Local Civic Information on the Internet

One of a series of forums on "The Internet and the Community" created by the City Club of Portland's Technology & Business Issues Committee. 10 April 1996

Steve Johnson: Manager of Community Research, Center for Urban Studies, PSU
Donna Reed: Community Information System Program Specialist, Multnomah County Library
Neal McBurnett: (Moderator) Boulder Community Network; Lucent Technologies (AT&T Bell Labs)

RITNet

The focal point for civic information in the Portland metropolitan area is RITNet: http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/ritnet/ - Regional Information Technology Network. It contains pointers, directly or indirectly, to most of the rest of this information and much more.

You can access the Internet either via your own account or from your local library, in person or via modem. See http://www.multnomah.lib.or.us/ritnet/ritcit.html for specific pointers. Cafe's are getting into the act also, e.g. The Habit: http://www.habit.com/~habit/ is a cafe at SE 21st and Clinton with inexpensive access.

Other Civic Networks

Grove Net: http://www.grovenet.org/ - Western Washington County
OPEN: http://www.open.org/ - Marion County and the City of Salem
COMPASS: http://www.orednet.org/ - State-wide public online network. Internet access for over 120 Oregon towns and cities
Eugene Free Net: http://www.efn.org/ - Eugene
Boulder Community Network: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/ - Boulder Colorado, a pioneer
Morino Institute: http://www.morino.org/pandhome.html - list of public access networks
WWW Virtual Library: http://www.rmsd.com/comnet/wwwvl_commnet.html - list of community networks

Concrete Examples of Civic Sites

Homeless Resources in Portland: http://www.teleport.com/~ldotm/HOMELESS/pdxhomeless.html
Volunteer Opportunities: http://www.teleport.com/~family/06fm/06fm06.html
Agendas for Washington CO Board of Commissioners: http://www.co.washington.or.us/deptmts/cao/bd_comm/bocmain.htm
Crestwood Neighborhood Association: http://www.teleport.com/~jere/cna.html - schedules, articles, survey, mailing list, map, etc.
Tri-Met: http://www.tri-met.org/ - schedules, lots of other details
IRS Tax Forms: http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/forms_pubs/index.html
Disaster Information: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/pdxflood/ - providing rapid, detailed, robust flood information
On-line Donations to KGNU Public Radio: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/cgi-bin/member-kgnu

General Resources

Building Community: Online Resources: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/resources/center.html
Newt Chapin's practical experiences: http://www.ci.eugene.or.us/present/partner.htm at Eugene Free Net
Teleport Nonprofit Center: http://www.teleport.com/community/nonprofit/ - local directory, grant-writing info, etc.
Teleport Nonprofits Web Builder's Guild: http://www.teleport.com/cgi-bin/guild.pl - volunteers who can help you out
Mailing lists ("listservs"): COMMUNET (via listserv@uvmvm.uvm.edu) and WEB4LIB (via listserv@library.berkeley.edu)
Local user's groups?
Alta Vista: http://altavista.digital.com - a great WWW and USENET search engine
The List: http://thelist.com/ - Internet service providers by geographic areas
Submit It!: http://www.submit-it.com/ - lets you notify many web search indexes about your web pages
World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/ - the "official" web organization - many references and standards
Internet Society: http://info.isoc.org/ - the premier Internet organization with global scope

Sponsored by the City Club of Portland: http://www.pdxcityclub.org/~pdxcc/

This handout is on-line at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/cityclub/civic.html.
Last Modified: 1996-01-23

Neal McBurnett: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/