05/25/2006

Fishing For Answers? Try ALearn!

Got a fish-related question? It’s a whole lot easier to catch an answer these days, thanks to a new Web site developed and sponsored by the Auburn University Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures.

The site, called ALearn (www.alearn.info), was launched last year as an outreach resource for everyone from anglers, pond owners and commercial fish farmers to citizens’ groups, teachers and students. Its mission: to provide Alabamians with useful, timely and interesting information about the state’s waters and the creatures that live in and on them.

Len Lovshin, a retired AU fisheries professor, spearheaded the site’s development and implementation.

“We had the departmental Web site (www.ag.auburn.edu/fish), but we felt we needed a site that was an Extension tool that could provide information to our constituency in and outside Alabama,” said Lovshin.

That idea had been discussed for several years, but it took off when Lovshin volunteered to develop the site after he retired. He began by talking with Extension faculty in the fisheries department to determine the types of information that the site should offer. Based largely on that input, he chose four major categories: education, aquaculture, recreational fishing and natural resources.

With the help of Troy Hahn, the department’s information technology specialist, Lovshin designed a user-friendly site which Extension specialists can update regularly to ensure the information is current. Since its launch in October 2005, the Web site has welcomed almost 33,000 visitors.

“It offers a very broad range of information,” Lovshin said. “Our primary intent is to provide information to non-academics and non-scientists and to provide lots of how-to information, but we do offer some information of a higher academic level so scientists can use it as well.”

While AU personnel are the main source of information for the site, it does tap into numerous other resources across the state and region.

“We tried to find the best information we could for the state of Alabama, so we gathered it from all over the place,” Lovshin said. “It is as broad-based as possible.”

The site also contains a useful search engine so visitors can easily get to specific subject areas, and it has many links to other resources, such as the fisheries department’s main Web site, a fisheries and aquacultural photo gallery, weather radar and even recipes.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu

For immediate release