Getting Community Information Online

Neal McBurnett

Overview

• Boulder Community Network - BCN
• Information and Access
• Collaboration - Getting community organizations to publish their own information
• Role of Libraries
• Open Standards
• Other Resources

Boulder Community Network

• Mission:

  The Boulder Community Network is dedicated to providing free community access to networked community information to promote the spirit of community and meet the information needs of Boulder County residents.

• Non-commercial Focus:

  BCN concentrates its efforts on segments of the community and categories of information that are not adequately served by the commercial sector, in much the same way that public libraries and public broadcasting stations operate.

• Information, not Communications
  • Both access (kiosks, telnet) and publishing (server)
  • No individual accounts, email, chat, etc. for the general public
    • Why? Lack of resources
    • Avoid duplication (many other free and commercial providers)
• Started in Oct 1993; on-line 15 Mar 1994
• Support from Univ Colorado (Journalism; Computing & Network Services), libraries, cities & counties, United Way, KGNU, lots of volunteers, etc.
• Tens of thousands of pages on-line, 400 modified last week
• Owned by about 100 information providers, mostly local non-profit organizations. We started off hosting the City of Boulder, and even helping a regional business publication get on the web, but most of the big organizations now have graduated to their own site.
• Examples
  • United Way's "Red Book" of information on human services organizations.
  • One Stop Career Network
  • Local environmental information
• At one point we provided kiosks to 17 public sites, but now the sites either provide their own computers for access, or people get online at home, work, etc.
• We get about 20000 "page hits" per day. Each "page hit" is typically one person clicking in their browser and viewing one page of information.
• Initial Funding:
  • University of Colorado provided coordinator; server; leadership and technical support, student projects in Journalism
  • NTIA TIIAP grants: $250,000 in September of 1994 for 18 months, $280,000 in Oct of 1996 for 18 months for One Stop Career Network, and involvement in a more recent BASIN grant from the EPA. There was lots of local support for the grants also.
• Funding:

  We currently operate with an all-volunteer staff and a budget of just $1000 or $2000 per year, plus continuing help from the University of Colorado to support the computer and networking.

  Other possible funding models:

  • Library model: County government
  • Funding from agencies deriving benefit (e.g., City, County governments doing on-line civic info & transactions)
  • Public broadcasting model: individual contributors, underwriting
  • Cable model: funding from telecommunications legislation or franchise fees
  • Possible commercial funding, but it's hard to out-compete for-profit ventures.
• BCN Policies - Library bill of rights, non-commercial focus, priorities of access to various internet services; privacy and cookies

Lessons

• Partner with open-minded technology leaders like universities
• Avoid proprietary solutions and partnerships
• Use Open Standards
• Structure depends on local situation, where talent is
• Web-based Partnerships, value of inter-personal networking
• Email lists (using software like Mailman) are invaluable for building community.
• Value of volunteers, volunteer coordinator
• Nurture non-profit organizations
• Help deal with reduced budgets - share resources

Role of Libraries

• Role in the beginning of BCN
• Principles of freedom of information
• Build on public support and visibility
• Build on information management strengths
• Build partnerships with community organizations

Open Standards

• Avoid proprietary solutions which you can't share with others
• Avoid browser-specific coding and add-ons like flash that don't work on either low-powered browsers or on trendy handheld PDAs
• Make pages accessible for visually impaired, etc.
• Use only Open Standards
• "Open" means defined by an open consoritum, not under the control of any one company.
• Best Standards: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC documents and W3C Recommendations and OASIS
• Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) United Nations E-Commerce and Development Report 2003, Chapter 4, Free and open-source software: Implications for ICT policy and development, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2003

  The report says that OSS software is better for four primary reasons:

  • More people looking for defects means more defects are found and fixed.
  • Free from marketing considerations, developers release more fixes and improvements, more often.
  • Proprietary software does not guarantee quality, in order to avoid legal liability.
  • Source code availability allows users to fix, customize or improve on their own. The report includes a summary of free and open source software policy development and activity in nations throughout the world.
• Open Source software is used to run most web servers in the world (apache, webiso, shibboleth, slash, etc.) Currently gaining popularity for desktop users, especially Linux and OpenOffice and the Mozilla/Netscape browser. See also: mailman, wiki, etc.
• Linux use at Howard County (Md.) Public Library on 200 public PCs.
• OpenOffice: alternative to Microsoft Office. All OpenOffice.org files are stored in an XML format by default. Any document created in OpenOffice.org can be read by any XML enabled tool and be processed, transformed, or archived in an application and vendor independent way.
• Slackware Linux is a version of Linux popular for use on older and less powerful computers, such as 486's. The RULE project is working on the same goal.
• KNOPPIX - an easy-to-try version of Linux. This CD-ROM is free and legal and all the updates to it will be free. It has all the software you need to develop web pages, run a library website, write memos in Bulgarian or English, browse the Internet, and collaborate with others via Internet email, etc. Even if the other people are using Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. BCN uses Linux software, and some BCN people use only this software. You can run it in most PCs, and don't even have to install it or modify any existing files on the disk - just boot from the CD. Works best with 128 MB of RAM or more.
• Free software + optional commercial support, e.g. FSF/Linux Unix operating system
• Tools: W3C

Other Resources

• Association For Community Networking
• OpenSector.org - "Open Source, Public Sector, Good News"
• Wikipedia - a collaborative multilingual encyclopedia, which is in many languages including a Bulgarian version
• The Open Directory Project - DMOZ - A great way to publish pointers to information specific to a region or topic, e.g. Bulgaria
• The Community Connector - Community Networking Resource Site
• Building Community: Online Resources: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/community/resources/center.html
• My early Portland City Club talk Local Civic Information on the Internet given in April 1996 and targeted at the general public. Examples of civic networks in Oregon and specific local sites of interest.
• My 1995 BCN talk with more statistics, detail.