ISO 25964-2 Published

ISO 25964-2 deals with interoperability between thesauri and other vocabularies, especially the principles and practice of mapping between them. Interoperability is defined as the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information, and to use the information that has been exchanged. The overall focus of ISO 25964 is on thesauri, and with the exception of terminologies, comparable standards do not exist for the other vocabulary types. Rather than try to standardize them, Part 2 deals only with interoperability between these and thesauri. You can read the entire press release at: http://nkos.slis.kent.edu/PressReleaseISO25964-2.pdf 

Early Registration Open for the IVth IAALD World Congress

Early registration is now open for the IAALD IVth World Congress.  Join in the conversation about "Emerging Priorities for Scientific and Technical Information" in a three day conference in beautiful upstate New York in the USA.  The conference will run from July 21-24, 2013 and is hosted by Cornell University. Register now and save money.  Early registration ends April 15th.

Open Access Week@AIMS

As part of the CIARD Movement, AIMS is organizing a series of webinars on the theme Making Agricultural Research Information Publicly Available and Accessible during Open Access Week 2012 . Seven webinars will be held from Tuesday, October 23 until Friday, October 26 and will include Jean-Claude Guédon and Alma Swan who will focus on the status of Open Access in the agricultural domain and Open Access policy developments. Wouter Gerritsma will talk about value-added services for the Wageningen Institutional Repository and Enrica Porcari will highlight the experience of CGIAR. The event will close with 3 webinars consisting each of 3 short presentations talking about respectively "Promotion of Open Access", "Search Engines for Open Access Web Resources" and "Digital Repository Development Use Cases". You can find the complete scedule at: at the program website. The event is being co-sponsored by FAO, GFAR, IAALD, and IICA.

Call for Proposals: 14th World Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD)

The 14th IAALD World Congress programming committee is seeking proposals for papers, posters and interactive workshops. This year’s conference, Emerging Priorities for Scientific and Agricultural Information," will be held July 22-24, 2013 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Submissions are due by December 1st, 2012.

Papers and Posters: Those wishing to present a paper or a poster should submit an abstract in English (maximum 300 words) online at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iaald13 (new users of the EasyChair software program will need to sign up for a free account).

Proposals should be tagged with at least two and up to five keywords from the provided tags. At least three additional author keywords are also required.

Interactive Workshops: The programming committee is also interested in hearing proposals for 2 hour hands-on workshops to be given at the conference. If you have expertise on a topic you think would benefit conference attendees and would like to lead a workshop, please submit a description in English (maximum 300 words) online at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iaald13 (new users of the EasyChair software program will need to sign up for a free account).

Authors will be informed of decisions on their proposals by January 15, 2013. All authors will be expected to give their papers, posters, and workshops in person at the IAALD World Congress. Scholarship information will be forthcoming.

Questions? Please email Jim Morris-Knower at iaald@cornell.edu

IAALD 14th World Congress Seeking Reviewers

The 14th IAALD World Congress programming committee is seeking proposal reviewers! This year’s conference is Emerging Priorities for Scientific and Agricultural Information.

Each reviewer will be expected to participate in the blind-submission process by reading submissions and provide a recommendation for acceptance. The review process will begin on December 1, 2012 and conclude on January 5, 2013.

If you are interested, please e-mail Jim Morris-Knower at iaald@cornell.edu.

US National Agricultural Library Changes its Collection Policies

The US National Agricultural Library (NAL) announced it is changing how it develops its collection by shifting its emphasis to creating and acquiring digital items.

Library customers’ desire for fast online access to content and NAL’s goal of serving more customers nation-wide, coupled with declining use of print items, is charting a path toward digital items and away from print. Continued belt-tightening is also requiring the library to critically consider how best to spend its budget.

The complete story can be found at the NAL website.

D-Lib magazine features effective use of scientific publications

The July/August 2012 issue of D-Lib Magazine is devoted to a single topic: making more effective use of traditional scientific publications. The topics range from automatic metadata extraction for individual articles to automatically characterizing collections to automatic browsing hierarchy creation to innovative visualization techniques for navigating collections.

D-Lib is open access.

New issue of Agricultural Information Worldwide is now available

The latest issue of Agricultural Information Worldwide, an international journal for information specialists in agriculture, natural resources and the environment,is now available.

The issue contains articles on researchers' publishing habits, information projects in Latin America and the Solomon Islands and use of extension information in Nigeria. The journal is published by IAALD and the contents and abstracts are freely accessible; articles are restricted to IAALD members and require a log in ID.

Information on IAALD membership can be found on the IAALD website.

Plans progressing for next IAALD World Congress to be held in 2013

The XIVth IAALD World Congress will be held at Cornell University July 22-24, 2013 in Ithaca, New York USA.

Plans are progressing for the conference and registration information will be available by the end of the summer.  To follow the development of the conference go the the website . Questions can be directed to the conference committee.  Watch this interview with  Jaron Porciello, conference chair.

Empowering farmers in India through video: Interview with Rikin Gandhi

The Agrilinks blog at USAID has an interview with Rikin Gandhi - CEO of Digital Green.

According to the interview, "the unique components of the Digital Green system include:

1. a participatory process for local video production,
2. a human-mediated instruction model for video dissemination and training,
3. a hardware and software technology platform for exchanging data in areas with limited Internet and electrical grid connectivity, and
4. an iterative model to progressively better address the needs and interests of the community with analytical tools and interactive phone-based feedback channels."