The Internet, with mobile phones, are revolutionizing the ways we communicate, and how we can share, access and exchange information. Each workshop and conference, each Google alert and newsfeed, each social networking web service reveals more and more of the diversity and richness of the information that surrounds us.We can access more agricultural information than ever before ... or can we? Despite the best efforts of the open access movement, digging deeper for specific research information, for example, reveals many reports and articles to be much less accessible than we would hope, data that are tricky to identify and obtain, and much knowledge embedded in people and networks.Access to agricultural information is limited in various ways, including:articles published in commercial...
Yesterday a small group of aginfo enthusiasts met at Wageningen UR to exchange experiences on the ways they make their information more accessible. It offered a rich insight into some practicalities of becoming ‘truly accessible’ – as the CIARD initiative calls on us to be.IAALD Board member Barbara Hutchinson opened, explaining AgNIC’s ‘born digital’ and ‘re-born digital’ initiatives that aim to provide “persistent long-term access" to the research outputs of US agricultural research and extension. She particularly highlighted the issue of ‘link rot’ – where after even a short period, many web resources can no longer be found via their URL. See her presentation.Ingeborg Nagel and Harry Heemskerk introduced ‘Search4Dev’ a new repository that the Royal...
Yesterday's meeting on aginfo accessibility was a good opportunity to hear more about experiences in this area of Wageningen UR.Hugo Besemer shared experiences with two projects: ‘Wageningen Yield' (see also earlier story) and ‘Groen Kennisnet’ – or ‘green knowledge net.’It seems that the Wageningen repository is now rather complete – they collect and index all resources created by WUR staff, even if they can’t yet make them all publicly accessible (due to license restrictions etc). For some other organizations, like the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, whose web site content management system changes often, WUR maintains an accessible ‘e-store’ of full text documents, giving them each a permanent address on the web.According to Besemer, the key to success so far is the...
At yesterday's informal meeting on 'Making Agricultural Information Available and Accessible,'Wilma Roem explained how the LEISA repository of ILEIA and its 6 partner organizations works to make accessible the practical information on sustainable agriculture they have created in the past 25 years. Through the www.leisa.info website, they make accessible a repository of 4100 full text multilingual articles from the journals published by the network partners (located in different parts of the world). This is both the recent ‘born digital’ material as well as older content that has been ‘re-born digital’ through digitization.Their repository contains full text documents in PDF and html formats; they encourage translation and re-use of the content, they recently introduced RSS feeds...
In Yesterday's small meeting in Wageningen, we discussed ways to make information more accessible.What were some take away messages from the presentations and discussion?1. A fundamental challenge is for each organization to provide or guarantee permanent access to their own outputs, the publicly funded ones at least. When URL’s change, we can of course search for their new locations. But isn’t there a responsibility of ‘publishers’ to give their content permanent addresses? The model where WUR provides a de facto permanent national archive of Dutch agricultural outputs – through its e-store - is perhaps interesting to explore elsewhere. Even as organizations re-vamp their web sites, moving and even deleting outputs, they all remain accessible in one reliable location.2. Even...
Wageningen, 13 November 200810:30 – 12:30 Wageningen UR Library and IAALD are pleased to hold an informal roundtable for people and organizations involved with agricultural & natural resources information in an international context. It will focus on efforts to make documents and other information resources truly accessible. Barbara Hutchinson (Assistant to the Director, University of Arizona Agricultural Experiment Station, will report on “born digital / reborn digital repositories” in the USA. Following Barbara, several colleagues from organizations in the Netherlands will report on similar initiatives:• KIT (Ingeborg Nagel, Harry Heemskerk)• ISRIC / WUR (Ger Naber)• ILEIA (Wilma Roem)• WUR / Wageningen Yield” (Hugo Besemer / Hubert Krekels)• WUR / “Groen...
In July 2008, the IAALD Africa chapter organised a workshop to examine the emerging field of e-agriculture and review specific cases of e-agriculture initiatives in Africa and their impact on sharing, managing and delivery of agricultural information and knowledge services. The report lists some issues raised during the meeting. See e-agriculture.org portal for more on this topic / see related posts on this...
On the e-agriculture.org web site, a report from the e-Agriculture panel at the recent IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Congress.“How can we make agricultural information and information technology truly accessible?” This question was put forward by Peter Ballantyne, IAALD President, on the first day of the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA World Conference 2008.On the final day of the conference, the challenge was taken up by an e-Agriculture participatory panel discussion facilitated by FAO focusing on multi-stakeholder partnerships and the roles of mobile phones in support of agricultural development.There was a lively debate focusing on issues of ICT as enablers in various critical areas of development, as well as the role of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in support of e-Agriculture.Read the...
Atsugi, Japan, 25 August 2008. This morning, the World Conference on Agricultural Information and IT was officially opened. IAALD President Peter Ballantyne welcomed participants, warmly welcoming them to this 12th World Congress of IAALD.At the end of his remars, see below, he posed participants an ‘Atsugi Question’: “How can we make agricultural information and IT truly accessible?” - asking people to reflect on this and share their thoughts during the congress.text of the remarks by Peter Ballantyne:"The first IAALD world congress was held in 1955 in Belgium. Since then, IAALD has held world congresses in Germany, the USA, France, Mexico, the Philippines, Canada, Hungary, Australia, Senegal, and the USA. In 2010, we will return to France.This is the first time that IAALD has...
Atsugi, Japan, 24 August: Participants from around the world have started arriving in the small city of Atsugi, south of Tokyo for the 12th IAALD World Congress. Co-sponsored by AFITA, local organizers from JAALD and JSAI have been busy with last minute arrangements at the conference venue, the Tokyo University of Agriculture.Today starts with several pre-congress workshops:Adoption of ICT Enabled Information Systems for Agricultural DevelopmentImage Management: Finding and Using Images on the WebDesigning Food Management and Security SystemGeo-ICT and Sensor Network Technology and ApplicationsIn an effort to make some of the congress discussions more accessible to the wider community, this blog, and other web spaces, will carry regular news and updates from the congress. Look across the...
On 26 August, CTA will organise a special session at the upcoming IAALD/AFITA World Congress in Japan.As a result of geographical isolation, poor communication facilities and limited purchasing power, many people working in agricultural development in ACP countries are unaware of the opportunities and resources that are potentially available to support agricultural development in ACP countries.This is particularly true in the fast moving field of ICTs which is heavily impacting on agriculture and shows great promise for ACP states. In recent years, for instance, technological advances coupled with falling prices in hardware have led to the appearance and increasing availability of low cost mobile computers (such as the XO “$ 100” laptop from OLPC), affordable wireless connectivity...
IAALD's Africa Chapter recently launched a completely renewed web site. The site introduces the chapter's activities, leadership, and priorities. The first call for proposals for the Chapter's 2009 conference in Ghana is also...
At USAIN's 2008 conference, Peter Young and colleagues gave an update on recent developments at the National Agricultural Library.He introduced 'Blueprint for Success: The National Agricultural Library 2008-2012' - a staff discussion paper that, according to Young explains "what it is that NAL's programmes are about." It responds to the question "what do you [the NAL] need ..." to revitalize and sustain the library and its services into the future. The paper is "meant to stimulate discussion, evoke critical comment and spark debate about NAL’s future."The starting premise of the team writing the report is that "information consumers, whether USDA staff worldwide or the Nation’s citizens, now expect easy and seamless access to digital content and personalized services. They demand...
What are you reading? What are the most popular blog and feed stories on this site? As part of our efforts to understand and track the use of this blog and its primary RSS feed, we dived into Google Analytics (see related posting on the basic metrics).The top twenty most viewed blog postings in 2007 and 2008 are:IAALD World Congress 2008e-Agriculture Week in RomeThe agricultural information specialist of the future?Conference: Participatory Web for DevelopmentICT and Agriculture sessions at WITFOR 2007Analyzing agricultural ICT projects in IndiaUSAIN 2008 ConferencePlanning Iran's agricultural Information SystemLifelong learning with farmers in Madurai, South IndiaAgricultural knowledge and development in a new age and a different worldWeb 2.0 for participatory development: Notes from...
In September 2006, we published a posting on IAALD blog metrics and use. We were proud to record 7,851 unique visitors and 18,500 page loads in the first year. How are we doing now?For this blog in 2007, 'StatCounter' recorded 36,000 page loads and 12,800 unique visitors (28,800 page loads and 10,800 visitors in 2006).Our RSS feeds and email alerts (that combine the blog posts with del.icio.us tagged items) were viewed 78,800 times in 2007, generating 2,500 clickthroughs to news items (this is sure rise in 2008 as we already recorded 22,000 views and 3,000 clickthroughs!).What are you reading? See the most viewed blog postings and feed items (at April 2008).Where are visitors coming from?ClusterMaps shows a truly global readership, except China, large chunks of Russia and Brazil, and some...
The IAALD Africa Chapter Board has been busy planning activities for its members and partners.On 14 July, 2008, it organizes a one-day 'Seminar on Meeting Information and Knowledge Needs of Farmers in Africa Through e-Agriculture'. Part of the SCECSAL meeting in Zambia, up to 50 participants are expected. Also this year, the Chapter is planning a session at the upcoming IAALD World Congress in Japan. Contact Chapter President Justin Chisenga for more information.Preliminary planning has also started for the IAALD Africa regional conference to be held in Ghana, 13 – 17 July 2009. Mark you agendas!IAALD's Africa Chapter was launched in Nairobi in May...
These days, India is a ‘boomtown’ of information and communication initiatives in agriculture and rural development. Mobile phones are fast reaching rural areas, phone centres are available in towns and villages, and government, private companies and civil society are experimenting with ways that information and communication technologies (ICTs) including the Internet can be used to benefit farmers and rural communities (see www.i4donline.net).One of the most interesting of these initiatives is happening near Madurai in southern India. Here, farmer associations, self-help groups, NGOs, Internet kiosks, banks, agricultural colleges, and international groups – like the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) – have come together to harness information, knowledge and ICTs for agricultural...
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From 24 to 27 August 2008, IAALD will co-organize the World Conference on Agricultural Information 2008. Co-sponsored with AFITA and WCCA, the congress theme is "the Agricultural Information Community of the future: Progress, Development, Partnerships."
This 12th World Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, the 6th World Congress on Computers in...
The CTA Knowledge for Development portal recently published some stories about information and communication management (ICM) experiences in some ACP countries.
Noteworthy are the articles by Rachel Rege and Roger Day. Roger argues that Information and Communication Management) and knowledge management usually have three main components: people, processes and technology. While "modern ICTs provide many opportunities", it is the people component of ICM that is the most important, supported by processes and technology."
Rachel suggests that the three main ICM challenges (and the solutions) are:
How to improve dissemination of research to and communication with policymakers
Strengthen research communication skills (in order to get the target right, get the format right and get the timing...
We've now been circulating news and updates using the blog for just over a year. For anyone who might be interested, here are some basic metrics on usage.
We began recording statistics on 26 August 2005, since then 7,851 unique visitors (21/day) recorded 18,500 page loads. Since early 2006, we've seen a large increase in daily use, averaging some 70 visitors per day (a high of 581 on 17 July!).
In terms of geographic origin, 'top' countries are the USA (23%), Netherlands (6%), New Caledonia (5.6%), the UK (5%), Australia (4.7%), the Philippines (4%), India (3.8%), Canada (3.1%), and Kenya (3%). You can view a 'map' of the visitors.
The most popular individual stories have been:
IAALD Africa launched in Nairobi
Workshop: Ontology-based knowledge discovery
World Congress on...
Hilda Munyua and colleagues recently compiled a summary report (pdf format) of the First IAALD Africa conference held in Nairobi in May 2006.
The report pulls together the main discussion points and issues from each of the sessions as well as from the various pre-conference workshops. It concludes by stating that the "conference objectives were fully achieved and delegates shared and exchanged experiences, ideas and best practices. A number of training sessions were held during the pre-conference workshops on various aspects of information and knowledge management. A number of decisions were taken with a view to helping to improve access to agricultural information to all the different categories of users. Furthermore, networking took place and relationships were established and...
In a small ceremony today, IAALD Africa members attending the 2006 conference elected an interim executive committee to take the plans of the association forward. The 90 African members attending the week-long conference elected officers to the Chapter and charged them to set out activities and plans, define appropriate follow up steps to issues discussed at the conference, and generally establish the Chapter.
The Executive Commmittee members are: Justin Chisenga (FAO, President), Joseph Kiplang'at (Moi University, Vice-President), Dady Demby (CORAF, Vice President), Gracian Chimwaza (ITOCA, Secretary), Hilda Munyua (Kenya, Treasurer), Rosaline Njike (Cameroon, Member), Elvira Timba (Mozambique, Member), Dickson Baguma (Uganda, Member), and Mamoun Mohamed (Sudan, Member).
The conference...