Website Coordinator

The current "Webster" of Annandale Online, Jill Bishop, has been a resident of Annandale since 1970.  She initiated the website in 1999 as the thesis project for her Master of Liberal Studies degree from the University of Minnesota.

...Let me switch to the first person now... 
I first got the idea to do a community website for my master's thesis project in 1997 when I took a class called "Computers in Culture."  Prior to that time I had been planning to write an ethnography of Annandale for my thesis, but a living website seemed to be more worthwhile, more useful, and more interesting.  In 1995 when I started my degree the World Wide Web was just starting to catch on, and when I learned about the Blacksburg Electronic Village, a community website in Blacksburg, Virginia, it inspired me to do something similar in Annandale. 

Creating and maintaining a community website also takes advantage of my long time interest in computers:  I have used a computer at home since 1983, I was the Bendix Elementary School Computer Coordinator until 1987, and I have been using e-mail regularly since 1993 when our oldest daughter went off to college out of state.  So Annandale Online is a convergence of my strong interests in both computers and my community.