TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Let’s say, for the sake of illustration, you want to open a nail salon in Alabama’s Butler County and need to know how many teen-aged and adult women live in Greenville and the immediate area.

In the past, you probably would have gone to the county seat or the local library and started pawing through Census records, become discouraged and given up on the idea. Now, however, thanks to the Alabama State Data Center at The University of Alabama’s business school, that information – plus a lot more – is available with only a few clicks of the computer mouse.

A new web site, called “Alabama Fact Finder,” at http://census.cba.ua.edu is now available to the Internet surfing public, thanks to the data center and UA’s Center for Business and Economic Research.

“The need for the public to have access to Census information is very important,” said Annette Watters, manager of the data center. “But in the past, it was difficult for average Alabamians to get to because they had to go to libraries and other places at a time of day when someone would be there to help find and retrieve the information. But with the advent of the Internet, a lot of things are more convenient.

“We had the idea of taking the state’s census information and making it available in such a way that people who have not had a lot of special training in obtaining and using statistical information can find it and use it.”

The result is a web site that offers easy navigation and access to all types of pertinent information by state, county, place and census tract. The site provides population characteristics, household characteristics, housing characteristics, social characteristics, income information, poverty status, employment characteristics and detailed housing information.

“We were aiming at the general public—not librarians or academics. We think our big users will be government officials, people doing research on business opportunities, students and teachers, people seeking grants, and the media,” Watters said.