Elana is a 53-year-old married white woman with three grown children and legal custody of their three grandchildren (ages 10, 11, and 13). Her elderly mother, husband, and three grandchildren reside with her in the row home she owns in a predominantly Italian-American, working class neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Elana has a high school diploma and began taking one college course per semester one year ago. She is employed full-time as a "Coordinator of Clerical Operations" in a mid-sized Philadelphia School District Office. She uses the internet in the this job to order office supplies and to track shipments.

Free Time: In her free time Elana reads, does personal research on the internet, and cares for her pets. She insists that she never watches television and "never was a TV person".

Elana reports a large social network including approximately 75 people. She used to write frequent letters to almost the entire network, but now uses email to contact many of them. However, she continues to write letters at least once or twice a year to most of her social network and much more frequently to those without email access. Elana reports

"You don't think as much (when using email); when you're writing a letter you stop and think; when you're typing an email you just type what you want them to know right then and stuff gets left out."

Internet: Elana has two computers at home, which are connected to the Internet via a regular phone line and a modem. She also uses computers at work. She first used the Internet in 1997 at home.

Elana estimates that she uses the computer for email about 20 hours per week. In an average day she sends about 8 personal one-to-one messages, and receives about five in return. She also reports receiving as many as 90 e-list or junk mail messages per day. She reports that email has not affected the number of people with whom she is in touch; it has just replaced many of her snail mail letters.

Elana has never used a chat room or instant messaging. Her Internet provider is AOL and she generally types in site names or searches rather than using search engines or hyper links. She seems to view the Internet as a great educational and research tool, one that had never before been available to her. She gets very excited about the knowledge she gains by connecting to library sites. In an animated manner she proclaimed

"I was very proud of myself! Are you kidding? For instance, someone asked me when one of the cathedrals in Rome was built. I didn't know but I looked it up and I told them and I felt very smart! If they had computers when I was first married, I'd be the smartest person walking!"

Elana also reports regularly using the Internet to help her grandchildren with their school projects. The day before our interview she had spent almost three hours researching Manitoba, Canada for one of her grandsons.

Elana also utilizes "mapfinder" quite frequently:

"I can get from here to there and not get lost! It's up to date with the highways and our maps aren't."

Although her formal education and direct technical computer knowledge seemed quite limited, Elana's enthusiasm regarding the educational and cultural opportunities the Internet offers is infectious and almost child-like. She returns frequently to some favorite sites but continues to look for new ones all the time as well. She views each new web site as a "discovery".

Interviewer: Yvonne Shands