About the *Nets Section of the WELLgopher
 
All over the world, groups of people are working to provide publicly
accessible networks for their communities.  Many have allied themselves
with the Free-Net project of the National Public Telecomputing
Network.  Others are working in a more isolated fashion using homegrown
or commercially available bulletin board and conferencing software.
Still others -- ToasterNets -- are focused on low cost, low tech
networking solutions.  Most share a desire to have a strong local focus
with access to government, culture, and community, plus a gateway to
Internet services.  Steve Cisler's paper on Electronic Greenbelts is an
excellent introduction to the community networking phenomena.

This section of the WELLgopher points at existing network repositories
of information about community networks and provides developing
networks with diskspace to share their working papers and policies.

The best source of ongoing information on community networks is the
COMMUNET mailing list, which you can join by sending e-mail to either
listserv@uvmvm.uvm.edu or listserv@uvmvm.bitnet with the message:

    SUB COMMUNET Firstname Lastname

Art "Rambo" McGee maintains a list of other Community/Rural/Civic-
oriented mailing lists you may want to subscribe to.  The most recent
version is available as item 2 in this portion of the WELLgopher.

				       --Eric Theise/verve@well.sf.ca.us
.