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I was one of the very first registered users of the Lorain County Free-net back in 1992 The director of the Lorain Public Library, Ken Cromer, was in the Leadership Lorain County group that was responsible for its creation as its class project. I remember bugging him, "How is it coming? When will the Free-net be available?" Once online, I became the sysop for the Library area and learned a little about Unix and became friends with Paul Boguski who was hired to be the director of the Free-net for the few years when there was funding was available. Thom Gould, Russ Cromwell, Bob Repas and Paul were all presenters to our users group about the Free-net over the years. I was a registered user of the very first Free-net, Cleveland Free-net (1986) but calling long distance was very limiting! How thrilling it was to have a place to have local access to email! The first Lorain free-net accounts were given out at no charge. Then asfunding and grants stopped coming in 1995, there was a charge of $15 and vanity accounts were also sold. At first the connection came through Oberlin College and my address was aa1024@freenet.lorain.oberlin.edu. Then later when the Internet connection became available directly from Lorain County Community College (where the equipment was housed), my email address became sandra@lcfn.org. |
But there is no doubt that as the World Wide Web began to become popular and local Internet Service Providers were available, the popularity of the free-net began to wane. It was hard for this text only interface to compete with the color, graphics and sound of the Web. From 4000 active users five years ago, there are now only about 650. Bob Repas, system manager has reported that all eight lines have not been in use at one time for over a year. I remember the early busy signals when it was at its peak! Recently Cleveland Free-Net announced that it would be closing on October 1 because of the expensive upgrades needed to survive Y2K! Because they are using the same software, Lorain County Free-net was in the same need and LCCC also decided to retire it. Currently, those seeking a local online community (that is difficult to find in the huge WWW) have still been using our free-net. Those who have older computers and slow modems, and the inability to afford a faster computer or an Internet Provider will be the ones that will be most effected by the loss of the free-net. These users can still connect to the Clevnet library system (of which Elyria, Lorain and Vermilion are part) through local dial access numbers and from there they can get out onto the Internet. Although, fewer and fewer Internet sites are now available to the text only user, it is still workable. Instructions on how to do this are available at: http://lorain.lib.oh.us/ Sandra Ruth |
