 Avano is harvesting FAODOC full text documents
28 April 2008 - Avano, a marine and aquatic sciences OAI harvester, now offers access to electronic resources about marine and aquatic sciences. The resources available in Avano come from the OAI harvesting of over 200 Open Archives and a number of commercial editors. The first harvesting was done in batch mode producing a legacy subset on marine and aquatic sciences subjects from FAODOC (only full text documents) in XML DC format. The initially loaded subset includes 4644 legacy FAODOC records that are searchable using Avano search engine. The next harvesting of FAODOC by Avano is expected shortly and will be executed automatically. This project is part of the Open Access international movement which aims at making scientific documentation accessible to a broad public through free publishing on the Web.
E-Conference on Agricultural Learning Repositories has started!
23 April 2008 - The AgLR 2008 e-Conference aims to initiate dialogue around the topic of Agricultural Learning Resources, involving organizations and individuals that are active in the field of agricultural learning repositories. The workshop is supported and promoted by the Agricultural Learning Repositories Task Force (AgLR-TF) which has been created to help make available online, on a global scale, collections of learning resources that are on topics essential for the development and welfare of agricultural and rural populations around the world. Its aim is to take advantage of the experience of stakeholders that are already involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories. These stakeholders can promote and share their experience (in the form of guidance, standards, technologies, tools, recommendations, and good practices) in a variety of topics. The e-Conference, which lasts five weeks, will be an electronically facilitated event.
AGROVOC in Slovak has been recently updated!
1 April 2008 - The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus in Slovak has now been updated on the AIMS web site. The Slovak version was released in 2005 by ÚVTIP in Slovakia, and contains more than 25799 agricultural related terms. Any inquiries regarding the Slovak version of AGROVOC should be directed to Jozef Bartko (bartko@uvtip.sk) or Mária Debrecéniová (debreceniova@uvtip.sk).
Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) returns to AGRIS!
31 March 2008 - The Center for International Forestry Research has recently submitted over 650 records for inclusion in the AGRIS Repository. The records, available now in XML format, cover the period of 2004-2007. This return to AGRIS is made possible by the AGRIS Application Profile, a standard which promotes sharing of metadata in XML format in a platform independent manner. These records also make an essential part of the Global Forestry Information Service which aggregates Forestry related information from different partners.
[New Publication] D7.1.2 Revised specifications of user requirements for the Fisheries case study
26 March 2008 - This document revises and updates the user requirements for the Fisheries case study (WP7). Its purpose is to refine the user requirements for WP7 and to enhance the alignment of the case study with the NeON project better contributing to it as a whole.
[New Publication] D 7.4.1 Software architecture for managing the Fisheries ontologies lifecycle
25 March 2008 - This document describes the software architecture for implementing a system for managing the fisheries ontologies lifecycle, cornerstone of WP7. The lifecycle described in this deliverable is an instantiation of the possible lifecycles that can be carried out with the NeOn toolkit. The document is also an extension and refinement of D7.1.1 in terms of requirements that should be fulfilled by the general NeOn lifecycle management support.
[New Publication] Results from Experiments in Ontology Learning including Evaluation and Recommendation
19 March 2008 - This document describes the Ontology Learning experiments performed to recommend a set of ontology learning techniques enhancing the ontology engineering process in the fisheries domain at Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Experiments have been conceived in the wider context of the Work Package 7 (WP7) of the NeOn Project. The main contribution of this document to WP7 is a set of best practices exploiting semi-automatic technique to acquire knowledge either from domain specific documents or existing ontologies. The basic criterion for success indication adopted is the reduction of the development time required for the Ontology Engineering process. The document also addresses the following issues: description of the state of the art in ontology learning; set up of an evaluation case study in the fisheries domain; identification of suitable techniques which can be profitably applied to fit the user's requirements; provision of a set of recommendations indicating the most reliable techniques to be included in the ontology engineering lifecycle.
AGROVOC in Japanese has been recently updated!
18 March 2008 - The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus in Japanese has now been updated on the AIMS web site. The Japanese version was released in 2005 by the Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries Research Information Center (AFFRIC), Japan, and contains more than 38659 agricultural related terms. Any inquiries regarding the Japanese version of AGROVOC should be directed to Akane Takezaki (ric@affrc.go.jp).
AGROVOC local version in Turkish is on its way!
17 March 2008 - The Turkish National AGRIS/CARIS Center in Turkey, has taken up the responsibility for the translation of AGROVOC in Turkish. This project, coordinated by Yasemin Cevik from the Publication Department of Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (AGRIS Center), uses the AGROVOC maintenance tool to produce the translated version of the AGROVOC Thesaurus. The release of AGROVOC in Turkish is planned for the end of 2010.
E-learning Course on Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques from the EC-FAO Food Security Programme
12 March 2008 - The EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme has released a new e-learning course entitled “Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques”. The course was produced in collaboration with Overseas Development Institute's (ODI) Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) Programme and Women Thrive Worldwide. The course consists of 3 lessons, of approximately 45 to 90 minutes each, for a total of about 3 hours of self-paced instruction.
ODI RAPID provided materials for the lesson “Techniques for improving collaborative work” which presents a wide range of collaboration tools and techniques for strengthening group work, shared thinking and learning. The lesson also includes a set of printable practical guides about each of the techniques presented.
Women Thrive Worldwide provided materials for a lesson on “Advocacy” that describes the advocacy process and various strategies for influencing different audience groups.
A third lesson, “Deciding on a collaborative assessment”, illustrates the advantages and disadvantages of conducting collaborative assessments, and describes the process for developing a collaborative work plan.
As with previous e-learning courses offered by the EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme, the interactive self-paced learning lessons are accompanied by job-aids, methodological guidelines and case studies which demonstrate real life applications of the concepts and procedures being taught. A set of PowerPoint slides, handouts and exercises, which can be easily customized by trainers to help develop their own face to face training are also available.
The course is available on CD and the Internet. To access this and other courses free of charge visit the Distance Learning Section of the EC-FAO Food Security Information for Action Programme website at: www.foodsec.org/dl
For more information:
e-mail: information-for-action@fao.org
[New Publication] Basic Guidelines for Managing AGROVOC: revised version now available online!
11 March 2008 - A new version of the guidelines on how to manage the multilingual thesaurus developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is now available online. The document contains resources for translations and maintenance of the thesaurus as well as instructions for the addition of new terms and the managing of relationships using both the maintenance and refinement tool. It also includes highlights on the efforts to improve the structure and semantics of AGROVOC such as the evolution from the thesaurus to what is called "Concept Server"(CS), an ontology which makes distinction between concepts and the terms used to represent those concepts.
[Request-for-comments] First draft of Language Code Ontology Published
10 March 2008 - The ontology contains languages and their mappings to ISO 639 -1 and ISO 639-2 codes. The ontology is available in English and French. Please send your comments and feedback to fao-agris-caris@fao.org.
Participate in a Special Online Forum: "Making e-Agriculture Work through Public Private Partnership (PPP) in Asia" to be held 10-28 March 2008
9 March 2008 - A Global Knowledge Partnership Event
e-agriculture.org will host a special online forum on the Role of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) starting 10 March 2008. Sponsored by Katalyst and FAO. Moderated by Katalyst, a multi-donor funded market development project implemented by Swisscontact, the Swiss Foundation for Technical Cooperation and co-implemented by GTZ-International Services.
Subject Matter experts:
M. Asaduzzaman, Research Director, Agriculture and Rural Development, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Bangladesh
Amit Dasgupta, General Manager, IBM Global Services India
Philip DesAutels, Academic Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation
Naimur Rahman, Director, OneWorld South Asia
Sunit Shrestha, Director, TNR Institute, Thailand
Moderated by:
Manish Pandey, Deputy General Manager of Katalyst, Bangladesh
Michael Riggs, Information Management Specialist, FAO
Charlotte Masiello-Riome, World Summit on the Information Society Communications Focal Point, e-agriculture and e-agriculture.org Coordinator
Go to Http://www.e-agriculture.org to register for the Forum Community, if you haven't already done so.
1st Call for Papers: Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgroLT 2008)
18 February 2008 - In the field of agricultural education, specifications and standards produced in the area of agricultural learning technologies have not yet been widely adopted and implemented. Sharing, preserving and reusing learning information among a large number of different systems and repositories would not only lead to wider dissemination of learning technology standards for educational applications but also help reaching a potential consensus of related work by comparing and harmonizing similar/competing approaches. The aim of the AgroLT 2008 Workshop is to bring together researchers and implementers that are working on the design and development of technology-enhanced learning systems and services to support the needs of the agricultural and rural communities. Its objective is to serve as a discussion forum where interested experts will present the results of their work and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects outlining the potential of the agricultural domain as an application field for learning technologies. For more information please visit related Web site.
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