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Collaboration at Work: The Three Rivers Free-Net

by Jesse Leavitt

Community networks and other community information systems are uniquely positioned to participate in and foster collaborative efforts to enhance communities. A natural common ground for local organizations and individuals, a CN's role in collaboration can range from partnering with public libraries and local government agencies, to facilitating the sharing of information between local community groups. Three Rivers Free-Net (TRFN) of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, can serve as an example of such collaboration at work.

TRFN, a service of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, aims to provide the people of southwestern Pennsylvania with free access to information by linking to selected globa l sites and bringing local non-profit and government organizations ("Information Providers") onto the Web. To bring the Information Providers online, TRFN provides, for free, Web space, training, in-house equipment, email, and support for all interested southwestern Pennsylvania nonprofit and government agencies. TRFN is committed to providing online access to information relevant to its community and claims, "If there is Pittsburgh area information on the World Wide Web, the Three Rivers Free-Net either hosts it or links to it."

The Free-Net's success in providing this sort of public access to informat ion was recently recognized when TRFN was selected as a semi-finalist in the Public Access category of the Global Information Infrastructure Awards (GII). One tool used by the Free-Net to provide such useful and relevant information is collaboration with other groups that have important information to share. TRFN provides good examples of the kinds of collaborations and linkages that CNs can participate in, and the ways in which these collaborative efforts can benefit communities.

The Free-Net's collaborative efforts include:

• Providing the county bus system with the help it needed to put all the bus schedules online when the bus system was itself unable to do so.
• Discovering that a directory created by one of its Information Providers would be useful for the wider community and collaborating with the IP (the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank) to make the directory available on the Internet.
• Collaborating with a local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, and with Carnegie Mellon University to create a community calendar.
• Assisting the Three Rivers Center for Independent Living in updating a review of disability access for venues in the Pittsburgh area; TRFN is training the Center's volunteers in creating the database and putting it online.

In addition to partnerships between TRFN and other entities, the Free-Net also encourages linkages among the Information Providers it works with. Susan Holmes, Project Manager of TRFN, says that her ultimate goal is, "to make it very easy for people to get the information they need" and that a key way to g et this done is by encouraging groups to look for organizations that provide complementary or follow-up services in their field, and link to them. This helps community members seeking information on a particular topic t o find all the information available, and it also helps community organizations learn about each other and avoid duplicating work done by another group.

To find out more about the collaborative efforts of the Three Rivers Free Net, or about the Free-Net in general, check out their Website Tour and explore their site!

We wrote about TRFN in a previous Connections article. Read the previous article in our archives. For more information about community networks and their collaborators, see The Work of CNs: Community Partnerships.