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A Model for Future CN's:
The Blacksburg Electronic Village

About the Community

As a small town of 35,000 residents and at the same time home of Virginia Tech, a large research institution, Blacksburg, VA was a natural place to start a Community Network.

The Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) was created in 1993 as a means for connecting its residents with each other, as well as providing local information and a gateway to the wider world of the Internet. An estimated 62% of the town of Blacksburg are members who currently use the network and information for educational, professional, business, civic, social, cultural and recreational purposes.

Funding and Collaboration

BEV is a cooperative project of Virginia Tech, Bell Atlantic of Virginia and the Town of Blacksburg. The small staff at BEV was originally funded by Virginia Tech. Within the last year, however, BEV has become an auxiliary to Virginia Tech. This means that BEV must begin to cover its own costs. To cover costs, BEV charges fees for some classes and training as well as nominal fees for some network services.

Separate from day-to-day funding, grants fund certain BEV projects such as the grant from the Network Infrastructure of the Education National Science Foundation project to evaluate the impact of networking on K-12 education and students, and outreach projects to help other communities to start community networks. One project is funded by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) which is an attempt to replicate Blacksburg's successful community network in rural communities. Another project centers around planning for virtual schools in electronic villages.

Accessibility

The Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library and the Montgomery County Public Schools add valuable support in the form of access by providing school children and other citizens of Blacksburg with free access to the Internet and with free e-mail accounts. A large portion of the BEV members use modems to dial in. The other connections are made in Blacksburg offices, dorm rooms and apartment offices using Ethernet, which is made possible by Bell Atlantic. Ethernet is different from modems in that it provides direct access to the Internet through a cable, rather than the temporary connection through a phone line that modems provide.

Membership in BEV is defined as living and working in Blacksburg, regardless of where you access BEV or what provider you use to do so. Some services BEV offers includes information on the various methods, including commercial, that local residents may use to access the Internet, as well as the space and assistance for its users to create and post personal web pages. This service extends to civic and non-profit groups who may register on-line to receive BEV server space to maintain a home page as well.

In addition, BEV offers brief Internet and computer classes locally. More extensive training is offered by such agencies as the Mongomery-Floyd Regional Public Library and the YMCA's Open University. The listing of these training sessions can be found at BEV's Help Desk.

Content

BEV excels at providing local content. The Community Events and News page lists links to local volunteer groups, community organizations, religious groups and sports. Additional community information about arts and entertainment can be found on a page compiled by the New River Arts Council. You'll find a detailed calendar of arts events in the area, links to pages on Museums and Galleries, Visual Arts, Performing Arts and more.

The extensive Village Mall page includes links to hundreds of local business home pages, offering information as well as the flavor of the business community. You can order flowers from a local florist or view artworks sold at a local store. Merchants can list specials and discounts here. The BEV Health Care page includes links ranging from the comprehensive site of the Montgomery Regional Hospital which lists services, programs and other health sources, to an interesting feature entitled, Dr. Hendrick's Database of Medical Note, consisting of notes by a local doctor on basic medical issues.

The Education Page of BEV lists links to local schools, colleges and universities. The Library and References Tools page links to area libraries and also offers links to periodicals and reference sources to be found on the World Wide Web. BEV's Government Page sports a similar format, offering local information first, followed by links to county, regional, state, and federal sites. A Virginia Resources page extend beyond Blacksburg to list information about the rest of Virginia, including links to other community networks in the state.

Other content highlights include local on-line newsgroups, e-mail groups, and local chat sessions including rooms for kids and seniors, as well as special town chat sessions.

Special Features

From the beginning, the Blacksburg Electronic Village was designed with the objective of being a model for other Electronic Villages in Virginia and the rest of the United States. BEV works closely together with the Computer Science departments and other departments at Virginia Tech to determine the impact of community networking on users' lives. Integration of Network Resources into the K-12 Curriculum is an example of a Research Seminar topic listed on BEV's Scholarly Research Page. Statistical research about BEV's users is another way that it has contributed to the study of the community networks and the people who use them.

The pursuit of federal grants show BEV's dedication to research. The BEV has received federal grant money for the purposes of educating others in the rural Appalachian area outside of Blacksburg. This includes a partnership with Radford, VA. The project includes an evaluation component in which BEV studies the effects of community networking on the rural community. The replicability of BEV in other communities, its potential to be a meodel, is also an area of study. One method of supplying information to other communities was for BEV to serve, in cooperation with Virginia Tech, as an electronic clearinghouse for information about how to start a community network, in what BEV calls a "turnkey electronic village."

This profile was initially developed by Stefanie Halliday for the Community Information Systems and Community Networking class (SI 725) at the University of Michigan School of Information. Teresa Ginal, also a student in SI 725 edited the content for publication in this online journal on June 5, 1997. Any links are used at the users own discretion, as their currency and accuracy cannot be attested. Any comments that have been included are an attempt to describe the overall site. They are in no way an authoritative opinion or assessment of the Blacksburg Electronic Village.

For more information about community networks and their collaborators, please see the Community Networking Resource Site.