1. Introduction

The first COAIM (Consultation on Agricultural Information Management), held in June 2000 recognized that AGRIS should become “a key enabler and catalyst to establish a new model of agricultural information management”. Furthermore, it was agreed that FAO [1] should develop AGRIS into a capacity building initiative as well as an information system. The AGRIS network now has 201 Resource Centres, which vary in their resources and level of participation in the network, and opportunities exist to improve the effectiveness of the initiative through enhanced collaboration.

A proposal for a new metadata standard for AGRIS reference was presented at COAIM 2002. This paper is a result of the evaluations made during COAIM 2002. It defines a set of high quality metadata on scientific and technical papers, and is directed at improving accessibility of materials on the Web. The standard also covers the necessary metadata for retrieving publications that are available only in paper format or that have restricted access.

The AGRIS Application Profile (AGRIS AP) is a metadata standard created specifically to enhance the description, exchange and subsequent retrieval of agricultural Document-Like Information Objects (DLIOs). It is a metadata schema which draws elements from well known Metadata standards such as Dublin Core (DC), Australian Government Locator Service Metadata (AGLS) and Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AgMES) namespaces. It allows sharing of information across dispersed bibliographic systems and provides guidelines on recommended best practices for cataloguing and subject indexing. The AGRIS AP is a major step towards exchanging high-quality and medium-complex metadata in an application independent format.

The AGRIS AP is based on the Dublin Core Elements and Qualifiers [2], the Agricultural Metadata Element Set [3], and the Australian Government Locator Service Metadata Set [4].

This document provides the best practices on the description of the AGRIS AP elements.

1.1 Goals and Objectives

The goal of the AGRIS Application Profile (AGRIS AP) is to facilitate interoperability of metadata formats currently in use to enable linking of various types of agricultural information, therefore allowing users to perform cross-searches and other value added services. This approach would also facilitate the harvesting of data from participating countries; with the application of the AGRIS AP model, this harvesting process could be automated.

The expected benefits of AGRIS AP are:

• a common format for exchange and description of information resources within the current AGRIS network;
• a standard data model for bibliographic description of resources in the domain of agriculture, covering publications in different areas of the domain such as Fishery, Forestry, etc.;
• different communities being able to access and re-use existing application profile schema and to establish a common format for homogenizing results on a search interface derived from parallel searching of heterogeneous archives, i.e. the AGRIS Multi-host Server;
• harvesting of metadata from data sources within and beyond the domain of agriculture; and
• a common approach to sharing information between applications and standards makers, while promoting interoperability between systems.

1.2 Methodology

The strategy and methodology adopted to formulate the AGRIS AP involved the following:

• Development of a conceptual map of the different types of information resources used in the AGRIS application.
• Remodelling of the AGRIS data model to meet current information needs (such as description of Web pages and databases).
• Evaluation of standards and common resource description practices, mainly using the Dublin Core Metadata Element set (DCMES) and the Agricultural Metadata Element Set (AgMES).
• Mapping of currently used elements to the available element pool from DCMES and AgMES.
• Proposing the unavailable elements and schemes to be included in the AgMES.
• Coding of the application profile schema into XML DTD, and studying of implementation results and problems for further enhancements and/or amendments.