Chapter 7 · 1999–2001

Last modems off

The modem pool shrinks, the corporation folds into the library, and ORION spends its last two years as what it always said it was: a source of local information.

• 5,511Inactive accounts purged, Feb. 1999
• Sep 1, 1999Last free modems switched off
• Oct 1, 1999ORION, Inc. dissolved into the library
• Sep 1, 2001ORION e-mail ends

Winding down the lines

By January 1999 ORION was down to 24 lines for free text access, and the busy signals were back. The plan was to get out of running Unix servers entirely: web content and mail would move to the Missouri Express server, and ORION's databases to the library's own machines.¹

On February 3 and 4 the board went further. It stopped renewing Galaxy and ISDN accounts and stopped taking applications for any kind of access. It purged 5,511 accounts that hadn't been used, and the old ISDN numbers were disconnected. By April ORION's dial-in was one PRI and twelve analog lines.²

The system had become more tangled into the city than anyone had written down. When it failed on a Friday evening that March, only nine modems worked until Monday. The board learned that the City of Springfield's touch-screen information kiosks had been quietly dialing in through ORION's modem pool, and that the phone company had disconnected lines without telling the people paying the bills.³ That spring TCI's cable modems were due to arrive in Springfield, at $39.95 a month for speeds a dial-up user could hardly imagine.⁴

Becoming part of the library

On April 1, 1999, the board agreed that ORION should become a function of the library rather than a separate nonprofit.² At a retreat at Evangel University on July 8, it voted unanimously to dissolve the corporation on or about October 1. The board would become an advisory council to the library board.⁵

The last archived minutes, from August 4, 1999, read like a closing checklist. ORION's hardware went back to MOREnet for $5,000. Users were told how to keep reading their ORION mail through another provider. The bank account held a little over $23,000 against about $31,000 in bills.⁶

                                                                  Announcements

   Announcements for September 1, 1999

   On September 1 we turned off the last of our free access modems.
   Users can still log into their existing ORION accounts via telnet to
   telnet.orion.org. If you want to find the settings for using POP mail to
   access your ORION email address go here You will notice our Home page has
   been reformatted, if you prefer the old format it can be reached at
   http://www.orion.org/indexold.html


  Arrow keys: Up and Down to move.  Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
 H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

September 1, 1999 came and the last free modems went off. Anyone with an account could still reach it over the Internet by telnet, and the homepage was redesigned around what was left: a communications center, maps, and free web sites for local nonprofits.⁷ On October 1, ORION, Inc. was dissolved, and ORION became a project of the Springfield-Greene County Library, with Ernest DeCamp chairing its advisory council.⁶

Maps and Christmas lights

Without a modem pool to run, ORION's small staff put their time into information again. Anthony Young, the trainer from the NeighborNet days, was now the library's GIS administrator, and his maps became some of ORION's best-known work. That December ORION published a map of Springfield's holiday lights, Tharp's idea: readers nominated houses and everyone else could plan a drive.⁸

ORION Community

In April 2000 www.orion.org became a pointer to community.orion.org, renamed ORION Community and focused on the people, places, events and culture of southwest Missouri. It ran feature stories, most of them written by Tharp, plus an events calendar, local TV news, the maps, and a directory of community organizations.⁹ It launched the same week AOL opened its own local "Digital City" guide for Springfield and Joplin. Reporting on the two, the News-Leader called Orion.org "Springfield's first Internet service provider," which was exactly what ORION had always said it wasn't.¹⁰

The end

In 2001 a notice from Annie Busch, by then the library's executive director, went up for ORION's remaining e-mail users and the groups whose web pages it hosted. As of September 1, 2001, the library would no longer support ORION e-mail accounts or host web sites. Missouri Express had not been renewed, the affiliates' support was gone, and the library's own budget was tight. The ORION web site would stay on as a department of the library, with its directory, calendar and features.¹¹

It stayed for a while. The last capture the Wayback Machine has of ORION Community is from November 2002. The orion.org registration lapsed, and in September 2003 someone else registered it.