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International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web (ICSD 2009)
20/5/2009
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New release of the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench: version 0.3 Beta
4/5/2009
A new release of the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench has been published! This 0.3 Beta version is still used for testing only, but it includes all AGROVOC data. AGROVOC terms have been modularized in bilingual modules: 17 modules are currently available. The new features of this release are the following: - Possibility to change ontology module with no need to re-login....

ICSD 2009: papers submission deadline extended to May 4th, 2009
Italy,  8/4/2009
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SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web (ICSD 2009)
Italy,  26/3/2009
ICSD addresses two main questions: (1) How can digital libraries support Semantic Web functionality? (2) How can Semantic Web technology improve digital libraries? Ultimately the goal is an environment in which all functionality is available to the user without the perception of different systems or system boundaries....

New version of the geopolitical ontology is now available
20/3/2009
A new version of the geopolitical ontology 0.8 (beta) has just been released....

D4Science participated in the recent FAO's Committee on Fisheries
12/3/2009

©FAO/Kyriakos KourkouliotisLast week, representatives of over 115 countries met at FAO's Rome headquarters for the 28th Session of the Committee on Fisheries (COFI)....

Open Access Week declared for 2009
9/3/2009
Popular global event extended over one week, October 19 – 23 Washington, DC – March 5, 2009 – To accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward Open Access to scholarly research results, October 19 – 23, 2009 will mark the first international Open Access Week....

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS - 3rd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'09)
Italy,  5/3/2009
SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS Special Track on Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food & Environment 3rd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'09) Milan, Italy, September 30 – October 2, 2009 http://infolab-dev.aua....

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web (ICSD 2009)
26/2/2009
ICSD addresses two main questions: (1) How can digital libraries support Semantic Web functionality? (2) How can Semantic Web technology improve digital libraries? Ultimately the goal is an environment in which all functionality is available to the user without the perception of different systems or system boundaries....

XV Inter-American Meeting for Librarians and Agricultural Information Specialists, RIBDA-2009
18/2/2009
"Technological Innovation in Open Access for Agricultural and Environmental Information” Peru, National Library, Lima - 27, 28, 29, October, 2009 http://www.aibdaperu....

FAO partners with CGIAR's ICT-KM Program on Knowledge Sharing Toolkit
9/2/2009
The Food and Agriculture Organization has become an official partner of the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit, started by the ICT-KM program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)....

AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench Verification Phase - Final Report available
27/1/2009
The final report (incl. the list of participants) of the AGROVOC CS Workbench Verification Phase which took place from 17 November to 12 December 2008 is now available at: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/011/aj983e/aj983e00.pdf. The report is based on the feedback received from 17 participants from 15 countries through completed questionnaires on assigned tasks during the Verification Phase....

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Track on Metadata and Semantics for Agriculture, Food & Environment 3rd International Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR'09) Milan, Italy, September 30 - October 2, 2009
Italy,  26/1/2009
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AGROVOC Concept Server Web Services beta version
22/1/2009
AGROVOC is remodeled using OWL, the Web Ontology Language, into a more semantically structured system called the Concept Server. For developers of agricultural information management systems, AGROVOC Concept Server web services beta version has been released to incorporate AGROVOC Concept Server into their applications via web services....

CTA and Wisard International: an AGRIS AP compliant Object Library
18/12/2008
CTA (http://www.cta.int/) and Wisard International (http://www.wi.wur.nl/UK/) have been developing a DLIO Library that has the AGRIS AP as basis for data entry, data storage and data dissemination. FARA and SADC have also invested in this development. This Object Library is a fully open source Django project (http://www.djangoproject....

Structural change of AGROVOC
4/12/2008
The AGROVOC Thesaurus is currently under a profound revision aimed to make it more coherent, consistent, and more meaningful. The revision is being done in partnership with ICRISAT, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, based in Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India, and coordinated by FAO staff....

News and events published by FAO partners embedded into the FAO Country Profiles
21/11/2008
The FAO Country Profiles is now embedding news and events related to agriculture, forestry, fisheries and rural development published by FAO partners and registered in the innovative and fast-growing AgriFeeds service. AgriFeeds is a service that allows users to search, filter and re-publish news and events from several RSS feeds....

AGROVOC CS WB: Verification Phase starting today
13/11/2008
After several months of preparation, the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench Verification Phase has been launched today. The objective of this preliminary testing is to receive feedback on the new structure of AGROVOC (remodelled into a more semantically organized system called the Concept Server) and its functionalities as well as on its collaborative features....

New version of the AGROVOC Workbench 0.2.1 Beta
12/11/2008
A revised version of the AGROVOC Workbench System is now available at http://naist.cpe.ku.ac.th/agrovoc/: 0.2.1 Beta. This release will expose to the same modules as the previous 0.2 Beta (Food, Health, Pest Control, Policies, Rice, and Science) and make them correctly visualizing also with Internet Explorer web browser....

Knowledge Share Fair: Call for Submission
29/10/2008
From 20 to 22 January, 2009, FAO, IFAD, WFP, CGIAR ICT-KM Program and Bioversity International, will be organizing a 3-day event at FAO's Headquarters in Rome entitled "Knowledge Share Fair for Agricultural Development and Food Security". Submissions are now open for your knowledge sharing cases. The closing date has been extended to 31 October 2008....

CGIAR Centres bibliographic information shared and disseminated by the AGRIS Search
29/10/2008
CGIAR and FAO/AGRIS consolidate their common efforts for sharing their knowledge, continuing their collaboration and partnership at the level of data exchange. The successful collaboration between the two organizations is emphasized by the data exchange of several repositories of the CGIAR centres with AGRIS....

[New Publication] A Web-based tool to manage multilingual thesauri: the example of AGROVOC
Canada,  9/10/2008
10th biennial International Conference (ISKO 2008), August 5th-8th, 2008, Montreal (Canada) ...

[New Publication] Scielo articles available to the agricultural community using OAI-PMH in AGRIS AP XML Format
8/10/2008
This article reports a new way of getting access to SciELO full text journal articles using AGRIS AP XML format to harvest SciELO metadata and to include them into the AGRIS repository....

[New Publication] Comparing human and automatic thesaurus mapping approaches in the agricultural domain
7/10/2008
Knowledge organization systems (KOS), like thesauri and other controlled vocabularies, are used to provide subject access to information systems across the web. Due to the heterogeneity of these systems, mapping between vocabularies becomes crucial for retrieving relevant information....

Online Learning Resources for Agriculture: the way forward
6/10/2008
29 September, 2008 A workshop to review progress over the past four years of the CGIAR’s Online Learning Resources Project and plan for the future has made considerable progress towards defining the goals of a third phase for the project....

[New Publication] Implementation of rich metadata formats and semantic tools using DSpace
Germany,  3/10/2008
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications (DC 2008), September 22nd-26th, 2008 Berlin (Germany) ...

AGROVOC Revision and Refinement documented and shared via a Blog
2/10/2008
The AGROVOC master copy is currently being revised by ICRISAT, India. Work is being carried out to improve the consistency and accuracy of the thesaurus, and to better structure it to convert to the AGROVOC Concept Server. The revision of the thesaurus will mainly concern its hierarchical structure, non-descriptors and relationships, that will be better defined and refined....

New version of the Workbench 0.2 Beta
23/9/2008
After releasing version 0.1 in December 2007, the new version of the Workbench 0.2 Beta is now available through: http://vivaldi.cpe.ku.ac.th:443/agrovoc02beta/....

[New Publication] Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008) E-Conference
17/9/2008
This report provides the summary of the discussions that took place during the Agricultural Learning Repositories (AgLR 2008, http://aglr.aua.gr/econf.php) E-Conference. AgLR 2008 aimed to explore the needs and requirements of stakeholders involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories....

[New Publication] Results from a study of the implementation of metadata application profiles in Agricultural Learning Repositories
17/9/2008
In technology-enhanced learning, metadata interoperability has been identified as an important issue. It allows not only the exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information (such as competency profiles, learning activities, and descriptions of learning resources), but also its future re-use among a large number of different systems and repositories....

FAO launches a project to upgrade its Country Profiles Mapping Information System
22/8/2008
In May 2008, FAO approved a project that will provide an upgrade to the FAO Country Profiles Mapping Information System (FCPMIS) launched in 2002. The project aims to enhance users' access to country information on FAO's expertise and increase collaboration among FAO's technical divisions and decentralized offices as well as partners in other organizations....

[New publication] Towards a harmonization of metadata application profiles for agricultural learning repositories
6/8/2008
Metadata interoperability allows the exchange and preservation of crucial learning and teaching information, as well as its future reuse among a large number of different systems and repositories....

[New Publication] Sharing agricultural events information: When and where is that workshop?
6/8/2008
In the last few years a strong need has emerged for a standard way to interchange various types of information, such as on organizations, projects, experts, events and news, in the agricultural community....

[New publication] The AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench: A collaborative tool for managing multilingual knowledge
25/7/2008
Ontology plays an important role in the enhancement performance of systems, addressing issues such as knowledge sharing, knowledge aggregation as well as information retrieval and question answering. This paper presents the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench (ACSW) for multilingual ontological concept construction and maintenance. The ACSW is a web 2....

First Call For Papers - SWAP 2008
16/7/2008
5th Workshop on Semantic Web Applications and Perspectives FAO-UN, Rome, Italy (15-17 December 2008) The Semantic Web is currently one of the most interesting and ambitious challenges that the scientific and technological community is facing. While great progresses have been made in terms of consolidation of base philosophy and infrastructure, new issues, technologies and tools are emerging....

[New publication] The AGROVOC concept server: rationale, goals and usage
8/7/2008
The main objective of the AGROVOC Concept Server (CS)is to create a collaborative reference platform and a one-stop shop for a pool of commonly used concepts related to agriculture, containing terms, definitions and relationships between terms in multiple languages derived from various sources. This paper aims to address the issues....

Full access to 2426 articles and publications, now available at http://www.fao.org/agris/search
30/6/2008

The latest AGRIS Search Engine update includes important data from the SciELO Network, a major online repository of Latin America and Caribbean scientific journals. The AGRIS collection is enriched with the first bunch of articles harvested from the Brazilian Open Archives Data Provider and they all include links to the full text....

[New publication] Achieving OAI PMH compliancy for CDS/ISIS databases
23/6/2008
This paper was already announced in 2007, but we announce it again as it has now been published in the Emerald journal....

FAODOC full text documents are now freely accessible from the Universal Digital Library!
4/6/2008
The Universal Digital Library (UDLIB) is a result of the Million book project making free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, available to everyone over the Internet. It is now granting open access to online available documents from FAODOC, including 9742 books, 4762 and analytics from books, 3297 journal articles and some Web resources, field documents etc....

[New publication] Emerging issues, priorities and commitments in e-agriculture
29/5/2008
Dr. Anton Mangstl, Director of FAO's Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division, explains that only through the commitment of policy makers can we truly realize the benefits of e-agriculture for the developing world - and in particular the rural poor. ...

[New publication] Agricultural information management standards website: an initiative to facilitate interoperability and improve coherence
29/5/2008
Over the past few years, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been working on the development of semantic standards in metadata and controlled vocabularies in the agricultural domain. At present, there are a number of parallel and dispersed developments in standards, tools and systems for managing agricultural information....

[New publication] Analysis of e-agriculture survey
29/5/2008
In late 2006, an online global survey to determine the scope and priorities for the WSIS Action line on e-Agriculture was conducted by an inter-agency Working Group. Most of the over 3400 respondents were unfamiliar with the term 'e-Agriculture; but nearly all respondents had suggestions on potential definition and benefits, as well as on priority areas for action....

AgriFeeds has a new "Global Issues" section!
23/5/2008
AgriFeeds has recently introduced a new functionality to provide customised multilingual feeds on current Global Issues. This service provides ready to use news feeds on subjects of current interest such as Biofuels, Avian Flu, Transboundary Diseases and Hunger....

Another step for FAO towards Semantic Web (requires installation of Firefox add-ons)
16/5/2008
The articles published on the Food, Nutrition and Agriculture (FNA) Web now make use of Semantic Web techniques such as RDFa (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/). The selected articles connect the user with information retrieved from other well known Web sites such as Amazon, Del.icio....

[New Publication] D'AGROVOC à l'Agricultural Ontology Service / Concept Server - Un modèle OWL pour la création d'ontologies dans le domaine de l'agriculture
16/5/2008
This paper illustrates the conversion from a traditional thesaurus in agriculture (AGROVOC) to a new system, the Agricultural Ontology Service Concept Server (AOS/CS). The Concept Server will serve as a multilingual repository of concepts in the agricultural domain providing ontological relationships and a rich, semantically sound terminology....

Recent success at Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria (INIA) in building Institutional Repository using WebAGRIS
Uruguay,  15/5/2008
The AGRIS Secretariat recently supported the conversion of INIA's local database into WebAGRIS. This work included running of the WebAGRIS application, the mapping of the local database fields to the WebAGRIS fields and the migration of the local application/metadata to WebAGRIS....

Avano is harvesting FAODOC full text documents
28/4/2008
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....

E-Conference on Agricultural Learning Repositories has started!
23/4/2008
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....

AGROVOC in Slovak has been recently updated!
Slovakia,  1/4/2008
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!
31/3/2008
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....

[New Publication] D7.1.2 Revised specifications of user requirements for the Fisheries case study
26/3/2008
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
25/3/2008
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....

[New Publication] Results from Experiments in Ontology Learning including Evaluation and Recommendation
19/3/2008
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....

AGROVOC in Japanese has been recently updated!
Japan,  18/3/2008
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!
Turkey,  17/3/2008
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....

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS (the date of abstract submission extended to March 31): World Conference on Agricultural Information and IT
14/3/2008
‘Advancing information and communication management, knowledge creation and sharing, and the application of information technologies in agriculture’ Tokyo, Japan, 24-27 August 2008 Conference Site: http://iaald-afita-wcca2008....

E-learning Course on Collaboration and Advocacy Techniques from the EC-FAO Food Security Programme
12/3/2008
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....

[New Publication] Basic Guidelines for Managing AGROVOC: revised version now available online!
11/3/2008
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....

[Request-for-comments] First draft of Language Code Ontology Published
10/3/2008
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
9/3/2008
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....

1st Call for Papers: Learning Technology Standards for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgroLT 2008)
18/2/2008
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....

Over 11 000 new bibliographic records added to AGRIS Repository.
5/2/2008
The first AGRIS database update of this year includes 11 035 new records catalogued by several libraries of institutions belonging to the AGRIS Network. The data predominantly covers Agricultural research, Crop husbandry, Nature conservation and land resources, Water resources and management and Food composition....

Crop Wild Relatives Ontology Browser is now available online!
31/1/2008
An ontology in the area of Crop Wild Relatives (CWR) has recently been developed in a joint effort between Bioversity International and the Food and Agriculture Organization. The ontology is now accessible online in 4 languages (English, French, Spanish and Russian). The hierarchy can be browsed in a tree-like view and the labels and relationships can be accessed via each concept's detail view....

Opening the content of agricultural repositories using Open Archives Initiative (OAI) framework
16/1/2008
FAO has realized a dynamic Open Archives Initiative (OAI) compliancy of the CDS/ISIS based institutional repositories following the new vision for AGRIS as open archives network. The plug-in developed allows FAO and other service providers to harvest agricultural metadata (if accessible over Internet) in an automatic manner, in both simple DC and AGRIS AP formats....

LAST CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies
9/1/2008
A common vision that may serve as an enabler for sustainable development,environmental preservation, and fighting hunger in the world, is the involvement, collaboration and coordination of activities dealing with the production, organisation and exchange of agricultural knowledge....

Agricultural Events Application Profile (Ag-Events AP) is now available for use!
7/1/2008
After a period of testing by FAO, GFAR and GFIS, the Agricultural Events Application Profile (Ag-Events AP) is now available to share information about upcoming events in the domain of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry and related subject areas....

Six new ontologies on fisheries are now available online!
7/12/2007
The latest output of the participation of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in the Networked Ontologies (NeOn) project is now publicly available....

Preliminary Alpha Test version of AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench online
6/12/2007
A preliminary test version of the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench is now online available at: http://naist.cpe.ku.ac.th/agrovoc/.
The tool shall help build and structure multilingual ontology and terminology systems in the area of agriculture in a distributed environment....

Printable flyer available on the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench
29/11/2007
An explanatory flyer is now available for downloading/printing about the AGROVOC Concept Server Workbench. The Workbench is a web-based working environment for managing the AGROVOC Concept Server. It provides tools and functionalities that facilitate the collaborative editing of multilingual terminology and semantic concept information....

More than 24,000 records from the AFFRC are now available in the AGRIS repository!
Japan,  28/11/2007
From today, the AGRIS search application will give access to more than 24,000 bibliographic references with abstracts, produced by the Research Council Secretariat of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (AFFRC) in Japan, in the last three years. The resources are all encoded in the AGRIS AP XML format and generated by WebAGRIS....

AgriFeeds, the new service to provide aggregated news and events information, is now available for testing
23/11/2007
AgriFeeds is the new service realized to study and provide aggregated view on news and upcoming events in the area of agriculture (including, Forestry, Fisheries, Food security and related domains such as Sustainable Development, Nutrition, etc). The service is part of a "feasibility study" on the use of web-feeds for aggregating and filtering news and events....

AGROVOC is now available in Lao via AIMS Website!
Laos,  22/11/2007
The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus has now been updated on the AIMS web site. The LAO version was released by the National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute (NAFRI) in LAOS and contains more than 15,000 agricultural related terms. Any inquiries regarding the LAO version of AGROVOC should be directed to: bandith@nafri.org.la....

AGROVOC local version in Moldavian is on its way!
Moldova Rep,  19/11/2007
The Republican Scientific Agricultural Library of the State Agrarian University, in the Republic of Moldova, has taken up the responsibility for the translation of AGROVOC in Moldavian. This project, coordinated by Viorica Lupu, Indexing Group Coordinator, uses the current AGROVOC maintenance tool to produce the translated version of the current AGROVOC Thesaurus....

[New Publication] Requirements for the treatment of multilinguality in ontologies within FAO
30/10/2007
International organizations like FAO are intrinsically multilingual. FAO is currently experimenting with semantic-oriented technologies based on ontologies, with the purpose of integrating data across various information systems and providing better services to end users....

[New Publication] Exposing metadata from CDS/ISIS databases using OAI-PMH
29/10/2007
CDS/ISIS is an Integrated Storage and Information retrieval System of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is widely used in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the AGRIS Network and in developing countries....

[New Publication] Benefits of AGRIS Application Profile over simple Dublin Core
25/10/2007
In databases such as AGRIS, there is large quantity of metadata records, dating back several decades. Most of these records do not have full-text documents available in the originating repositories. However, it has been shown by a paper published in the Dublin Core Conference in 20032 that there is an effort to put resources on the Internet retrospectively....

[New Publication] A distributed architecture for harvesting metadata describing organizations in the agriculture sector
24/10/2007
Providing easy access to updated, accurate and semantically meaningful information about organizations working in the agriculture sector is of primary importance in agricultural information management....

[New Publication] Metadata application profile for agricultural learning resources
22/10/2007
Capacity and institution building is a core function of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). FAO has recently started the "Capacity and Institution Building Portal" to provide structured access to information on FAO’s capacity and institution building services and learning resources....

[New Publication] Achieving OAI PMH compliancy for CDS/ISIS databases
19/10/2007
CDS/ISIS is an Integrated Storage and Information retrieval System of United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is widely used for managing bibliographical reference ensuring high quality content....

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Issue on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies
17/10/2007
A common vision that may serve as an enabler for sustainable development,environmental preservation, and fighting hunger in the world, is the involvement, collaboration and coordination of activities dealing with the production, organisation and exchange of agricultural knowledge....

The launch of e-Launch of an interactive web-based platform in support of agriculture and rural development
9/10/2007
“e-agriculture is a truly demand-driven platform,” according to FAO’s Anton Mangstl 28 September 2007, Rome – The UN Food and Agriculture Organization today announced the launch of a unique interactive web-based platform focusing on the role that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can have in supporting agriculture and rural development. The online platform, www.e-agriculture....

Eighth Agricultural Ontology Service (AOS) Workshop on "7 years of AOS: Achievements and Next Steps", Rome, Italy, 21-22 September, 2007
Italy,  19/9/2007
The Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division (KCEW) of FAO is organizing a two-day workshop titled “7 years of AOS: Achievements and Next Steps” with the primary purpose of bringing together information knowledge managers from agricultural Institutions working on the development of semantic standards for the exchange of agricultural information....

Special Session on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics: Papers are now available for download!
Greece,  12/9/2007
The aim of the Special Session on Agricultural Metadata and Semantics of MTSR'07 is to bring together researchers and practitioners that are working on agricultural knowledge production, organization, and exchange from a Semantic Web perspective....

AGROVOC is now available in Polish!
Poland,  6/9/2007
The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus has now been updated on the AIMS web site. The online version includes new concepts and revision of existing ones. The Polish version was released by the Centralna Biblioteka Rolnicza, the Central Agricultural Library (CBR) in Warsaw and has 16,998 Descriptors and 11,919 Non-descriptors....

AGROVOC is now available in Italian!
Italy,  4/9/2007
The Italian AGROVOC is based on FAO AGROVOC which is the common thesaurus used by FAO for agriculture terminology in general, including forestry, fisheries, environment, etc.. The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus has now been updated on the AIMS web site....

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Session on Agricultural Metadata & Semantics
Greece,  16/7/2007
The aim of the Special Session on Agricultural Metadata and Semantics of MTSR'07 is to bring together researchers and practitioners that are working on agricultural knowledge production, organization, and exchange from a Semantic Web perspective. ...

Publishers Commit to Bringing Free Access to Scientific Research to Developing World
10/7/2007
Washington, DC – 10 July, 2007 – Many developing countries lack access to information and training that can help save lives, improve the quality of life, and assist with economic development....

FAO’s activities on Agricultural Information Management Standards go into Wikipedia
9/7/2007
Wikipedia is the world’s fastest-growing, cooperative, free content, on-line encyclopaedia. There were 600,000 visitors per day by the end of 2005; there are more than 4 million articles in 200 languages. The amazing success of Wikipedia is not only due to its "open edit" policy, or its collection of high-level knowledge on all conceivable themes....

FAO Case Study on semantically navigable “Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Journal” is published by W3C
18/6/2007
One current application of the Semantic Web in the agricultural domain is the AGRIS Application Profile (or AGRIS Application Ontology) consisting of concepts describing document-like information objects such as title, creator and publisher....

[Request for comments] Proposed Architecture and Workflow for Managing Decentralized Information on Organizations Using a Central Registry File
22/5/2007
During the last Content Management Task Force meeting, Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) proposed the idea of a distributed architecture where the single organizations describe themselves and host the description on a web server and the URLs of the files containing the descriptions would be registered in a Registry File....

IMARK Spanish e-learning module to address the needs of information managers and trainers.
18/5/2007
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is pleased to announce on behalf of the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) Steering Group, the release of the Spanish version of the IMARK e-learning module "Investing in Information for Development"....

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: Web2ForDev International Conference, Rome, Italy, 25-27 September 2007
12/4/2007
Web2ForDev 2007 is the first conference devoted to exploring the ways in which international development stakeholders can take advantage of the technical and organizational opportunities provided by Web 2.0 methods, approaches and applications....

e-Agriculture should focus on Information over Technology , say respondents in recent global survey
2/4/2007
A recent global online survey, conducted as a follow-up to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), indicates that improving information and communication processes should be the top priority in furthering global discussions and related actions in e-Agriculture....

[New Publication] Towards an architecture for open archive networks in Agricultural Sciences and Technology
23/3/2007
The paper illustrates how the Open Access (OA) and the Open Archive Initiative (OAI) models can be used within the AGRIS Network as a means of solving the problems of information dissemination and exchange of agricultural research outputs. It presents the possibility to address the accessibility, availability and interoperability issues of exchanging agricultural research output....

[New publication] FAO’s Capacity-Building Initiatives in Accessing, Documenting, Communicating and Managing Agricultural Information
22/3/2007
The new information and communication technologies (ICT) and the growing wealth of digital information have the potential to improve access to and benefits from development activities for the rural poor, as well as facilitate policy-making....

[New publication] Agrovoc Web Services: Improved, real-time access to an agricultural thesaurus
22/3/2007
Controlled vocabularies, such as the multilingual agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC, are the facilitators of semantic services on the Internet, since they can provide the baseline for connecting distributed resources. The more resources in a particular domain are described using a certain controlled vocabulary, the more accessible and interoperable they will be....

[New Publication] AGROVOC Web Services: Improved, Real-Time Access to an Agricultural Thesaurus
20/3/2007
Controlled vocabularies, such as the multilingual agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC, are the facilitators of semantic services on the Internet, since they can provide the baseline for connecting distributed resources. The more resources in a particular domain are described using a certain controlled vocabulary, the more accessible and interoperable they will be....

EASYPol: New Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) software, manual and exercises:Available on line
2/3/2007
The Agricultural Policy Support Service (TCAS), FAO has released the Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) software, manual and exercises. This multilingual software, available for now in English and French, will help you to build and analyse consistent policy scenarios for commodiy chains....

EASYPol: Nine new modules on Inequality and Poverty Impacts of Agricultural and Rural Development Policies published on EASYPol
28/2/2007
EASYPol is an on-line multilingual repository of resource materials for policy making, available at: http://www.fao....

[New Publication] Ontology-based navigation of bibliographic metadata: example of the Food, Nutrition and Agriculture Journal
27/2/2007
This paper describes the work done within the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) on providing an ontology-based navigation to the Food, Nutrition and Agriculture (FNA) Journal....

AGROVOC is now available in Hungarian!
Hungary,  21/2/2007
The latest release of the AGROVOC Thesaurus has now been updated on the AIMS web site. Together with new concepts and revision of existing ones, the Thesaurus is now also available in Hungarian. The Hungarian version is released by the Gödöllo Agribusiness Centre and has 16486 Descriptors and 9859 Non-descriptors. Any inquiries regarding the Hungarian version of AGROVOC should be directed to Dr....

Presentations and final report of the Seventh AOS Workshop are now available online
19/2/2007
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AGROVOC Web Services V1.5 beta released
1/2/2007
In this release, three new methods have been released as beta versions. A new search method (simpleSearchByMode) now facilitates searching for an AGROVOC term in different modes. The getTermsListByLanguage method has been introduced to retrieve a list of terms given the termcode. The method getConceptByTerm has been deprecated and its future use discouraged....

AGROVOC is now available in Lao!
Laos,  4/1/2007
The Lao AGROVOC is based on FAO AGROVOC which is the common thesaurus used by FAO for agriculture and forestry terminology. It contains more than 15,000 agricultural related terms.
NAFRI decided to translate the AGROVOC terms to assist in the development of Lao Agriculture Database (LAD) system so that Lao researchers can better search and categorize research being generated....

AGROVOC in German is now available online!
Germany,  15/12/2006
The German edition 3 (version 1999) of the AGROVOC Thesaurus is now available on the Agricultural Information Management Standards Web site. It includes more than 25,300 terms and 1,200 scope notes, including geographical and taxonomic terms....

The new GFAR Document Repository and its participation in the AGRIS Network
13/12/2006
The GFAR Document Repository is a cooperative product of the GFAR Secretariat in collaboration with the Library and Documentation Systems Division of FAO....

December 2006 - Digitization and Digital Libraries module now in Spanish
7/12/2006
The IMARK Steering Group is pleased to announce the release of the second IMARK module in Spanish entitled "La Digitalización y las bibliotecas digitales" which offers 31 lessons concerned with the creation of digital libraries and the preservation of materials in digital format....

The English version of WEBAGRIS 2.0 is now available for download!
6/12/2006
The new WEBAGRIS Version 2.0 is a robust information management system having integrated numerous updates, error fixes and new features. Most of the changes and improvements incorporated in this version are a result of problems encountered by users and suggestions made while using the previous version....

Developing World To Receive Access To Critical Global Environmental Research: United Nations Environment Programme, Yale University and Leading Publishers Launch “Online Access to Research in the Environment” (OARE)
16/11/2006
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New international partnership to support information and knowledge systems in agricultural science and technology
India,  3/11/2006
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Launch of the E-agriculture Global Survey
2/10/2006
Assessing the future direction of the use of digital technologies for improving information and communication in agriculture


The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) announces the launch of a global survey on e-agriculture....

AGORA: The power of information - closing the knowledge gap
27/9/2006

FAO’s AGORA initiative widens access to agricultural research to more countries

Over 100 of the world’s poorest countries will now be able to access leading food and agriculture journals for little or no cost with the launch of the second phase of the Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) initiative, FAO announced today....

New FAOTERM system available on the FAO Terminology Web site
26/9/2006
As part of the continuous efforts to improve access to multilingual terminology in the fields of work of the Organization, a new FAOTERM system has been designed and released on the Internet.

The new FAOTERM system features: