by Linda C. Williams and Gregory P. Stein

"The mission of the Greater Detroit FreeNet (GDFN) is to provide the residents of metropolitan Detroit with free, electronic access to community-related information, while giving information providers means to disseminate their information as widely and economically as possible."

The GDFN is a "free-access" community information system attempting to cover Detroit and the tri-county area of Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland. It is possible to log onto the GDFN as a visitor to try out the system (some features are restricted), but it isn't quick and easy to do so. Visitors are encouraged to instead apply for permanent user accounts especially if there is any sort of volunteer or charitable organization connection. The facilities available include e-mail, discussion groups (Usenet), downloadable software, on-line chat, and "other capabilities." There is an impressive listing of Board of Directors, Officers, and six committees. Checking the links reveals many of the same names reoccurring under different categories. It appears that about eight individuals are at this point running the GDFN. The home page lists a number of links to other Detroit sites and resources. It doesn't look like an attempt to be exhaustive, but is not limited to sites of non-profit organizations either.

They list, with links, several other electronic community networks, i.e., Free-Nets including Blacksburg Electronic Village, Palo Alto, Grand Rapids, Texas Metronet -- a total of 7 in the US, again no attempt to be exhaustive, just a sampling. They also list samples in Canada including Chebucto Community Net and Prince George Free-Net -- a total of 4. They state that the GDFN is run on donations from hundreds of people who want to see it succeed, and from organizations like CICNET, Merit Network, Inc., Walsh College, and United Way.

Finding our way there from other sites:

With a hint from a classmate we found a link to GDFN on the MetroTimes home page. It was there just under Gilda's Place (alphabetically listed). Otherwise it was difficult to find. It is not referenced by any of the HotBot top 10 for Detroit. It is only when the search included the top 150 that a link to GDFN was found. There is a huge amount of information to be gathered using a "Detroit" search. There were 21,192 items returned. The mix of commercial, government, and non-profit is a bit lopsided in favor of commercial, but otherwise about equal. (A general impression - did not survey all 21,192).