1. Who do the systems serve?;
2. What information needs do they try to meet?
3. How effectively do they meet those needs?

1. Directional and factual help dominate the service offerings, but the types of information provided varied considerably from one system to another
2. Services based on interactive communications were significant and growing
3. Counseling services were present but limited
4. Advocacy was almost non-existent
5. Information about social services was rare.

Services oriented to middle income and upper middle income patrons dominated the four systems. Very few services were specifically targeted to low-income patrons. The pilot study indicated that the taxonomy is useful for evaluating CCIS services. It is particularly useful for identifying areas in which service offerings are weak or non-existent, thus it can be used to help a CCIS improve its services to better meet its objectives. In the past six years we have witnessed a virtual explosion of information services available through a variety of grass-roots based computerized community information systems (CCISs). Doctor & Ankem (February 1996) have identified more than 390 CCISs either in existence or organizing. These systems provide a wide variety of communication and information services to people in their own homes and in public places in their communities. Through continuing, rapid expansion supported in part by federal development of a National Information Infrastructure (NII), they have the potential for significantly changing traditional power relationships in our society. The questions we must ask are:

• Who do these systems serve?
  
• What information needs do they try to meet?
  
• How effective are they in helping people with their day-to-day information needs?
  
• By what mechanisms and to what extent do they change the distribution of societal power?
  

Types of Help The types of help provided vary considerably across the systems we have examined:
Advocacy involves personally assisting the help-seeking patron solve her/his problem through direct contact with a helping agency or an adversarial agent. There is evidence that people seeking information really are seeking help, or advocacy. Advocacy may be essential if an information service is to succeed (Bundy, 1972; Voos, 1969). This form of help may involve contacting helping agencies on behalf of, or with, the patron. Such contact may be electronic (e-mail, telephone), print (letters, fax), or in person.
Counseling involves helping the client to understand his/her problematic situation and to understand and use various means available to effectively resolve it. Counseling services usually are provided by professionals. In this taxonomy, counseling stops short of advocacy. Directional help answers where questions like, Òwhere do I get this information?, or Ówhere is information about . . .?Ó It leads the patron to the information that she/he seeks, but it does not help the patron define what information is needed. Factual help answers what questions such as, Òwhat jobs are available?Ó, Òwhat are my legal rights?Ó, Òwhat entertainment is available tonight?Ó. Interactive Communications may incorporate any of the other four ÒhelpsÓ. It requires at least two parties in direct or indirect communication. It usually takes place via e-mail, or electronic discussion lists, but it also may use the telephone or fax machine. It may involve an exchange of messages between two or more people, or it may involve requests for information or interaction with an organization by filling out and sending an on-line form. Other, more advanced forms of interactive communication also could involve electronic opinion polls or even voting. Interactive communication involving groups tends to foster a sense of community or shared interest. Both group and personal interactive communication can be effective in providing emotional or other psychological support, a help found to be very important to people seeking information (Dervin & Fraser, 1985; Chen & Hernon, 1982). On CCISs, this help typically is not professional help, but rather peer self-help or mutual aid.

Testing the Taxonomy
To test the taxonomy, we scanned the services offered by more than 150 operational CCISs and selected four systems (Big Sky Telegraph, Blacksburg Electronic Village, Mobile Free-Net, and Victoria Free-Net) for detailed analysis. Selection criteria included geographical diversity, level of maturity, and type of system.

• Big Sky Telegraph is a mature statewide network funded by Western Montana College and U.S. West. ItÕs emphasis is on education, particularly K-12 education. Big Sky is an affiliate of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
• Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV) is a Òcooperative project of Virginia Tech, Bell Atlantic of Virginia, and the town of Blacksburg.Ó (About the Blacksburg . . ., February 1996). It became operational in October 1993 following two and a half years of preparation. BEV serves a town of 36,000 citizens. Fifty to 60% of this highly educated, upper income community are members of BEV.
• Mobile Area Free-Net (MAFN) is a relatively young network that opened in early 1995. It serves about 500,000 people in Mobile, Alabama and its surrounding areas. Services available on MAFN are changing rapidly.
• Victoria Free-Net is a free community-based network formed in June 1992. It serves an area with a population of 300,000. It has no paid staff, is run by volunteers, and depends on contracts and individual and corporate donations for funding. It is a mature network. It adheres more closely to the NPTN menu format for Free-Nets than do the other networks examined here.

Although we have assigned each CCIS service to a situational category and type of help, the actual services are not so neatly arranged or identified on the CCISs we have examined. Services typically are scattered across each systemÕs menus, often making it difficult for patrons to locate a particular kind of information. We have not addressed issues relating to ease of access or ease of use in this paper. In addition, some services properly fall into more than one category. We have reflected this in our analyses by counting a multi-category service wherever it appears even though this means that the total service counts will be somewhat inflated. We examined the 600 services provided by the four CCISs, locating each service within the three-dimensional matrix. For this paper, however, we have reported on only two dimensions of the matrix, situational categories and types of help. Socioeconomic identifiers are discussed in a forthcoming article. Table 2 and Table 3 show the services offered by situational category and by type of help, respectively, for each of the four systems. Tabulations of the results for each system are shown in Table 4 through Table 7.

We found that: (1) Directional and factual help dominate the service offerings but the types of information provided varied considerably from one system to another. Directional help was present in 65% and factual help in 85% of the 600 services offered;(2) Services based on interactive communications were significant and from other work weÕve done, appear to be growing, but they were highly variable from one system to another. They ranged from 20% to 67% of total service offerings on the four systems, averaging 42% of the 600 services; (3) Counseling services were present but limited, averaging 4.8% over all services; (4) Advocacy was involved in only 1.8% of the 600 services, ranging from zero to 3% of each systemÕs services. One system (Blacksburg) offered no discernible advocacy services at all; (5) Information about housing, legal matters, social services, and transportation was rare; and (6) Services oriented to middle income and upper middle income patrons dominated the four systems. Very few services were specifically targeted to low-income patrons.

Table 2 - Services Offered, by Situational Categories

Ronald D. Doctor & Kalyani Ankem
(rdoctor@ua1vm.ua.edu & kankem1@ua1vm.ua.edu)
School of Library and Information Studies
The University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487

fs22 . The term Free-Net is a registered servicemark of the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN).
. Big Sky Telegraph is available by modem at (406) 683-7680, or on the Internet by telnetting to bigsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us (or 192.231.192.1). Login as bbs.
ftn . Blacksburg Electronic Village is available at the following URLs: gopher://gopher.bev.net, and on the WWW at http://www.bev.net/.
.bMobile Area Free-Net is available via modem (334) 405-4636, settings 8N1 and on the Internet at the following URLs: telnet://ns1.maf.mobile.al.us (199.78.232.2). Login as visitor; http://www.maf.mobile.al.us/.
. Victoria Free-Net is available via modem, (604) 595-2300, and on the Internet at the following URLs: telnet://freenet.victoria.bc.ca (134.87.16.100), login as guest; gopher://gopher.freenet.victoria.bc.ca; and http://www.freenet.victoria.bc.ca/freenets.html.