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Making the Most of What We do Best - Agriculture Network Information Center - AgNIC

Making the Most of What We do Best - Agriculture Network Information Center - AgNIC. Melanie Gardner AgNIC Coordinator Http://www.agnic.org National Agricultural Library SIDALC 10 th Anniversary Meeting September 2009. 15 years ago ….

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Making the Most of What We do Best - Agriculture Network Information Center - AgNIC

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  1. Making the Most of What We do Best - Agriculture Network Information Center - AgNIC Melanie Gardner AgNIC Coordinator Http://www.agnic.org National Agricultural Library SIDALC 10th Anniversary Meeting September 2009

  2. 15 years ago … • 26 individuals from 12 universities, government, private and international met to discuss how to manage all the agricultural information on the Internet • Questions asked: • What exactly were they talking about? • How should they divide up this responsibility? • Who would take the lead? • What would be the model?

  3. “Agriculture Network Information Center” • AgNIC would be the framework • Designed around “centers of excellence” approach • Would provide “seamless access to distributed sources of agricultural information, subject experts, and other resources”

  4. Goals: • Identify major collections of agriculture-related information, subject area experts, and other resources • Facilitate access to and retrieval from these resources • Encourage organizations to collaborate in creating and using the AgNIC, while retaining ownership and responsibility for their own agriculture-related information contributed to AgNIC. • Leverage the distributed character of the Internet to ensure that workload and responsibility are distributed across participating member sites and to use the expertise available • Provide a test bed for learning, experimenting, and gaining experience in Network Information Center (NIC) operations • Facilitate collaboration between people within the broad agricultural community

  5. Scope of Participation • Began with U.S. Land Grant Universities • Libraries and extension – Information organizers & information creators – Perfect! • Ultimately include many elements of the public and private sectors of the agricultural community

  6. So what exactly *IS* AgNIC? • AgNIC is a “big tent” alliance based on a center of excellence approach - working to bring quality agricultural information and expertise to Internet users • Augments what institutions are already doing • Builds a bridge between experts and libraries • Utilizes existing support systems • AgNIC has a strong library presence & we believe stewardship is at the core of our work • Partners take a slice of agriculture – blueberries, swine, beef cattle, aquaculture, etc. • That idea is being challenged because the web, technology, and capabilities have changed. • We are now considering other options for participation • Helps individual institutions highlight and promote their areas of expertise

  7. National/International Initiative • GOAL: • To provide immediate access to a broad base of agricultural research and practical information using a distributed Web-based retrieval system developed and maintained by an alliance of land-grant universities, the National Agricultural Library, and other interested organizations

  8. Benefits • Network of over 80 information and subject specialists • Over 60 topics covered comprehensively – with reference services in those topics • Reduces redundancy of effort • Open access full-text & web-based resources • Global participation • Potential technology platform to launch a collaborative site to get things rolling • Potential mirroring of web sites and services

  9. What DO we do best? • FIND information and resources • SHARE information • HELP connect our users with what they need • ORGANIZE information • COLLABORATE • These are the essentials for AgNIC

  10. How to participate? • Identify what you do best • Examples: • Know about all the experts in area of cacao and make a list of those • Have lists of all banana associations, exporters, and experts • Have identified potato databases, major research projects, and research center • Have a web page listing country contacts for agricultural products imports and exports • Have digital theses of arid agricultural practices and research • Web page on guava

  11. To Participate … • Identify how to get this information to the user • Your institutional web site? • AgNIC? • Blip.tv, Flickr, UTube?, SlideShare, other • The AgNIC goal is to get information to users – we like to help each other do what do what we do best.

  12. Connecting with Latin America and Beyond • Sharing hemispheric information is critical • Sharing expertise makes our jobs easier • Sharing training helps build capacity • Sharing technology helps those with lower capacity to find a “voice” • Getting the right information to the user helps make our countries better

  13. Questions?¿Preguntas? Contact: Melanie Gardner melanie.gardner@ars.usda.gov http://www.agnic.org

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