DOCUMENTATION AND AGRIS HISTORY

1
DOCUMENTATION AND AGRIS HISTORY
2
AGRIS ORIGIN

• In 1975, FAO set up AGRIS to improve access and
  exchange of information on agriculture
• The largest cooperative information system in the
  world
• Steady dynamic development over its history
• In 1989, it became a component of WAICENT, FAOs
  gateway via the Internet

3
Languages of Original Documents

• - 58 English- 8 French- 7 German- 7
  Spanish- 4 Japanese- 3 Italian- 3 Russian-
  2 Portuguese- 8 others

4
Composition of the AGRIS database

• - 75 journal articles- 18 monographs- 6
  conferences papers- 1 others
• - 16 refer to non-conventional literature
  (not commercially available)- 21 include
  abstracts

5
AGRIS NEW VISION

• In 2000, a new vision to help move AGRIS to
  become a worldwide distributed open access
  resource on agricultural information

6
AGRIS NEW APPROACH

• emphasis on decentralized actions
• diversity of participating organizations
• not just one official focal point per country
• greater attention to capacity building
• focus on full text documents
• a set of web-enabled standards and tools

7
AGRIS INITIATIVES

• standards to support more effective information
  content capture and exchange
• IMARK e-learning initiative
• self-learning information management modules

8
AGRIS RESOURCES

• All relevant material published within the
  national territory in the field of agriculture
• The content should be of general interest and the
  publications should be obtainable.

9
DONT INCLUDE

• Short lived information
• Restricted or confidential materials
• Local news
• Legislations on local subjects of short duration
  (decrees of officers or prices)
• Local agreements
• Text books on basic sciences
• Advertisements
• Non original or repetitive materials in popular
  Journals
• Reprints of Journal articles

10
BUT INCLUDE

• Short articles on taxonomic description
• A case study
• Notes on projects in progress
• Obituaries of outstanding scholars
• Editorials, letters to editors, regular columns,
  opening speeches in meetings
• Literature produced for extension worker

11
AGRIS SCOPE

• Has been extended to include all forms of
  electronic publishing
• Is increasing to cover specialized and relevant
  local information
• The current format can be used for storing
  information in XML, RD and relational databases.

12
AGRIS AP CONCEPT

• a type of metadata schema
• consists of data elements drawn from one or more
  namespaces DCMES and AgMES
• specifies the cardinality and data-typing
  information
• specifies the application-specific schemes and
  controlled list values

13
AGRIS AP ADVANTAGES

• providing the AGRIS audience with information of
  high quality with medium complexity
• providing a standardized format for the exchange
  of bibliographic information
• providing information in XML/RDF(RESOURCE
  DISCRIPTION FRAMWORK) formats or to be easily
  exposed for multi-host searches

14
ESSENTIAL DEFINITIONS

• Element a unit of data or metadata. The element
  allows us to give more information about the
  described information
• Element Refinement An element qualifier makes
  the meaning of an element either narrower or more
  specific
• Encoding Scheme An encoding scheme aids in the
  interpretation of the value of an element

15
CHANGES IN AGRIS AP

• Many changes have been incorporated into the new
  AP
• Many rules are not included into the new
  guidelines
• AGRIS AP takes the role of an exchange format.
  Its emphasis is more on metadata exchange
• Provides best recommended practices on
  cataloguing