A Web Network Slowly Grows

By Andrew Trotter

Andrew Trotter is associate editor of Electronic School.

In contrast to some community networks, which are closed systems, the Boulder Community Network (BCN) is run on the World Wide Web. Web technology allows information at any Web site, often called a home page, to be linked to other Web sites at computer servers anywhere in the world. A Web user can travel, or "surf," there with point-and-click ease. And a graphical Web browser, such as the popular Netscape, lets users see graphics on the computer screen, unlike text-only Internet applications.

BCN's Web site organizes information about Boulder into an array of information centers. Click on the Human Services Center, and you are led to information from more than 100 city and county agencies. The Education Center includes a link to the Boulder Valley School District's Web site; there you can examine school board agendas, announcements, cafeteria menus, and a student-produced on-line newspaper, Vocal Point. Other centers cover local religion, politics, and business. And when you do want to look beyond Boulder, the centers all have Web links to related information sites -- local, national, or international.

And BCN isn't just a one-way flow of information to the user. Each page has a comment function that lets you send E-mail to local government officials and politicians, the cable TV franchise and other organizations, and even national figures such as President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich. The service also convenes electronic discussion groups on local topics, such as a proposed zoning plan or a school bond issue; you can read the comments of others and post your own.

The scope of local information on BCN continues to grow, but BCN organizers realize that even in high-tech Boulder, average citizens might have difficulty tapping into it. The technology requirements for the Web are stiffer than those for simpler bulletin boards -- including nonprofit public-access networks called freenets. A computer surfing the Web needs more power, and either a fast modem and an account with a service provider, or a costly direct connection to the Internet. (As the major on-line services offer Internet and Web access, however, these barriers have begun to fall.)

Catherine Weldon, the BCN coordinator, says her network is working hard to become something more than a leisure service for the upper middle class. "We do have to have free access," agrees Kenneth Klingenstein, BCN's "principal investigator" and head of computing at the University of Colorado at Boulder. To provide that access, BCN has set up Web-linked public computer terminals at the university, in public libraries, and at recreation and senior centers.

Outside of the university, the public library is BCN's widest dissemination point, says Randy Smith, assistant director of the Boulder Public Library. At the headquarters building, a Macintosh station in a glass-enclosed bridge, which arches over Boulder Creek, gives patrons full access to BCN and the Web. Fourteen other computers, and computers at three outlying branches, offer cheaper text-only access. (The libraries of the nearby towns of Longmont and Broomfield also are equipped with BCN terminals.)

The city library supported BCN from its inception in 1992, Smith says, because the network meshed with the library's effort to put its catalog on the Internet. The catalog now resides on the library's home page -- and is thus available to Boulder students, who use school computers to search for public library books before visiting.

A murky question is how much the library's BCN terminal is actually used. Smith says use is heavy, although when Electronic School visited, the waitress at the adjacent espresso bar disagreed, saying she hardly ever saw anyone there, "and not for long." On that day, the computer's central processing unit was out being repaired.

Not everyone goes to libraries, of course, and relatively few people will spend a Saturday morning taking one of BCN's free training sessions. So BCN offers special training, computer access, and Internet accounts to target populations, such as senior citizens and families in public housing. But progress in getting the target populations to use the service has been slow. Although BCN terminals are installed at all of Boulder's senior centers, Art Rifkin, a retired executive who is a BCN volunteer, says only a handful of his peers use them.

Rifkin, an athletic 71-year-old, volunteers his time to update the local Web page for seniors as well as the page promoting Boulder's annual jazz festival. At a modern senior facility of earth-toned brick and glass in East Boulder, Rifkin says he shows other seniors how to jump from BCN to Web sites that give worldwide tourism information, prices, and even virtual tours: "I went to Venice first through Netscape," Rifkin says. Or he explains how seniors can find companionship by joining on-line discussion groups with seniors worldwide -- or by corresponding by E-mail with grandchildren, as Rifkin does.

But most of his peers aren't buying, Rifkin admits. They're intimidated by computers, or they don't think learning to surf the Net is worth the bother. "Most folks I know are afraid to commit." Still, the potential is great, "once they take that first step," Rifkin says.

Another target population -- families in crisis -- might be an even tougher sell. The city's Project Self-Sufficiency, for example, provides job skills and brokers other services to single-parent families in public housing. The project also has a page on BCN, offering information on housing, parent groups, crisis counseling, and other topics.

Peggy Rueda, a social worker and volunteer with the project, says the parents -- almost all of whom are single mothers -- can follow Web links to get help in finding a nursing home for an aged mother or a new wheelchair for a child. And a BCN terminal, in some cases, is right next door -- as in the small computer center at the Woodland Housing Site, a well-maintained ring of town houses for 35 low-income families.

But some women there are too close to the edge of crisis to welcome basic training on BCN and the Web, Rueda says. "Some of the people, they've got to get things done yesterday. Their kids are sick, the car is broken down, they just don't have the time." These women need prompting and personal instruction. "If you put them in a large class, they'd be so lost," Rueda says. Instead, volunteers like Rueda often navigate the Web for them, while prompting them with questions.

But Rueda thinks things will improve as local social service agencies learn to use the Internet themselves. Eventually, Rueda envisions these agencies exchanging E-mail with clients, and possibly with the schools -- but much groundwork remains to be done, at a time when social services are under increasing budget pressure.

Undeterred by mixed results, BCN is preparing for its "next big push" to expand public access, says Weldon, by signing up local organizations and companies to underwrite the cost of 12 public computer kiosks at "small neighborhood markets and high-end coffee houses." Other kiosks are planned for city and county government buildings.

Many local companies have expressed interest in sponsorships, says Klingenstein. He adds that crucial decisions about whether BCN will permit corporate advertising on the terminals are still to be worked out.

The business community is still waiting and watching BCN to see if it will succeed, says Jerry Lewis, editor of the Boulder County Business Monthly, which supplies information publicizing local businesses for BCN's Business Center. "[BCN] really is in the exploration stage," Lewis says. "Our role in [promoting] the business center is to start to incubate the commercial side."

Klingenstein himself still seems to be casting about for an application of BCN that establishes a powerful demand for the service. One possibility is geographic information. Giving citizens access to maps will be one of BCN's hottest growth areas, Klingenstein predicts. The Boulder community is roiled by debates over the city's own sprawling growth. BCN's map center offers activists and ordinary citizens dozens of maps of the Boulder area and Colorado -- relief maps, census maps, road maps, zoning maps. And through a Web link to the main computer serving Boulder County, Klingenstein says, citizens can access the county's geographic information system and look at or download more than 750 different maps -- of area wetlands, flood plains, and open spaces, among others. This fall, BCN will offer training in how to use the service, Klingenstein reports, and the county's planning commissioners have agreed to consider the opinions expressed in bcn discussion groups.

Klingenstein admits that community networking in Boulder has developed more slowly than he expected, since "technically, community networking is not rocket science." But the Boulder experience shows that community networking also requires the hard work of community development -- a time-intensive process of building human relationships and serving needs that goes on long after the technical issues have been solved and the equipment has been installed.

Yet Klingenstein remains confident that BCN will eventually take off. "See how we're doing a year from now," he says.