UC Integrated Pest Management Program
In 1981, the information was read at dedicated terminals in 11 county Cooperative Extension offices, at the UC Kearney Research and Extension Center in the Central Valley, at UC Riverside, UC Davis, UC Berkeley and at UC Berkeley’s Gill Tract research farm in Albany.
In the mid-1980s, when early adopters were using desk top computers with modems, the IPM program began offering dial-in access to its information database. When the World Wide Web took off in the mid-1990s, IPM was ready with a digital database of pest management information they had been building for a dozen years.
Today, the IPM Web site is the program’s most far-reaching outreach tool to deliver environmentally friendly pest management advice. Before the Web became commonplace, agricultural pest management guidelines and urban-oriented Pest Notes were distributed through county offices and handed out at meetings. In the mid-1990s, about 7,200 printed Pest Notes reached consumers in a year. By 2006, there were more than 2 million downloads annually from the IPM Web site. About half of Web site visitors find the resource through search engines.
The information on the IPM Web site is continually reviewed and updated, and Web trends are monitored to make sure the Web site meets the needs of contemporary users. For example, some of the IPM resources may offer more information than visitors hunting for simple answers want, according to Joyce Strand, UC IPM associate director for communications.
“We are considering adding a quick tip in front of all our Pest Notes,” she said. “Then if they want more information, they can link to the three- to six-page publication.”