the conference, and I was not surprised to have more than 25
people spend 90 minutes talking about what they would like to do in their
communities and by trading details on new and established projects around
the United States.
The second meeting I attended was a gathering of organizations most
involved in pushing the NREN legislation and in building the
Internet/NREN and the evolving National Information Infrastructure. The
groups included ALA, IEEE, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bellcore,
Computer Systems Policy Project, Coalition for Networked Information,
FARNET, Educom, and Consortium on School Networking. Following our
long work day, a group met to share information on community networks.
It was exciting to hear about the varied projects and to know that each
could cross-pollinate the others, and even though the economy is depressed
and the mood of taxpayers and consumers is cautious, many of these
ventures have a great potential to succeed, partly because they address the
needs of a community and are not just a test of new technology.
Apple Library is interested in fostering these online communities where
libraries can be active. What follows is the call for proposals for the 1993
Apple Library of Tomorrow program.
<continued>
