Increase productivity and enhance capabilities of the Ohio Sea Grant Communications program in the areas of webpage development, newsletter production, and other publications: brochures, guides, fact sheets, technical reports, and special projects for National Sea Grant.
Educate the public about the programs and projects of the Lake Erie Programs: Ohio Sea Grant, F.T. Stone Laboratory, and the Great Lakes Aquatic Ecosystem Research Consortium, through improved website features and print publications.
Reach larger audiences by improving our production capabilities in-house for the projects mentioned above.

The current equipment used by the communication's graphics department is unable to meet our goals of communicating Ohio Sea Grant research, education, and outreach to citizens in Ohio and the Great Lakes region. Our proposed equipment upgrades will allow us to increase productivity and enhance capabilities of the Ohio Sea Grant Communications program in the areas of webpage development, newsletter production, and other publications: brochures, guides, fact sheets, technical reports, and special projects for National Sea Grant.

In addition, the purchase of certain pieces of equipment will enable personnel to spend 100% of their time on production in-house. Currently, staff members must go off-campus or to other campus locations for slide scanning, CD-ROM duplication, and laminating services. Purchasing this equipment will save personnel time and costs associated with outside vendor fees.

We propose to upgrade existing computer equipment and software, purchase a digital camera and laminator to increase and enhance production capabilities for all Lake Erie Programs.

A new desktop publishing system (Macintosh) was purchased with a R/W CD-ROM drive, scanner with slide adapter, new software, a digital camera and laminator. Based on this new equipment, our publications and web site have been enhanced. Since these upgrades, Communications has won the following awards:

APEX Award of Excellence for the Twine Line Newsletter. As part of the 13th Annual Awards for Publication Excellence sponsored by Communications Concepts, Twine Line competed with 743 other newsletters to be one of the 54 winners in the category of "Newsletters - Printed."

Blue Ribbon Award (first place) for the Stone Laboratory materials (brochure, flier, and poster). This award was earned at the 2001 Sea Grant Week conference in the category of "Brochures and Fact Sheets."

Since 1999, our web site content has increased greatly and patrons have responded with interest. Web Site use was tracked and analyzed for 1999, 2000 and 2001. During this timeframe, there was a total of 258,165 "hits" to our entire site in 1999; 571,756 "hits" in 2000; and 988,631 for 2001.