In February 1994, the inhabitants of Helsinki got a new public library with a new public service, access to Internet. During the opening hours of the library, four PC:s are at the disposal of those visitors who wish to use the Internet, or who have only learned about its existence and are keen on making their own first-hand experiences. From the other sites of the Net the "Knot at the Cable" is reachable day and night.
The Knot at the Cable has a leased line Internet connection from a commercial provider. The primary services offered are World Wide Web browsing and telnet access to patrons, email and WWW publishing to library staff and partners.
The World Wide Web (WWW), which structures Internet as hypertext, was initiated as the internal information service of the European research center CERN. WWW ties togehther many Internet services and makes them available for browsing with graphical or character-based client applications (NCSA Mosaic,Lynx etc.). Therefore, WWW has rapidly spread in academia and industry.
The WWW-server of "The Knot at the Cable" runs on a 486/50 PC with Linux, a free version of Unix. The public access terminals (3 MS-Windows PC:s and 1 Linux PC) in the library use NCSA Mosaic as a graphical user interface.
"The Knot at the Cable" (fi: Kaapelisolmu; se: Kabelknuten) combines three things. It is, firstly, a pilot project in the field of equal access to electronic information. The Knot at the Cable exemplifies the need to extend the public sphere itself by means of new interactive electronic media, especially the Internet.
Secondly, the Knot at the Cable functions as an electronic "publishing house" for a hundred or so members of the cooperative society Katto-Meny which maintains the technical system of "The Knot at the Cable". The membership of Katto-Meny includes authors, poets, makers of comic-strips, publishers, politicians, environmental organisations, adult educators and otheractive "information producers".
Finally, the Knot at the Cable is developing into the Internet link of the old Cable Factory, nowadays taken over by painters, artisans, musicians, dancers, writers,museums, schools, theaters - and the library. The Cable Factory is a massive industrial building which used to serve the Nokia corporation. (Incidentally, Nokia installed some of the first computers in Finland in the same building!). At the end of the eighties,it was sold to the City of Helsinki.
During the first half year, there were 60.000 WWW page accesses at "The Knot of the Cable", half of which were from the library's system. The other half were from other Internet sites in Finland and in 30 other countries.
From jkp@katto.kaapeli.fi Thu Sep 15 05:33:59 1994 [...] July 15, 1993 Memorandum outlining a public-access Internet infostation located in Helsinki City Library, with possibility for publishing mentioned as an option Autumn 1993 Negatiations and preparations between possible cooperating organizations to lay out organizational plans on what exactly to do and how to do it December 8, 1993 An agreement to start the project February 4, 1994 Opening of the new library where the Internet access point was to be situated January-February 1994 Installing the Linux machine to function as the router, WWW server and email server for the project February 18, 1994 www.kaapeli.fi became connected to the Internet February 28, 1994 Opening of the Knot at the Cable, both as a WWW server to be accessible from the Internet and an Internet access point for Mosaic and telnet use by library patrons June 1994 Announcement on the NCSA What's New list August 1994 Number of public access PC machines climbs to four, three MS-Windows w/ Mosaic for Windows, one running Linux with Mosaic for X
Accessed pages
From within the system 23.385
From other Internet-sites 36.449
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Total 59.834
2) WWW PAGE ACCESS BY COUNTRY 1.6.-15.8.
domain (country)
fi (Finland) 26245
com (Corporate, USA and int'l) 1372
edu (academic & educ'l; USA) 1175
ca (Canada) 571
se (Sweden) 235
uk (UK) 179
de (Germany) 167
gov (Gov't, USA) 143
jp (Japan) 139
net (misc.) 125
ch (Switzerland) 124
no (Norway) 110
org (organisations, USA and int'l) 85
fr (France) 69
us (USA) 57
mil (USA, military) 54
it (Italy) 44
pl (Poland) 42
au (Australia) 39
nl (Netherlands) 37
dk (Denmark) 36
ee (Estonia) 25
nz (New-Zealand) 23
arpa (USA) 22
be (Belgium) 18
il (Israel) 18
es (Spain) 17
mx (Mexico) 14
at (Austria) 8
pt (Portugal) 7
tr (Turkey) 6
sg (Singapore) 5
su (Russia) 5
cl (Chile) 4
hu (Hungary) 3
cz (Czechia) 2
WWW PAGE ACCESS FROM FINLAND
domain (organisation)
kaapeli (The Cable Book/Katto-Meny) 11175
helsinki (Helsinki univ.) 2916
hut (Helsinki univ of Tech) 2476
nokia (Nokia Inc) 1189
utu (Turku univ.) 911
jyu (Jyväskylä univ.) 690
tut (Tampere univ. of tech.) 575
uta (Tampere univ.) 517
pp (Individual users, by Personal EUnet etc.) 431
oulu (Oulu univ.) 363
vtt (Tech. research center) 360
funet (FUNET) 296
gsf (Geological survey) 287
tele (Finnish Telecom) 283
martis (Martis Inc.) 252
joensuu (Joensuu univ.) 226
uku (Kuopio univ.) 194
shh (Swedish business univ.) 157
unda (UNDA Inc.) 123
ttl (Turku Telecom) 114
3) LOGINS (19.2. - 15.8. 1994)
Anonymous logins (i.e. the possibility to enter the system without a personal password) are allowed from Free-Net Finland (educational network) and via TeleSampo (a public service of Finnish Telecom). Logging in with username "lynx" lets the visitor browse the WWW-pages of the Knot at the Cable with the character-based Lynx-browser. The anonymous user "kirjasto" can find library resources.
Anonymous logins
username "lynx" 2990
username "kirjasto" 415
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Total 3405
Login totals:
Total number of logins from 247 hosts 7657
Estimated costs 1994:
Internet-services; leased line (1800 FIM/month) ca 20.000 FIM Training ca 60.000 FIM