Reproduced courtesy of the Davis Enterprise, published October 31, 2006, page A3.

McMahon thanked for boosting YoloLINK

By Elisabeth Sherwin
ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER

Davis resident Steve McMa­hon is being honored for his col­laborative work bringing free, accurate and timely information to residents of the county.

Last week, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution thanking him for his time and efforts. Supervisor Mariko Yamada of Davis pre­sented him with the resolution.

"I first met Steve in the late '90s while we were both serving as treasurers for respective Davis City Council candidates," she added Monday. "Even then, he had put his stamp on the 460s (campaign finance reports), pro­ducing them online. They were the best and most accessible re­ports of that time.

"He brings real-time election results coverage to Yolo County, has brought YoloLINK into the 21st century, and does it with a calm, quiet and super-efficient style," Yamada said.

McMahon, vice president of the nonprofit Davis Community Network, helped make YoloLINK, the county's infor­mation and referral directory, available on the Web and recently turned it over to the li­brary to run.

"YoloLINK is an electronic catalog - a listing of organiza­tions and services," McMahon said. "It is maintained and up­dated by the Yolo County li­brary.

"I figured out how to put this information on the Web," he added. "I wrote a set of comput­er programs to help the library staff put information on the Web in a searchable form."

For instance, if someone in town was looking for informa­tion about alcoholism, you would go to www.yololink.org:81, type in "alcoholism" and you would find 65 results for public and private counseling and educa­tion programs in Yolo and Sacramento counties.

If you went to the same URL and typed in "dog park," you would receive information of city recreation programs throughout the county - and al­so information about a pet loss support group in Sacramento and, strangely, English classes at a local church.

It may not be perfect yet, but it's getting there. And it's far cheaper than publishing the printed YoloLINK directory, McMahon said.

Put another way, YoloLINK is a no-cost, searchable communi­ty information database of more than 900 services to Yolo Coun­ty residents. Types of services include the names of organiza­tions that offer emergency food and shelter, education, recre­ation, health/medical and social services. Information can be searched based upon type of service, location of service and/or name of service provider.

"The database provides a great service to the community by enabling local government, education, businesses, arts, en­tertainment, nonprofits, election coverage, city aerial photos,  a community calendar and nu­merous other Web sites to be available via the Web," said Frank. Sieferman Jr., board chair.

Sandy Briggs, program man­ager for the county library sys­tem, said the library is lucky to have found and worked with McMahon for 10 years.

"He is incredibly talented and' generous," she said. "He com­bines technical skills and abili­ties with excellent commu­nication skills and a heart-felt motivation for providing com­munity service."

McMahon said he was pleased that his' work is no longer need­ed because it means that he is fulfilling the mission of Davis Community Network - to strengthen the community by helping people understand and benefit from participation in the electronic information era.

"I think YoloLINK is just, invaluable to people who are mak­ing social service referrals," he said.