About ILGARD / News

Campus & Community Ohio University Section
January 1998

By Mary Alice Casey
and Clare Warmke

WORKING COMPUTER MAGIC: E-mail may be one of the only ways to keep up with Scott Hill. Besides serving as mayor of the Meigs County village of Racine, population 729, he drives a school bus every morning and afternoon, works at the village’s only funeral home, serves as a volunteer firefighter and, for his main source of income, runs a produce farm.

Hill’s link to cyberspace — and that of 40 other government officials and health care providers in 11 Southeastern Ohio counties — is being made possible by MAGICnet. The project, known as the Medical and Government Internet Coalition Network, is coordinated by Ohio University’s Institute for Local Government Administration and Rural Development (IILGARD) and College of Osteopathic Medicine (OUCOM). Thc university hopes to continue and expand the program, which is funded by a $77,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission.

The idea is to offer electronic mail capability, Internet access and World Wide Web sites for 40 rural communities and medical facilities. The grant paid for a year’s worth of Internet access fees as well as for high-speed modems and software. Nine villages also received new computers — some of which were the first ever for those locations.

"Technology can provide a way to level the playing field. The village of Zaleski can access everything electronically that the city of Columbus can ILGARD’s Marsha Lewis says of the community of 294 people. "Now they’ve got a Web presence just like they have 294,000 people."

The villages, most of which have part-time staffs, are finding e-mail especially useful. They can send a question to the Governor’s Office, for instance, and retrieve the answer the next time they’re in the office. There s no waiting around for a call back or wasting money on long-distance charges. They’re also finding benefits in being able to access the Ohio Revised Code and other information sources.

Coolville Mayor Russ Day says another plus to Internet access is the ability it gives villages to research purchases in advance. Between that and e-mail, the village of 800 people expects to save enough in phone charges to justify picking up the cost of Internet access after the one year of free service ends.

"Our village simply could not have the funds within our meager budget for this type of equipment," says Day.

For health care providers, medical information is accessible online that would be too costly or time-consuming for physicians to gather in other ways, especially in rural areas, says Brian Phillips, OU-COM’s director of information technology.

Up to 20 health care providers, mostly physicians’ offices, are participating in the program. Locations in Athens, Nelsonville and Coolville received new computers.

"The university has the capability and the expertise to do this," Lewis says. "This is a clear example of how the university expertise is put our in the region."