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Community Partners: Austin City Networking

by Mara Beverwyk and Alison Atkins

Austin, Texas is a city committed to the vision of community networking--providing public access, increasing connectivity, and offering relevant information services.

As a department of the city of Austin, the Austin Public Library (APL) sits in the unique position of collaborating with not one, but three community information providers, the Austin Free-Net, the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network (MAIN), and Austin City Connection.

Austin City Connection was established by the city government as a strategic initiative to determine how Net technology could best serve the Austin community. Developed by city employees and supported by the city itself, Austin City Connection creates and maintains pages with information by and about city agencies, including the Austin Public Library.

While the focus of Austin City Connection is to disseminate local government information to the Austin community, the Austin Free-Net, a full partner of Austin City Connection, provides access to this information. The Austin Public Library (APL) has worked in conjunction with the Austin Free-Net to bring public access to the Internet through the Library system. The Austin Free-Net received a $200,000 grant from the Texas State Library to install 50 microcomputers in APL's 22 branches. The Library/City of Austin contributes approximately $50,000 a year in financial support, as well as countless hours of library staff time. Currently, most branches have two public terminals and the Central branch boasts eight. The APL is in the final stages of developing an Internet training center at one branch, and has added a full-time staff member to support access to Internet terminals. APL branch managers work with a team of volunteers to ensure smooth running of the public access stations. According to Sue Beckwith of the Austin Free-Net, however, Austin Free-Net minimizes the burden on library staff to implement public Net access by providing all necessary training, maintenance and technical support.

A partner of the Austin Free-Net, the Metropolitan Austin Interactive Network's (MAIN) objective is to provide free web services (including creating, hosting, and training) for community-interest, non-profit groups and activities. MAIN won a Texas State Library grant which allowed it to install the first free public Internet-access terminals in local libraries throughout central Texas, including two branches of the Austin Public Library. Unlike Austin City Connection, which is staffed by City employees, MAIN is run wholly by volunteers and is seeking status as a non-profit, tax-deductible organization.

Rather than competing, these three organizations have achieved harmony by focusing their missions and by collaborating to achieve a shared vision. As one administrator describes it, this collaboration "conserves community resources by eliminating duplication of effort in creating multiple web sites." The arena in which this collaboration takes place is the Austin Public Library.

While maintaining traditional values of public, free and equal access, the public library has entered into the new realm of electronic community networking. As with any relationship, the collaboration between a library and community information providers may have its ups and downs. For example, a library, as part of a city government, has established administrative methods, rigid funding structures, and policy-making techniques which may pose difficulties to the establishment of partnership with community networks. On the other hand, a library would bring access, space, funding, and visibility, among other benefits, to collaboration with community networks.

The commitment to community networking in Austin is moving forward with plans to integrate the libraries, MAIN, Austin City Connection and the Austin Free-Net into a "neighborhood intranet." As Beckwith notes, "It's not about technology; it's about communities of people seeking, finding and creating the information they need in their lives."