key sites
sites managed by FAO
The International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology(AGRIS/CARIS)
AGRIS, the international information system for the agricultural sciences and technology, was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1974, to facilitate information exchange and to identify world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture. AGRIS is a cooperative system: participating centres input references to the literature produced within their boundaries and, in return, draw on the information provided by the other participants.
The system collects bibliographic references (to date, about 3 million) to either conventional (journal articles, books) or non-conventional materials (sometimes called "grey literature" e.g. theses, reports, etc.), not available through ordinary commercial channels. One of the main reasons for AGRIS' existence is to encourage the exchange of information among developing countries, whose literature would not be covered by other international systems.
Agricultural Ontology Service project (The AOS Project)
The goals of the AOS are realised by assisting community partners in building ontologies. An ontology is a system that contains terms, the definitions of those terms, and the specification of relationships among those terms. It can be thought of as an enhanced thesaurus-it provides all the basic relationships inherent in a thesaurus, plus it defines and enables the creation of more formal, more specific and more powerful relationships. An ontology captures and structures the knowledge in a domain, and by doing so captures the meaning of concepts that are specific to that domain. This meaning is then extended to end-users through the use of tools (e.g., indexing, retrieval) that apply the ontologies.
webpages on the creation of metadata
The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative is an open forum engaged in the development of interoperable online metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI's activities include consensus-driven working groups, global workshops, conferences, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices.
Ongoing efforts of DCMI participants include the collaborative development and continual refinement of metadata conventions based on research and feedback between DCMI Working Groups. Anyone wishing to participate may do so by simply joining the appropriate mailing list for the working group activity of interest. The DC-General mailing list is the general forum for community participation and for submitting general feedback.
E-Journals publishing articles on metadata
ARIADNE is targeted principally at information science professionals in academia, and also to interested lay people both in and beyond the higher education community. The principal goal of ARIADNE is to "report on information service developments, information networking issues and current digital library initiatives worldwide.
D-Lib Magazine is a solely electronic publication with "a primary focus on digital library research and development, including but not limited to new technologies, applications, and contextual social and economic issues. The primary goal of the magazine is timely and efficient information exchange for the digital library community". Typing in the keyword "Metadata" to the search box on the cover page, the reader will find hundreds of relevant articles published to date. The full contents of the magazine, including all back issues, are available free of charge at the D-Lib web site as well as multiple mirror sites around the world.
The Journal of Digital Information is supported by the British Computer Society and Oxford University Press. It published its first papers in April 1997, when it was one of very few electronic-only journals. It continues as an electronic-only journal today. Not all papers can be printed. JoDI has over 3500 registered users who have signed up to receive email alerts of new issues.
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