Chapter 6 · 1998

The New ORION

The year the money ran short, the users were asked to chip in, and ORION decided it could no longer be everyone's way online.

• $12The donation ORION asked of every user
• ~$96,000Federal grant money at risk of being clawed back
• Sep 1, 1998No more new free dial-up accounts
• 18,023Registered users that month, the most ever

Two kinds of ORION

By early 1998 there were really two ORIONs. Most people still used the free text service: dial 864-6100, wait for a line, get an hour of Lynx, Pine and IRC. A small and growing group paid for "Galaxy," a graphical PPP account on a newer 56k modem pool, at $95 for six months or $180 a year. Galaxy sat at the top of a ladder of supporting memberships named for the sky: Star at $25, Sun at $50, Planet at $100.¹

ORION was also doing more than it ever had as an information service. On February 3, 1998, working with the Greene County Clerk, it posted the city election results live on the Web as the precincts came in.² And on the Web the graphical browsers had taken over. In June 1998 ORION's servers logged about 342,000 hits from Netscape, 239,000 from Internet Explorer and 194,000 from Lynx.³

Running short

The free modems were the expensive part, and nobody was paying for them. In April the board projected a $23,000 shortfall.⁴ In June ORION mailed its users asking for a minimum donation of $12 a year. Tharp told the Springfield Business Journal that without more income ORION couldn't keep up with either the technology or the support its users needed.⁵ About 2 percent of users responded, sending in $2,333.³

Then came a worse problem. As the federal NeighborNet grant was being closed out, auditors questioned how some of ORION's costs had been counted, including the modem pool's phone lines and the coordinator's salary. The board asked Tharp what it would mean if roughly $96,000 of the grant were disallowed. His answer, in the minutes: it "would probably force ORION into bankruptcy."³ The board cut the budget back to the basics. A new server, new office PCs and planned staff were all dropped.

"New ORION"

After a summer retreat, the board announced the change on July 22, 1998. From September 1, ORION would take no new applications for free text accounts, and existing free accounts would be phased out by September 1, 1999. Free sessions would drop from an hour to 30 minutes, with the hour kept for anyone who donated $12 or more. Galaxy wasn't affected.^6, 7

The board described it as a return to ORION's original mission: information, not access. When ORION started it had been the only way online in town, Tharp said; now, with commercial providers everywhere, it was the safety net.⁷ A library column that same week noted that more than 90 percent of ORION's traffic was already coming in through the Web.⁷

"If text is dropped it will fold"

Not everyone agreed. At the August board meeting, users who had formed an ad hoc committee to save ORION came to object. One longtime user, who had joined after a pep talk from Annie Busch, told the board it was the "Best tool I have seen in my life." Shutting down text, he warned, would be a grave mistake.⁸

There was another pressure the users couldn't do much about. The IRS was reviewing a case in Oregon over whether giving the public free dial-up access was really charitable work. If the answer was no, ORION's nonprofit status could be at risk for doing exactly what its users wanted to keep.⁸

The town hall

On September 1, 1998, the free sign-ups stopped. ORION had 18,023 registered users and 10,051 active ones, with 117 Galaxy members.⁹ Three weeks later, on September 22, it held a public town hall. Busch told the story of how ORION began. The board president, Ernest DeCamp, said ORION needed another $70,000 a year to keep going as it had, and that it was shifting from providing access to providing information.¹⁰

"We are not winding down!"

About a third of the staff were let go that fall.¹⁰

Still useful

The information side kept proving its worth. On election night in November 1998, ORION put results on a live map, precinct by precinct, as the county counted them. News organizations used it as their main source that night, and people followed along from as far away as Michigan.¹¹ That winter ORION's office, servers and phone lines were set to move into the library's new Library Center.¹¹