Structured Metadata for Direct Resource Location: A Case Study

This paper proposes that for scientific and technical information resources, a well-structured and high-quality metadata record contains enough information to find that resource on the Internet, and as a consequence, no additional human labour is needed to create or maintain any links. Research was performed by creating a control group of records from the Online Catalogue of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and searching them in various ways in Google and Metacrawler. Based on results, this method was revised and used on the larger AGRIS database. Results showed not only that the method is successful; it is also highly useful for searching citations. A user interface is suggested, and changes to current cataloguing rules are discussed

Towards an architecture for open archive networks in Agricultural Sciences and Technology

The AGRIS Network is an international initiative based on a collaborative network of institutions, whose aim is to promote free access to information on science and technology in agriculture and related subjects. The paper illustrates how the Open Access (OA) and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) models can be used within the AGRIS Network as a means of solving the problems of dissemination and exchange of agricultural research outputs. The lack of adequate information exchange possibilities between researchers in agricultural sciences and technology represents a significant weakness limiting their ability to properly address the issues of agricultural development. The OA model promotes the dissemination of research output at international, national and regional levels thus removing the restrictions placed by the traditional scientific publishing model. This paper presents the possibility to address the accessibility, availability and interoperability issues of exchanging agricultural research output

Towards an architecture for open archive networks in Agricultural Sciences and Technology

The AGRIS Network is an international initiative based on a collaborative network of institutions, whose aim is to promote free access to information on science and technology in agriculture and related subjects. The paper illustrates how the Open Access (OA) and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) models can be used within the AGRIS Network as a means of solving the problems of dissemination and exchange of agricultural research outputs. The lack of adequate information exchange possibilities between researchers in agricultural sciences and technology represents a significant weakness limiting their ability to properly address the issues of agricultural development. The OA model promotes the dissemination of research output at international, national and regional levels thus removing the restrictions placed by the traditional scientific publishing model. This paper presents the possibility to address the accessibility, availability and interoperability issues of exchanging agricultural research output

Towards an architecture for open archive networks in Agricultural Sciences and Technology

The AGRIS Network is an international initiative based on a collaborative network of institutions, whose aim is to promote free access to information on science and technology in agriculture and related subjects. The paper illustrates how the Open Access (OA) and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) models can be used within the AGRIS Network as a means of solving the problems of dissemination and exchange of agricultural research outputs. The lack of adequate information exchange possibilities between researchers in agricultural sciences and technology represents a significant weakness limiting their ability to properly address the issues of agricultural development. The OA model promotes the dissemination of research output at international, national and regional levels thus removing the restrictions placed by the traditional scientific publishing model. This paper presents the possibility to address the accessibility, availability and interoperability issues of exchanging agricultural research output

Ontology-based Navigation of Bibliographic Metadata

This paper describes the work done within the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on providing an ontology-based navigation for the Food, Nutrition and Agriculture (FNA) Journal. The aim of the revised navigation was to provide more efficient and effective browsing of the Food and Nutrition Publications using a knowledge model to guide the user with concepts and relationships relevant to a specific subject area. With this approach, data from two different bibliographical databases was merged, unified and presented to the user with improved services. A preliminary metadata merge was needed to combine all the information into one system in order to produce a metadata-ontology. Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) was chosen to exploit semantic relationships, e.g. the possibilities of browsing the data in different ways (by keywords, categories, authors, etc.), and the creation of a multilingual concept-based advanced search

Structured Metadata for Direct Resource Location: A Case Study

This paper proposes that for scientific and technical information resources, a well-structured and high-quality metadata record contains enough information to find that resource on the Internet, and as a consequence, no additional human labour is needed to create or maintain any links. Research was performed by creating a control group of records from the Online Catalogue of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and searching them in various ways in Google and Metacrawler. Based on results, this method was revised and used on the larger AGRIS database. Results showed not only that the method is successful; it is also highly useful for searching citations. A user interface is suggested, and changes to current cataloguing rules are discussed

Generating AGRIS AP XML from local databases

This document provides detailed technical information for converting bibliographic data from local databases into valid AGRIS DTD compliant XML records. The process that is to be carried out is, to some extent, complex. However, the result will benefit the Institutions and Centres that produce bibliographic data of agricultural content, in the conversion to XML data that can be disseminated to and harvested by the AGRIS XML repository. The XML repository is aggregated, maintained, organized and made available via the Internet. The main purpose of this guide is to facilitate the conversion process thorough step-by-step instructions and to provide a list of common pitfalls

Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008) E-Conference

This report provides the summary of the discussions that took place during the Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008, http://aglr.aua.gr/econf.php) E-Conference. AgLR 2008 aimed to explore the needs and requirements of stakeholders involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories. It was organised as an electronically facilitated discussion, during April 24 – June 15, 2008. AgLR 2008 was supported and promoted by the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF, http://aglr.aua.gr)

Basic guidelines for managing AGROVOC

AGROVOC is a Multilingual Agricultural Thesaurus developed by FAO. AGROVOC was basically "born" in English, or at least was (and still is) oriented to Western-European languages (mainly EN, ES, FR). However, over the years, the need of translating it in multiple languages arose, in particular in the non-European Chinese and Arabic, as these are official FAO languages