CIVIC NETWORKING IN THE UNITED-STATES - A REPORT BY COLUMBIA-UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

During the 1994 spring semester, twelve students enrolled in Columbia University's graduate program in public policy and administration and explored the new phenomenon of civic networking for a workshop in appl ied public policy analysis. Each workshop is required to be sponsored by a governmental client, which in this case was the U.S. National Com mission on Libraries and Information Science. The commission was inter ested in ascertaining the range of activities sponsored by the network s and in determining their involvement or lack of involvement with loc al public libraries. Participating in this project were representative s of twenty-four civic networks, who answered telephone queries coveri ng a range of topics dealing with network services, users, goals, fund ing, governance, technical design, social benefits, government informa tion provision, evaluation, and definition. This paper summarizes the findings of the students' investigation.