ASFA Advisory Board Meeting (IFREMER, France, 19-22 June 2001)
Meeting REPORT
CONTENTS
2. ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS
3. ELECTION OF CHAIRPERSON AND RAPPORTEURS
5. ADOPTION OF SUMMARY REPORT OF 2000 ASFA ADVISORY BOARD MEETING
7. ASFA SCOPE, COVERAGE, MONITORING AND TIMELINESS
9. PROGRESS WITH MACHINE READABLE INPUT
10. REPORT ON ASFA TRAINING ACTIVITIES
11. STATUS OF ASFIS REFERENCE SERIES PUBLICATIONS
12. EXPANDED LANGUAGE CAPABILITY IN ASFA
15. PLACE AND DATE OF NEXT MEETING
ANNEXES
(Only selected Annexes 1, 2, 38, 42 are included with this Report)Annex-38:ASFA Trust Fund Status
Annex-42:Decisions and Actions Agreed by Participants
The Annual Meeting of the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) Advisory Board was hosted by the Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER), Service de la Documentation et des Bibliothèques (SDB), Centre de Brest, located in Plouzané, France, during 19 to 22 June 2001.
The Meeting was attended by 39 participants from: 19 National ASFA Partners, 2 Collaborating ASFA Partners, 3 UN Partners, 4 International ASFA Partners, the ASFA Publishing Partner, and 1 observer. The names and addresses of the participants are listed in Annex-1The Agenda is in Annex-2, and the abbreviations used in the Report are in Annex-2a.
Ms. J. Prod�homme, Responsible for the Library of Brest, opened the Meeting and Mr. François Le Verge, Director of the Brest Centre of IFREMER, delivered the opening speech. He welcomed the participants to IFREMER and thanked the Board for the opportunity to host the 2001 ASFA Board Meeting. Mr. Le Verge mentioned that France had participated in ASFA from its creation 31 years ago by FAO, and has seen the ASFA partnership grow through the years from 15 members in 1983 to 44 members in 2001. He briefly described the main goal of IFREMER, which is to ensure the participation of its scientists in European Research Programmes and he outlined the various programmes currently underway. He referred to the importance of the ASFA database, explaining briefly the contents of the database and its relevance to IFREMER�s field of work and major goal. He thanked Ms. J. Prod�homme for the organization of the Meeting.
Ms. M. Melguen, Head of the Documentation Services and Libraries of IFREMER welcomed the participants to Brest and gave a brief outline of her role in IFREMER. She described, using slides, the work carried out at IFREMER and explained what IFREMER is. The Institute has some 1700 research scientists working in 78 laboratories and 20 coastal stations/centres. Reference was also made to the 2 major libraries of IFREMER (at Brest and Nantes) and the services offered to IFREMER staff both in France and overseas, and to the relations with other national and international libraries. She also mentioned the importance of ASFA as being involved in the main goal of IFREMER (participation in National European Scientific Research Programmes). The new input tool www-ASFA-ISIS and its presentation, by Dr. H. Rybinski, was mentioned as an important innovation in this field.
2. ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTSMs. J. Prod�homme (IFREMER/France) presented information under this Agenda Item.
3. ELECTION OF CHAIRPERSON AND RAPPORTEURSMs. J. Beattie (NOAA) was elected Chairperson of the Board Meeting and Ms Prod�homme co-Chairperson. Ms. H. Wibley (FAO) was appointed Rapporteur and Mr. R. Pepe (FAO) as assistant Rapporteur.
The Agenda, as it appears in Annex-2, was adopted by the Board.
5. ADOPTION OF SUMMARY REPORT OF 2000 ASFA ADVISORY BOARD MEETINGThe Report of the 2000 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting (Goa, India) was adopted by the Board.
5.1 Matters Arising from the last (2000) ASFA Advisory Board Meeting
The Chair introduced this Agenda item referring to document (ASFA/2001/2) which lists all of the "Decisions and Actions agreed by Participants" at last year's Board Meeting (note, ASFA/2001/2 is not included as an Annex to this Report, because last year's action items are directly quoted in the text of this Report when discussed under the appropriate Agenda item).
6.1 Report on Intersessional Activities of the ASFA Partners
Each ASFA Partner presented a summary report of its inter-sessional activities. In most cases, only the highlights, comments and discussions regarding the reports are recorded below, as the full text of the Reports can be consulted in the Annexes 3-34. For the Reports of Partners not attending the Meeting, the FAO ASFA Secretariat summarized the major points or concerns contained in their Reports.
6.1.1 United Nations Co-sponsors
6.1.1.1 FAO Report
(Annex-3) - Mr. R. Pepe presented the FAO ASFA Secretariat�s Report. He mentioned the main accomplishments for the inter-sessional period which included: developing the www-ASFA-ISIS software, recruiting 2 new partners (Brazil and Vietnam), carrying out 2 training sessions on ASFA input methodology (Tunisia and Cuba), and continuation with the project to increase the availability of the ASFA information products (CD-ROM/Internet Access) to Low Income Food Deficit Countries. Ongoing activities were highlighted: preparation of ASFA input, editorial control of input received from newly trained partners, maintenance of the ASFISIS help desk, maintenance of the monitoring list and other ASFIS Reference Series Publications, and ASFA Secretariat. See Annex-3c for Report of SIPAM (the FAO Collaborating ASFA Centre).6.1.1.2 IOC Report
(Annex-4) - Mr. M. Odido presented the IOC Report. He mentioned the database being prepared under contract from IOC, by the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, on aquatic and fisheries science documents published in/or about the Western Indian Ocean. The database is visible at (http://odinafrica.org) and contains over 4000 records. Additional records from the Ocean Data and Information Network in Africa (ODINAFRICA) will be forthcoming.6.1.1.3 UN/DOALOS Report
(Annex-5) - Mr. R. Gruszka presented the UN/DOALOS Report. He mentioned that UN/DOALOS were prepared to look into the possibility of taking over some serial titles covered currently by CSA, resources permitting. He noted that the UN had received little user feedback regarding ASFA.6.1.1.4 UNEP
- (not present, no Report submitted)Regarding the action item (1) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(
1) The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to follow up on the status of UNEP�s ASFA participation."The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported on its efforts to re-involve UNEP in ASFA. In February, a brief talk was held at FAO with Dr. Illueca, Assistant Executive Director of the Division of Environmental Conventions, who said that he would follow-up the matter from UNEP's side. The FAO ASFA Secretariat expressed their disappointment on the limited progress regarding this matter. Nonetheless, the FAO ASFA Secretariat has an eventual mission approved to UNEP to discuss the matter further.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to continue following-up this matter.
The Representative of NCMR mentioned that, in the meantime, Greece would continuing to monitor the publication "MAB Technical Report".
6.1.2 ASFA Partners
6.1.2.1 ADRIAMED
(Annex-6) - Ms. N. Milone presented the ADRIAMED report. She provided a brief explanation of the FAO ADRIAMED project, and mentioned, in particular, ADRIAMED's efforts to cover the Adriatic publications as comprehensively as possible.6.1.2.2 ICCAT
(not present, Annex-7) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned the problem raised in the ICCAT Report (i.e., insufficient subject and taxonomic descriptors for indexing purposes), and replied that the number of taxonomic descriptors in the ASFISIS software was limited, however the new www-ASFA-ISIS system would include a much larger list of descriptors (approximately 10,000 species).6.1.2.3 ICES
(Annex-8) - Ms. M. Ovens presented the ICES Report. She mentioned the agreement with CSA to carry out ASFA input for the ICES Council Meeting documents now that BF was no longer able to continue. Ms. M. Ovens expressed thanks to Mr. W. Kirchner for all the assistance that BF has provided over the past years to ICES in carrying out the input for these documents.6.1.2.4 ICLARM
(Annex-9) - Ms. S. Child presented the ICLARM Report. She mentioned in particular the problems that they had encountered due to the move of the ICLARM headquarters, and that they hoped to resume contributions to the ASFA database after July 2001.6.1.2.5 IUCN
- (not present, no report) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that they had received an e-mail from Ms. C. Thiery apologizing for not being present at the Meeting.6.1.2.6 PIMRIS
(Annex-1) - Mr. G. Rao presented the PIMRIS Report. He noted that PIMRIS had begun preparation of ASFA input and that PIMRIS is committed to the pending ASFA Trust Fund project to convert 500 records. The second batch of 11 records has been sent to FAO for checking.6.1.2.7 Argentina
(INIDEP) (Annex-11) - Ms. G. Cosulich presented the INIDEP report. She mentioned in particular the promotion by INIDEP of ASFA in South America, and said that the holding of a training course for ASFA in Chile would be very important.6.1.2.8 Australia
(CSIRO) (not present, Annex-12) - On behalf of Mr. D. Abbott, Mr. G. Rao (PIMRIS) presented the CSIRO Report.6.1.2.9 Brazil
(not yet ASFA operational)6.1.2.10 Bulgaria
(MAFAR) (not yet ASFA operational)6.1.2.11 Canada
(NRC) (Annex-13) - Ms. H. Cameron presented the DFO Report. She mentioned the lower input production due to change in input staff and the possibility that responsibility for ASFA in Canada may move to Fisheries and Oceans Canada from National Research Council (NRC).6.1.2.12 Chile
(IFOP) (not present, Annex-14) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that Chile had encountered problems mainly due to lack of training. The next ASFA training course should be held in South America, but the exact dates will depend on when the new version of the ASFA input software is released. See items 9.2 and 10.1 for further discussion.6.1.2.13 China
(NMDIS) (Annex-15) - Mr. Yang Ying presented the NMDIS Report. He mentioned the increase in Chinese literature relevant to the scope of ASFA and the increase in NMDIS staff to deal with the backlog.6.1.2.14 Côte d�Ivoire
(CRO) (Annex-16) - Ms. Ehui Diakite presented the CRO Report. She mentioned that their major problem was lack of equipment and staff able to provide abstracts in English. Mr. R. Pepe (FAO) pointed out the possibility of entering only an abstract in French, but also emphasized the desirability of an English abstract.6.1.2.15
Cuba (CIP) (Annex-17) - Ms. M. Hernandez Ceballos presented the CIP Report. She mentioned the input prepared by CIP and the usefulness of the ASFA CD-ROM. She also mentioned the importance of the training in Chile for Latin America.6.1.2.16
Estonia (EMI) (not present, Annex-18) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat presented highlights from the EMI Report. Dr. W. Kirchner (BF) relayed the regards of Ms. M. Kalenchits to the Board and explained that she has been busy finishing her thesis and setting up a new scientific journal (for which BF provided training in the use of the PageMaker software). The Board offered their congratulations to Ms. M. Kalenchits for the very hard work she was doing, and requested the FAO ASFA Secretariat to send an E-mail to congratulate her on her graduation and on her involvement in the setting up of the new journal.6.1.2.17 France
(IFREMER) (Annex-19) - Ms. J. Prod'homme presented the IFREMER Report which contained a detailed description of the intersessional activities. A major part of the report was dedicated to problems of quality control and these are discussed under Agenda item 8.1.6.1.2.18 Germany
(BF) (Annex-20) - Dr. W. Kirchner presented the BF Report. He gave a brief summary of the project to clean the ASFA database. Further discussions are under Agenda item 7.6.1.2.19 Greece
(NCMR) (Annex-21) - Ms. S. Goulala, presented the NCMR Report. She mentioned the input statistics and the merging of Institute of Marine Biology of Crete with NCMR and the usefulness of extending the access of ASFA to IMBC.6.1.2.20 India
(NIO/NICMAS) (Annex-22) - Dr. M. Tapaswi presented the NIO Report. He described the recently completed ASFA Trust Fund project regarding the conversion of the ASFA 1974 printed journals into machine readable format. For full details concerning this work, see Annex-A of the NIO Report.6.1.2.21 Italy
(SIBM) (not present, no Report) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the centre had just recently sent some ASFA input to FAO for checking.6.1.2.22 Japan
(Fisheries Research Agency) (Annex-23) - Mr. S. Mizobuchi presented the Report, and Dr. K. Takayanagi explained the re-organization of the ASFA responsibilities under the new institute, the Fisheries Research Agency, which is under the aegis of Japan Fisheries Agency.6.1.2.23 Kenya
(KMFRI) (Annex-24) - Mr. J. Macharia presented the KMFRI Report. He reported briefly on the progress of the ASFA Trust Fund project regarding the conversion of the ASFA 1973 printed journals into machine readable format.6.1.2.24 Korea
(KORDI) (not present, no Report)6.1.2.25 Lithuania
(Ichthyobank) (not present, no Report) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that they would follow up to see what the situation was with Lithuania.6.1.2.26 Mexico
(DGB) � (not present, Annex-25) - The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the Mexican ASFA Partner was actively producing input, and that in their Report they reminded new Latin American Partners to send their monitoring Lists to Mexico - to avoid duplication of inputs. FAO mentioned that it is routine procedure for the FAO ASFA Secretariat work to coordinate monitoring responsibilities when new Partners join ASFA.6.1.2.27 Morocco
(INRH) (not yet ASFA operational)6.1.2.28 Norway
(IMR) (Annex-26) - Ms. T. Espelid presented the IMR Report and she mentioned the agreement with CSA to prepare Norway�s input.6.1.2.29 Peru
(IMARPE) (not yet ASFA operational)6.1.2.30 Poland
(SFI) (Annex-27) - Ms. Z. Brzeska presented the SFI report. She mentioned the input prepared and the wide use of the ASFA database by scientists and students. She also mentioned some problems regarding the continuance of the institute.6.1.2.31 Portugal
(IPIMAR) - (Not present, no Report).6.1.2.32 Russia
(VNIRO) (Annex-28) - Dr. E. Romanov presented the VNIRO report, on behalf of Dr. Zhavoronkov. He mentioned the input statistics and the increased use of the database since it was made accessible via the Internet.6.1.2.33 Spain
(IEO) (Annex-29) - Mr. E. Prieto presented the IEO Report. He mentioned input statistics and usefulness of the ASFA database to scientists both in IEO and CINDOC.6.1.2.34 Sweden
(IMR) (Annex-30) - Dr. V. Oresland presented the IMR Report. He mentioned that Sweden was encountering problems in their ASFA input due to a reduction in the number of journals being published in Sweden (i.e. authors were publishing in international journals). IMR were putting more effort in to covering Theses. See item 7 (monitoring).6.1.2.35 Tunisia
(INSTM) (not yet ASFA operational)6.1.2.36 Ukraine
(YugNIRO) (Annex-31) - Dr. E. Romanov presented the YugNIRO Report. He mentioned the work on the translation of ASFIS-2 and the training in ASFA input methodology for the Ukrainian ASFA network. Some problems with the ASFISIS software were also cited.6.1.2.37 United Kingdom
(PML) (Annex-32) - Ms. L. Noble presented the PML Report. She mentioned the input and the collaborating centres contributions. Problems were mentioned regarding coverage and they are discussed under the appropriate agenda item. Regarding user access in UK, ASFA is second to Science Citation Index.6.1.2.38 USA
(NOAA) (Annex-33) - Ms. J. Beattie presented the NOAA Report. She mentioned the enormous use of ASFA by NOAA staff and the negotiations between NOAA and CSA to provide nation wide desk-top access to ASFA for all NOAA employees. The NOAA Library was selected "Federal Library of the Year".6.1.3
ASFA PARTNER-PUBLISHER (CSA) (Annex-34) - Dr. C. Emerson presented the CSA Report.Regarding action item (5.5) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
(5.5) "CSA agreed to try and produce usage statistics (i.e., how many searches done on a particular server)." The Board noted that this was covered in the CSA Report.
The Representative of CSA requested the ASFA Partners to check the statistics provided in the ASFA input table, and notify discrepancies. He re-iterated the importance of ASFA Partners notifying CSA, via E-mail, when sending ASFA records via FTP (i.e., Partners should include details regarding number of records sent and the range of TRNs). He mentioned the unofficial list of journals monitored by CSA (available on the CSA home page), which includes those publications covered only occasionally. A new feature available on CSA�s IDS is the current awareness Search Alert.
6.2 New and Potential ASFA Partners
6.2.1 Admission of New Partners
The Board welcomed 2 new Partners into the ASFA Partnership: 1) Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto Oceanografico (Brazil); and Ministry of Fisheries, Fisheries Information Centre (Vietnam).
Regarding action item (7) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(7) FAO agreed to write to each Partner officially communicating their acceptance into the Partnership by the ASFA Advisory Board, but also reminding them that entitlements and listing in the title pages of the journals will only commence with the submission of input for inclusion in the ASFA database. " The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that this had been done for last year�s new Partners and agreed that they would also be writing to Brazil and to Vietnam.
6.2.2 Consideration of Potential Partners
Regarding action item (8) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(8) PIMRIS agreed to follow up again on identifying a potential ASFA Partner in New Zealand." The Representative of PIMRIS reported on discussions with Nelson Polytech, which appeared to show interest in joining ASFA, and the Representative of PIMRIS agreed to continue with this follow-up.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned 2 missions carried out during the inter-sessional period:
1) Dr. J. Cort (FAO) traveled to Latin America to identify a second ASFA Partner in Brazil, and this is being followed up.
2) A recent mission to Oman by FAO�s General Information Library Division carried information on the "how and why" of becoming an ASFA Partner. FAO has been informed that the information was well received; and Oman will be requesting further information.
The Representative of BF agreed to follow-up with Egypt regarding a potential ASFA partner.
The Representative of FAO reminded Partners that an FAQ existed on the ASFA Homepage regarding "Why participate in ASFA and How to become an ASFA Partner"
( http://www.fao.org/fi/asfa/faq/faq2.asp ).6.3 Co-operation with AGRIS
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that co-operation between the FAO ASFA Secretariat and the AGRIS/GIL group continues. Their programmer mounted the ASFA Thesaurus on the FAO Fisheries web page (http://www4.fao.org/asfa/nons_en.htm) and assistance was provided in adding fields to the ASFA Monitoring list database. Collaboration regarding the development of the www-ASFA-ISIS lessened, as the FAO ASFA Secretariat requested more and more independent functionalities, which deviated from the AGRIS system.
6.4 ASFA Partnership Agreement
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that to date, the ASFA Partnership Agreement (official title: Partnership Agreement Providing for Co-Operation in the Preparation and Publication of the Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) and the Reconstitution of the Advisory Board) has been signed by 44 Partners: (see Annex-35 for a full list of ASFA Partners)
4 UN, Co-sponsoring ASFA Partners33 National ASFA Partners
6 International ASFA Partners 1 Publishing ASFA Partner.
Partners were reminded that the text of the ASFA Partnership Agreement is visible on the FAO ASFA Homepage at: (
http://www.fao.org/fi/asfa/agreemt.asp )With regard to IFREMER�s wish to sign a new convention [Agreement] between FAO and all the Board Members, FAO clarified that the Partnership Agreement (unlike the Publishing Agreement) does not expire. Nonetheless, additions/amendments to the Partnership Agreement, by the Board, are possible, in which case, the additions/amendments would be reflected or recorded in the minutes of the relative annual ASFA Advisory Board Meeting Report. Such was the case for the "Criteria for the removal of Partners failing to fulfill their ASFA monitoring responsibilities" which was approved by the Board at the 1998 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to put on the ASFA homepage the criteria reflecting loss of entitlements and dismissing from Partnership.
6.5 ASFA Publishing Agreement
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the present Publishing Agreement covers the period 1 Jan. 2000 to 31 Dec. 2003, and no amendments were proposed during the inter-sessional period by either the FAO ASFA Secretariat or CSA. Negotiations for the 2004-2007 Agreement would begin in 2002.
Partners were reminded that the parts of the Publishing Agreement relevant to the ASFA Partners are visible on the ASFA homepage at:
http://www.fao.org/fi/asfa/agreemt.asp#Entit.
7. ASFA SCOPE, COVERAGE, MONITORING AND TIMELINESSThe FAO ASFA Secretariat reminded the Partners of the importance of this Agenda item because of its direct relation to the quality of the database and introduced the item by first reviewing the definition of the terms: "scope", "coverage" and "monitoring" as used in the ASFA system.
Partners were reminded of the detailed description of these terms contained in the paper "ASFA Scope, Monitoring and Coverage" (see Annex-2 of 1998 Board Meeting Report), and that a summary definition existed also on the ASFA Homepage (see FAQ file: http://www.fao.org/fi/asfa/faq/faq4.asp ).
Scope - A brief historical description was given of the scope of ASFA and its evolution since the creation of ASFA in 1970. The FAO ASFA Secretariat pointed out that the publication " ASFIS-2, ASFIS Subject Categories and Scope Descriptions" represents a legal definition of ASFA scope as all the Partners, on signing the Partnership Agreement, agree to use this tool in the preparation of ASFA input.
Based on the discussions of the ASFA Board over the last few Meetings, the FAO ASFA Secretariat does not perceive the desire or need to make changes to the scope of ASFA.
Coverage - This was described as the extent or depth to which publications are sought out within the subject scope of ASFA, and this, in turn, depended on coverage policy (as regards: time span, language of coverage, geography, type of document etc.).
Monitoring - This was defined as the systematic scanning of the literature relevant to the subject scope of ASFA which entails identifying the relevant articles to be input and the actual preparation of the records. FAO mentioned that now it was time that Partners carry out an independent survey of gaps in their monitoring lists, as suggested by Mexico at the 1998 Board Meeting held in Rome.
The Representative of IMR (Sweden) brought up the problem that they were encountering in producing ASFA input due to the decrease in serial monitoring.
Regarding this problem, the Representative of CSA said that they were willing to give up some of their titles to other Partners, provided that the Partner could, themselves, get hold of the publications (i.e., due to strict copyright rules, CSA could not provide hard copies of these publications to Partners).
The Representative of CSA agreed to provide interested Partners with a list of the Serial Titles currently covered by CSA (broken down according to place of publication). It was suggested that all Partners review this list to identify any titles that they would be prepared to take on the monitoring responsibility. All transfers of Serial monitoring responsibility should be reported to FAO.
The possibility of exchanging monitoring responsibilities between Partners was discussed, whereby one Partner would give up the responsibility for monitoring some journals and take on that of other journals of another Partner. The use of the ASFA-Board-L to send messages to all Partners regarding the exchange of titles was suggested. Partners were reminded that before any definite exchange be carried out, CSA and FAO should be notified so as to maintain the Monitoring List up to date.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reminded Partners that if they increased their input figures, they could also increase their entitlements.
Ph.D. Theses - Further to its decrease in serial monitoring, the Representative of IMR (Sweden) reported that it would direct its efforts towards data entry of Ph.D. Theses. The Representative of CSA and the Representative of DFO noted that Theses were being covered by most Partners, but in the discussion that followed it became clear that different policies regarding the availability of Theses existed in different countries. In Sweden there is a policy among Universities to encourage dissemination of Theses, whereas Cuba, Argentina and PIMRIS have to request permission first from the author, since Universities are not authorized to provide the theses. Due to the difficulties mentioned in obtaining the theses, the possibility of including details as to the availability of the thesis was raised by Sweden. The Representative of BF suggested inclusion of a note in the Bibliographic Guidelines in the section concerning theses.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to modify the Thesis section of the Bibliographic Guidelines providing instructions to include information as to the availability of the thesis in the Notes field.
Document delivery - The Representative of IEO brought up the problem of document delivery, noting that some Partners only have details regarding the source and do not have access to the document. The FAO ASFA Secretariat explained that ASFA Partners are not obliged to provide document delivery as part of their responsibility in carrying out ASFA input, but they should be able to provide information, if or when requested, as to the source of the document.
The Representative of CSA pointed out that part of ASFA�s strength is the wide breadth of grey literature that is covered, but not enough information is available on how to get hold of copies.
The Representative of PIMRIS mentioned the software Ariel which facilitates document delivery. For multiple buying of the software, special discounts were mentioned by the Representative of Greece who agreed to post information on ASFA Board-L for the ASFA Partners.
Electronic documents - Regarding the availability of Electronic documents, the Representative of NOAA noted that often such electronically produced documents were available in an online catalogue only for a short period of time and then were subsequently removed.
The Representative of DFO mentioned that they were trying to overcome this problem by having a Library server archive copies of electronic documents.
The Representative of the FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) as being a way of keeping track of electronic documents when URL�s change, and also pointed out that a field had been introduced into the new www-ASFA-ISIS software to include such information.
The Representative of CSA explained the DOI as being a unique serial code provided by the publisher. Partners were encouraged to visit 2 web pages which provide more information regarding DOIs (www.doi.org and www.crossref.org).
The Representative of PIMRIS raised the question as to how to cover electronically produced documents which are revised after a few months.
The Board agreed that such documents (the origin and the revision(s)) be treated as different records, in the same way as revised editions of publications produced on paper are treated.
The possibility of entering more than one URL address was discussed, and the FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to investigate making the appropriate field in the www-ASFA-ISIS software repeatable.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat noted its concern that even Partners from highly economically developed countries (e.g. UK) were having difficulties in carrying out their monitoring responsibilities comprehensively due to insufficient staff resources.
The Representative of NIO mentioned the willingness of some developing countries to help other Partners in preparing input.
BF Presentation - A presentation was provided by Dr. W. Kirchner (BF) on the Trust Fund Project "Improvement of the ASFA database" (completed in June 2001). He illustrated how the data were obtained, analyzed and the results. ASFA records (1975-1999) were used in the study and the contents of the 3 descriptor fields (subject, taxonomic and geographic) were examined. Comparisons were made between the descriptor fields and the 3 main authority lists to indicate inconsistencies in the database and to enable homogenization of the database.
Some 155,000 subject descriptors were changed, 8000 were moved to the taxonomic field and 10,000 to the geographic descriptor field.
The data corrected has been delivered to ZADI for burning onto CD-ROM. Copies will be sent to FAO and CSA for loading on IDS, CD-ROM and Dialog.
A discussion followed on the use of the data obtained during this study in �cleaning up� the current list of subject descriptors. For example, if over a period of time a term only had 1 hit, then perhaps it could be removed from the thesaurus.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat asked if a subset of the data (1996-1999) could be analyzed to see if the introduction of the ASFISIS software, for data input, had made any difference regarding inconsistencies in use of descriptors.
The Board congratulated the Representative of BF on such a useful exercise.
Regarding the action item (2) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(2). Greece (NCMR) suggested that Partners request book lists and eventual copies of the books from commercial Publishers in their countries. She also suggested that a Partner consider donating books to other Partners who are willing to prepare the input for them." Regarding book coverage, most Partners concentrate on inputting serials, because they lack the time to cover books/monographs. Also books are expensive and most libraries are on a low-cost budget and simply cannot buy books. It is also easier to control and keep a check on journals.
The Board agreed that when an ASFA Partner identifies a book not on the database, it should alert the Partner in the country where published. Should the Partner not be able to prepare ASFA input, then the Partner who is in possession of the book should carry out the input.
Regarding the action item (10) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
" (10) FAO suggested that "future strategies for development" should be added to the Agenda and papers could be contributed by consultants. "The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that due to the short inter-sessional period and many other tasks, no time had been available for this matter, but agreed to add this item to next years agenda.
Strategy for development - Detailed discussion followed regarding what was meant by the preparation of a strategy for development and how this strategy could be developed. The Representative of UN/DOALOS noted that the FAO ASFA Secretariat has, to date, been very successful in developing new Partners, ensuring their participation and providing training, as illustrated by the 5 recently joined Partners now operational (ADRIAMED, Cote d�Ivoire, ICCAT, Korea, PIMRIS) and the 3 recently joined Partners that had received training during 1999/2000.
The Board suggested that FAO provide a paper on strategies on developing new partners. The Representative from FAO stated that if a consultant were necessary it would be financed by FAO. The
draft discussion paper would be sent to ASFA partners via ASFA-Board-L and would be a topic for discussion at next year� s Meeting.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to prepare a paper on strategy and tabled a draft Terms of Reference for the task. See (Annex-41).
Future developments
Regarding the action item (11) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
" (11) CSA agreed to add a new section to its annual report dealing with "future developments".The Representative of CSA reported that this was problematical due to constraints and competitiveness in the business, so would wait for enhancements to the database to be launched before adding such information in their reports. The Board requested the Representative of CSA to continue to keep it informed whenever possible of new developments concerning the database.
The use of XML for the coding of fields, and HTML and UNICODE for the coding of characters as a means of improving the database was mentioned.
Regarding the action item (12) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(12) FAO reminded Partners of the need to put into action the suggestions or ideas to improve coverage contained in the two studies on coverage of Fisheries Economics and Fisheries Technology. " The FAO ASFA Secretariat suggested the need to follow-up on previous studies carried out on coverage (fishery economics and fishery technology), and to do this, it would utilize some of the Trust Fund already allocated to the FAO ASFA Secretariat, under last year's (and this year's) Trust Fund proposal "Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat".
Regarding the action item (13) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(13) The Board agreed that papers dealing with "sociology" ... economics and politics are important ... CSA was encouraged ... to carry out a similar search in their recently acquired political science database. " The Representative of CSA reported that this had been done.
Regarding the action item (14) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(14) CSA agreed to add relevant records from the sociology database to ASFA using ASFA indexing terms." The Representative of CSA reported that the records had been identified and that they were waiting on a priority list for addition to the ASFA database.
ICES CM Papers
Regarding the action item (15) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(15) FAO agreed to communicate to ICES the Board�s concern regarding BF's inability to continue its monitoring of the ICES CM papers, and that this non coverage for ASFA would be a great disservice to the world�s scientific community. ICES is urged, therefore, to find a solution. "The Representative of ICES reported that they did receive an e-mail from the FAO ASFA Secretariat, and that they have arranged for the ICES CM papers to be input by CSA under contract.
Regarding the action item (16) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(16) BF suggested the compilation of a list of book publishers (commercial, academic etc.) which regularly publish titles within the subject scope of ASFA. This would serve as a check that the main publishers are being monitored. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to investigate maintaining the list of publishers for each Partner country). The Board agreed that Partners would send FAO the names of such Publishers." The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that nothing had been received from the Partners. The Representative of BF stressed the utility of such a list, and agreed to prepare a rough list.
The Board agreed that BF carry out a search on the ASFA database to identify a list of Publishers. The List would then be communicated to Partners by FAO using ASFA-Board-L. Each Partner, once receiving the list, would then contact the publisher to request that they be added to their mailing lists of catalogues and/or to receive complimentary review copies of new books so that they could be cited in the ASFA database.
The Board suggested that if a Partner received an unsolicited copy of a book, but did not have the time/staff to prepare ASFA input for it, then the book could be passed on to another Partner (using ASFA-Board-L to communicate the details) who was willing to prepare input.
Corrections to Partners input by CSA - The Representative of BF asked if CSA could provide feedback regarding the recurrent errors (in Partner�s input) that they corrected at CSA, and if it were also possible to tag the changes made by CSA, so that Partners could observe the corrections made and thereby learn from the errors. This would assist in improving the quality of future input.
The Representative of CSA pointed out that they do notify Partners of their recurrent errors. The possible use of a software which could compare old and new records to look for and reveal corrected mistakes should be looked into.
Concerning the appearance of corrected records on the database, CSA reported that reloading of the IDS database was carried out twice a year, while SilverPlatter reloaded about every 6 years.
Problems encountered when dealing with variations in Latin names of species and misspellings in the documents were discussed in detail. Great care should be given when choosing or deciding upon the correct spelling to use for data input. See item 11.8 for further discussions regarding taxonomic names.
8.1 Quality of Outputs
The Representative of IFREMER brought up the topic of missing records in the different output products (ASFA CD-ROM, ASFA Tapes and IDS). Particular reference was made to verifications carried out by IFREMER for their input for 1992 and 1998, which showed different figures for each of the 3 products. The Representative of IFREMER asked if other ASFA Partners had come across the same problem.
The Representative of CSA gave various reasons for the discrepancies. Sometimes the records were not actually missing but simply not retrievable when using only the IC field, which is easily corrupted.
One of the major problems would appear to be related to the twice-yearly updating of the IDS tape, which excludes "corrupted" records from the download.
The Representative of CSA agreed that they would check the IDS re-loads for missing Partner�s records and try to fix the problem.
Again, the Representative of CSA stressed the importance of Partners notifying CSA, via E-mail, when they send ASFA input to CSA (giving details as to the range of TRNs and the number of records that the ISO file should contain). This information would facilitate CSA�s retrieval of the records, should any records appear to be missing later from the database.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agree to send a reminder to all ASFA Partners (regarding the procedure for sending input to CSA via FTP or other means).
The Representative of IFREMER reported that they were pleased to discover that the time delay between records sent to CSA via FTP and appearance on the CSA/IDS was now very short, approximately 2-4 weeks. Scientists at IFREMER expressed their satisfaction, and Ms. J. Prod�homme congratulated CSA on this.
The Representative of YugNIRO noted discrepancies between the input figures given in the YugNIRO report and that given in CSA's and FAO's tables. The Representative of CSA pointed out that they were most probably incorrect figures, rather than missing records.
The Representative of PML mentioned the publication Aquaculture Engineering, which is covered by one of their Collaborating Centres. They noticed that although input was prepared by the UK, some records appearing on the database were those prepared by CSA for the Marine Biotechnology Abstracts database and NOT those prepared by the UK. The Representative of CSA agreed to look into the matter, and explained that the Marine Biotechnology Abstracts database was not in fact a true database, since the ASFA Board had decided back in 1990 that the database would not be indexed by them. Marine Biotechnology has its own separate monitoring list, which overlaps with that of ASFA, and the records are not indexed with the ASFA thesaurus but with that of Life Sciences. However it is a part of the ASFA group and sometimes �duplicate� records will occur � those produced by the ASFA Board and those produced separately by CSA Life Sciences. It was noted that some Marine Biotechnology records may not appear in ASFA 1,2 or 3.
Spell checker - Regarding the action item (28) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(28) The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to check on the feasibility of inserting the spell checker developed by Dr DeSmet into the current ASFISIS release-3 software." The FAO ASFA Secretariat pointed out that nothing had been done regarding a spellchecker for the DOS version of ASFISIS3, but rather efforts were put towards the new www-ASFA-ISIS. The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that they had tried to create a dictionary file to be incorporated into Word so that it could be used for the spellchecking of abstracts before inclusion in the www-ASFA-ISIS software, but encountered problems because the dictionary became too large. The Representatives of NIO and YugNIRO reported that they had tried similar exercises and had come across the same problem. The Representative of BF referred to the study they carried out regarding improvement of the ASFA database and suggested that the terms they identified with the highest "use frequency" could perhaps be used as a base for the spell checker.
The Representative of BF emphasized the importance of spell-checking for use by non-English partners and asked whether it could be incorporated in the www-ASFA-ISIS software, and if such a software existed on the market.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported they did not know whether it was possible to incorporate such a spellchecker in www-ASFA-ISIS, but would have to confirm with Dr. H. Rybinski (see Agenda item-9.2).
The Board agreed that when an eventual base dictionary is constructed and a software identified, the spellchecking should be carried out at the input phase by the Partners rather than at the downloading phase with CSA.
More information regarding an exercise carried out by Ms. V. Soto concerning spellchecking at CSA may be found in CSA�s report.
Regarding the action item (4) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(4) Regarding missing records and corrections of errors in existing records, CSA agreed to circulate to Partners a format for submitting requests for the correction of records."
The Representative of CSA reported that this was included in their report.
Regarding the action item (18) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(18) CSA, BF and NISC agreed to make recommendations regarding coding of diacritical marks, but all Partners are urged to participate in the discussions."
The Representative of BF reported that this has been done by CSA.
Regarding the action item (22) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(22) Regarding the inclusion of all the author affiliations cited in a single document (i.e., the first author with full postal address and all the others with only Institute name, city and country): The Board agreed that this would be a good feature (for bibliometric and management studies) if included in a database although it would require considerable effort."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that considerable discussions were held during the inter-sessional period with the webASFISIS Working Group and programmer. Inclusion of all the author affiliations was not considered feasible due to various technical problems with the www-ASFA-ISIS software and also time requirements that would be required for modifying the output programmes for IDS, the ASFA tape, and various vendor formats.
Regarding the action item (50) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(50). The Board agreed that Partners should collect user's comments ... regarding complaints, opinions, and compliments received from users regarding ASFA... On the basis of these comments, the Board agreed to consider the need for a formal user survey. (p 15)"
The Representative of CSA reported that nothing had been received from Partners, therefore there was no need for a formal user survey. CSA presented a table in their report.
Regarding the action item (51) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(51) The Board suggested that a "frequently asked question" (FAQ) file regarding ASFA be put up on the FAO ASFA home page. CSA agreed to send some of its FAQs to FAO as a basis for the list."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that an FAQ file was added to the ASFA Homepage (http://www.fao.org/fi/asfa/faq/faq.asp). Some FAQs were received from CSA a few days prior to the Board Meeting. These will be considered for inclusion in the FAQ file.
8.1.1 ASFA Journals, CD-ROM and Database
(Annex-36 contains year 2001 prices)CD-ROM delivery - The Representative of NIO mentioned tardy receipt of the ASFA CD-ROMs (latest received was Sept. 2000). The Representative of CSA reported that the latest update was March 2001, and pointed out that CD-ROM delivery was the responsibility of Silver Platter, but that CSA was aware that some countries were encountering problems in timely delivery. It was noted that CD-ROMs are delivered by courier service to India, so that it should be possible to keep track of the delivery. It was agreed that Partners should E-mail CSA when they have problems. The Representative of CSA reminded Partners that when CSA receives the latest CD-ROM update from SilverPlatter they post notice on the CSA home page, in this way Partners can always be informed as to the latest update. How to access this information of the CSA Homepage is described in the CSA report.
The Representative of CSA agreed to ask Silver Platter to notify Partners via E-mail when the CD-ROMs are being sent.
The Representative of IFREMER mentioned that many French users requested monthly updates of the CD-ROM and also pointed out that other similar products are updated monthly.
The Representative of CSA said that they would have no problem in providing Silver Platter with monthly tapes and agreed to make a request to Silver Platter for the availability of monthly updates.
8.2 New Outputs and Services
CSA/IDS
- The Representative of IFREMER requested some new functionalities on the CSA/IDS: 1) the possibility to save, print or E-mail more than 250 records; 2) to sort also by author and by information input centre (by increasing or decreasing number of input); 3) to combine strategies with the Boolean operator "not"; 4) to display results using a personalized format where one could select the particular fields to be displayed, such as Accession number and Input Centre Number; 5) to increase the 6 month expiry period for saving marked records; and 6) to add a new column in the Search History/Alerts that would indicate the result number before the column �Save as alert� or the column �Run�;.The Representative of CSA replied that from the time the CSA/IDS was introduced they have been constantly trying to add new features, similar to those included on the CD-ROM, but this will take time.
He explained that the 250 limit to records had originally been set to protect against abuse of copyright rules, to avoid researchers downloading 1000s of records, and fully understood that there were valid reasons for wanting to download more than 250 records.
The Representative of CSA agreed to investigate the possibility of increasing the figure to 500, and also to incorporate additional sorting columns.
Regarding the saving of search strategies and search results (Search History/Alerts), the Representative of CSA reported that it may now be possible to increase the expiry period to more than 6 months, with new equipment enabling increased storage capacity. They would also be looking into improving and extending Boolean searches, with the "and/not" operators.
Regarding the action item (24) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(24) Dr Oresland and CSA agreed to further discuss the matter of making the Cod database (containing records from ASFA) available to colleagues via the Internet. (p 10). The Board requested from Dr Oresland the serial titles and other reference titles collected for the Cod bibliography which do not appear in ASFA, so they can be eventually added to the ASFA monitoring responsibility."
The Representative of CSA reported that discussions were carried out and conditional permission was granted.
The Representative of IMR (Sweden) agreed that this would be done in autumn this year. (Action item for next year)
8.3 Public Relations Activities and Marketing
The Representative of UN/DOALOS pointed out that CSA and IFREMER covered many aspects of this item in their reports.
The Representative of NOAA mentioned several training sessions on using the database, and other Partners (PML, FAO, Sweden, GR) also provide demonstrations on how to search the database. A request was made by Sweden for brochures explaining how to use the Silver Platter database.
The Representative of CSA agreed to provide Partners with pamphlets describing the searching of the IDS, as this information could also be useful in searching the CD-ROM product. Partners interested in receiving these pamphlets should contact CSA via E-mail.
The Representative of INIDEP explained INIDEP�s E-mail service which provided information to an ASFA contact identified from their mailing lists of Institutions related to fisheries.
The Representative of BF mentioned a presentation he made on the "Role of Secondary Publications in Scientific Publication" which illustrated the importance of the ASFA database, not only in the field of knowledge but also in increasing the visibility of primary journals, authors and the institutes involved in the research.
The Representative of PML asked about the existence of a Power Point presentation on ASFA.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to supply the presentation it prepared a number of years ago (in English, French and Spanish) to those Partners who requested it.
8.4 Partner Entitlements
The FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned that Partners� Entitlements were listed in Annex-4 of the FAO Report. All Partners were entitled to IDS access and should contact CSA for this entitlement.
The Representative of PML reminded Partners that if they no longer required the receipt of the ASFA printed journal entitlement, they should inform CSA.
The Representative of CSA noted that some Partners (no longer fulfilling their input responsibility) should be contacted regarding the possible loss of their entitlements.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to contact these Partners and to remind them of their ASFA responsibilities.
8.5 Increasing Distribution of ASFA Information Products and Services
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported on the "Project to Increase the Distribution of ASFA Products to Low Income Food Deficit Countries (LIFDC)", which actually became operative at the beginning of 2000. Some 32 Institutes have been identified, and 26 have signed an agreement and are receiving ASFA CD-ROMs. In addition, 6 LIFDC countries are being provided by CSA with access to the IDS.
This year's progress report (Annex-39) includes some of the replies that were received from countries receiving the ASFA CD-ROM. Not surprisingly, a number of the recipient institutes have reported difficulty in using the ASFA CD-ROMs even though in the initial questionnaire (which was sent to them by FAO at the projects start) they indicated the necessary expertise and infrastructure to use it. Obviously, the next logical step, funds permitting, would be to follow up on these institutes and provide them, if possible, with the necessary means to access the ASFA database.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat noted that although the original proposal for this project envisaged a 5-year time span, the project was agreed between FAO and CSA for an initial period of 2 years - with possibility for extension. Since the project has been operative for two years (it started January 2000) it is now time to extend the project for a further 2 years. It was also believed opportune to consider expanding the CD-ROM part of the initiative to LIFDC countries outside of Africa, as the original project was limited to Africa.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned the new owners of Silver Platter [Wolters Kluwer] and hoped that they would not provide any obstacles to the current and proposed future activities of this project.
The Representative of CSA agreed to contact Wolters Kluwer regarding the continuation of this project.
Regarding the action item (26) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(26) IOC will also suggest additional institutions to be considered [for the LIFDC project] after comparing the list of [institutes] in ASFS/2000/50 and the list of institutions participating in the ODINAFRICA project. "
The Representative of IOC reported that IOC has received some additional requests, and they will contact FAO.
Regarding the action item (27) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(27) PIMRIS agreed to assist in identifying institutes in Oceania to benefit from the IDS initiative and Mr. Macharia�s list of three institutes requiring PC�s may also be considered for this initiative."
The Representative of PIMRIS reported that various institutes had been identified in Vanuatu, Kuvalu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Kiribati, but several were encountering problems in infrastructure. Not all of the institutes have a definite IP, making it difficult to provide IDS service. CSA said that they could solve this problem by removing the IP restriction.
The Representative of PIMRIS agreed to put the relative institutes in contact with CSA.
9. WITH MACHINE READABLE INPUTASFISIS (release 3) .Discussion on DOS ASFISIS was limited given the importance of www-ASFA-ISIS at this Meeting.
9.2 WWW-ASFA-ISIS
Regarding the action item (29) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report
"(29) The Board agreed to reactivate the ASFISIS working group (FAO, NIO, BF, PIMRIS) ... to define and list the functionality and features required for the ASFA version of www-ISIS interface. They will collate the items and discuss the issues and items brought up in this report. They will also test the interface once it is ready."
In order to give the Board an idea as to the amount of work involved in the development of the www-ASFA-ISIS software, the FAO ASFA Secretariat distributed an example of one of the many extensive correspondence that has been going on backwards and forwards between FAO, the www-ASFA-ISIS Working Group and ICIE, the company developing the www-ASFA-ISIS software.
Thanks goes to the ASFISIS Working Group (C. Emerson, M. Tapaswi, W. Kirchner, G. Rao) and the ASFA Secretariat (R. Pepe, L. Lombardi, and H. Wibley and to some extent A.M. Rossi and J. Collins) who worked very long and hard drawing up specifications, explaining concepts, testing and writing help notes.
Prior to the demonstration of the www-ASFA-ISIS software interface, the FAO ASFA Secretariat gave a brief historical background leading up to the need for and development of the software.
At the 2000 Board Meeting, a Trust Fund proposal was agreed, in principle: "Support to the Development of Web based interface to ASFISIS" . The final ICIE project proposal and cost estimate was sent to FAO in November 2000 and circulated to the ASFISIS Working Group for comment. The ASFISIS Working Group agreed to the ICIE proposal and Dr Rybinski and his staff began work immediately in December 2000. The overall cost of the development was shared between the ASFA Trust Fund and the FAO Regular Programme Budget.
www-ASFA-ISIS demonstration - Dr. H. Rybinski (ICIE) demonstrated the www-ASFA-ISIS software (Version-0) which contained most of the FAO ASFA Secretariat's specifications to date, however by the time of the Meeting, FAO did not have time to view or test the version being demonstrated.
Most Partners appeared very impressed by the software and its functionalities. Great interest was shown by the Partners, as indicated by the large number of questions made concerning various aspects of the software, both regarding data input and searching functions.
The Representative of CSA believed that this software would greatly reduce errors during the data input stage and brought up the possibility of having one central server (FAO) connected to all the other clients (ASFA Partners). Dr. H. Rybinski replied that this would be possible, but that it would not be easy and due to the problem of connectivity could be very slow.
When asked about incorporation of a spellchecker, Dr. H. Rybinski said that he had investigated the matter and had already linked the software to an inexpensive commercial spellchecker. Other commercial spellcheckers were available, and he said that he was prepared to investigate further and include some links to demo-versions of the spellcheckers. ASFA Partners could then, after a trial period decide themselves which one they liked best. Considerable discussion followed regarding how the spellchecker could be adapted to the www-ASFA-ISIS software. The possibility of merging the ASFA thesaurus with the spellchecker was also considered.
The Representative of PIMRIS (commenting on a technical aspect of the software) suggested that the format " Complete" should be the default rather than "Temporary" to avoid the possibility of exported incomplete records. The Representative of FAO agreed to forward this comment to Dr. H. Rybinski.
Next step - The FAO ASFA Secretariat explained that now that the www-ASFA-ISIS software had been developed, the next phase would involve FAO familiarizing itself with the software and carrying out the testing (input of data and testing of utility programs) for bugs in the software. Once tested/debugged, the software would be sent to the ASFISIS Working Group for further beta testing. The various data input manuals would also have to be modified. Then a decision would be made regarding the necessity of training courses before sending the software to the ASFA Partners for general use (see Agenda item-10.1, for further discussion regarding training).
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported to be ahead of schedule on the development of www-ASFA-ISIS, although it is by no means finished. The above mentioned familiarization and testing phase and manual writing phase will require time, hard work and patience by FAO, the ASFISIS Working Group, and CSA who will need to make some changes in its import procedures. Regarding the inputting guidelines, FAO reported that considerable progress has already been made in the form of the extensive set of "help notes" which have already been included as part of the software. These " help notes" can also serve as the basis for an online manual and/or for the revisions of the printed manuals.
Assistance in implementing the software - Immediately following the release of the software (i.e., after the above mentioned testing, debugging etc. phase) it is envisaged that the Partners might require guidance and assistance in its implementation.
To facilitate discussions, the ASFA Trust Fund Proposal �Support to implementation of the www-ASFA-ISIS interface" ($10,000) was brought forward from Agenda Item 13.3.3 for discussion and approval under this Agenda item. (See Annex-3b for the text of the proposal)
The Board agreed that the above mentioned Trust Fund proposal should not include the second activity listed concerning the adaptation of the software to other databases as this was a capacity building function better suited to the mandate of FAO and its regular Program funding.
The Board approved this ASFA Trust Fund Proposal which would essentially provide a help desk service, by ICIE, to the ASFA Partners for one year after the release.
In addition, Sweden suggested and the Board agreed that Dr. H. Rybinski be invited to the next years Board Meeting and that the Proposal should incorporate additional funds for travel and per diem.
Regarding the action item (30) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report
"(30) CSA agreed to send FAO the validation program which it runs against the ASFA files for inclusion in the new system."
The Representative of CSA reported that they would send the ASFA relevant lines of their overall CSA database validation program to Dr Rybinski when possible.
10. REPORT ON ASFA TRAINING ACTIVITIESThe FAO ASFA Secretariat carried out 2 training sessions during the inter-sessional period. Information on the first training session is contained in Section 11 of the FAO Report (Annex-3). The second training session was conducted the week before the ASFA Board Meeting, the trainee was Ms. Marisela Hernandez Ceballos (Cuba).
10.1 FUTURE OF ASFA TRAINING SESSIONS
The FAO ASFA Secretariat pointed out that a number of new ASFA Partners (and some existing Partners) require training in the ASFA input methodology.
However for the FAO ASFA Secretariat, the training of new Partners has become somewhat problematic in light of the near future release of the www-ASFA-ISIS software
The Board agreed that new Partners should not be trained before the new software is ready, which will be after FAO and the Working Group has carried out the beta testing etc. mentioned in Agenda item 9.2 above. If FAO and the ASFISIS working group judge the "change over" to www-ASFA-ISIS to require face-to-face training, the ASFA Trust Fund may have to be used to cover part of the costs for a series of ASFA training courses (a course, for Latin America, was already approved at the last ASFA Board Meeting and offers to host the Training were received in FAO from Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Mexico).
11. STATUS OF ASFIS REFERENCE SERIES PUBLICATIONS11.1 ASFIS-1, Serials Monitored for the ASFIS Bibliographic Database
The ASFA Monitoring List (official title: Serials Monitored for the ASFIS Bibliographic Database, (ASFIS-1) is available via the FAO Fisheries ASFA Homepage (http://fao.org.fi/asfa/asfa.htm) as : 1) a text file, and 2) an ISO2709 file for downloading and importing into the ASFISIS (release-3) software.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat discussed the maintenance of the Monitoring List and all ASFA Partners are reminded of the necessity of notifying FAO (attention: Ms Lombardi) of any changes or additions or deletions to their lists, and to reply as quickly as possible to any FAO queries regarding the List.
As requested at the last ASFA Board Meeting, FAO has added five new fields to the Monitoring list master file:
1) one field to identify "electronic ISSN numbers",
2) one field to identify "core journals",
3) three fields to identify "monitoring status":
a) "begin ASFA coverage" which indicates the DATE in which the ASFA Partner started to monitor a journal (including Volume and Issue numbers);
b) "ceased ASFA coverage" which indicates the DATE in which the ASFA Partner ceased to monitor the journal (including Volume and Issue numbers); and
c) "ceased publication" which indicates that the journal is NO longer published.
FAO reported that they were already receiving from the Partners information for inclusion into these new fields, and obviously it has created a new (and quite time consuming) workload for the Secretariat (for Ms. Lombardi). Partners were requested to follow the instructions sent by Ms. Lombardi on 4 May and 10 May 2001 via ASFA-Board-L and reminded that they should wait until receiving a text file of their Monitoring Lists from Ms Lombardi and then supply the necessary information as requested.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to send the individual lists out to all Partners for inclusion of the data required.
Regarding the action items (20, 21, 23, 32, 33) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(20) Partners agreed to notify FAO when they discover an ISSN for an electronic journal version."
"(21) The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to collect these ISSN�s and will investigate creating another field in the monitoring list database to accommodate the number."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the new field has been added to the monitoring list database.
"(23) The Board agreed on the utility of the full serial titles over the abbreviated titles and requested FAO to adjust the ASFISIS software to input the full title for export to CSA."
FAO agreed to investigate the possibility to carry out this change. The target date for the changeover is January 2001."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that there is a technical problem regarding input of the full serial title in the ASFISIS software, since it contains ALSO details regarding the place of publication, which often do not form part of title. A small program would be required to reformat the monitoring list database to remove the place of publication details when appropriate.
"(32) CSA requested the FAO ASFA Secretariat to modify the Monitoring List to include information on ceased or dropped publications including dates.
FAO agreed to investigate the possibility of modifying/maintaining the Monitoring List to include information on ceased or dropped publications including dates."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that new fields had been included, but noted that the work currently underway will determine the eventual long-term feasibility.
"(33). The Board agreed to send core serial titles to FAO by the end of December 2000, and FAO would investigate the possibility of adding a "core" field to the Monitoring List. For the purposes of this exercise "core" does not refer to the importance of the journal but only to the fact that it is monitored "cover to cover".
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the field had been added.
11.2 ASFIS-2, Subject Categories and Scope Descriptions
Regarding the action item (34) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
�(34) Board agreed to disband the inter-sessional Working Group (IOC, NOAA, FAO, CSA, BF) which was established at the 1998 ASFA Board Meeting to investigate the need for new categories and the elimination of unused categories, as there was no longer an expressed need to update these categories especially now that the IOC GLODIR project was not using the categories anymore to index scientist�s specialties. The Publication can now be printed and be put on the FAO ASFA Homepage."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that this publication was finalized and published on the FAO ASFA Homepage FTP site (/fishery/docs/asfa/ ). Only a small number of printed copies will be published and distributed to Partners as the difference between the provisional and final versions is not substantive. The Ukraine ASFA Partner is in the process of completing the translation of these Guidelines into Russian as part of the Trust Fund proposal approved at the last Board Meeting.
11.3 ASFIS-3, Guidelines for Bibliographic Description
Regarding the action item (45) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(45) The Board agreed that translations of the ASFIS Reference Series Publications should be made available on the FAO ASFA Homepage, and FAO agreed to take action."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that this was done.
The most recent edition of ASFIS-3 (Rev.2), Guidelines for Bibliographic Description was issued in 1998. It is available in English and Russian on the ASFA Homepage FTP site (/fishery/docs/asfa/)11.4 ASFIS-4, Guidelines for Abstracting
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the ASFIS-4 (Rev.1), Abstracting Guidelines was finalized by incorporating into the body of the Guidelines the one page "Information Sheet on Abstracting and Indexing" (which was issued in 1998), and by improving the examples in the various Annexes. It will eventually be modified for the www-ASFA-ISIS software. It is available in English and Russian on the ASFA Homepage FTP site /fishery/docs/asfa/
11.5 ASFIS-5, Guidelines for Indexing
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the most recent edition of ASFIS-5 (Rev.1), Guidelines for Indexing (Provisional Draft) was issued in 1998 together with the one page "Information Sheet on Abstracting and Indexing" which described the new or changed features contained in the ASFISIS (release-3). The publication needs to be finalized to incorporate the data input instructions for www-ASFA-ISIS.
11.6 ASFIS-6, Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Thesaurus
During the inter-sessional period an online version of the ASFA Thesaurus was published on the FAO ASFA Homepage http://www4.fao.org/asfa/nons_en.htm . It is also available in English as a text file on the ASFA Homepage FTP site (/fishery/docs/asfa/ ).
Regarding the action item (35) contained in 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(35) FAO agreed to send out a reminder to Partners to use the printed Thesaurus for indexing, and to send corrections and suggestions for new terms to FAO by March 2001(attention: R. Pepe). FAO will circulate them to the Thesaurus (FAO, BF, CSA, Canada, IFREMER, PIMRIS) committee for comments. The Terms will then be sent to Heather Cameron for discussions with Julia Hudson regarding the incorporation of the changes and the eventual need for a Trust Fund project. The goal is to publish the Thesaurus before the next Meeting."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the reminder was sent out, and that some comments were received from Partners (mostly in March). However the late replies, combined with FAO�s large list of potentially new terms (still in need of further compilation) and the "interruption" caused by work on www-ASFA-ISIS have caused a delay in this work. FAO has approximately 100 terms that need to be considered for additions by the Thesaurus Committee.
All the suggested new terms still need to be: compiled, sent to the Thesaurus committee for review, entered into the software and then formatted for printing.
Discussion followed on the maintenance of the Thesaurus and the incorporation of new terms. The Representative of Canada reported that discussions regarding this matter and eventual costs were carried out together with the Thesaurus consultant Ms. J. Hudson.
The Representative of BF suggested that the frequency list demonstrated in BF�s presentation could be reviewed by the Thesaurus Committee to obtain a subset (i.e., infrequently used terms deleted).
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to provide a list of spelling mistakes in the ASFA thesaurus and distribute it on the ASFA-Board-L. Dr. H. Rybinski pointed out the possible use of the www-ASFA-ISIS software to maintain electronically thesaurus terms. Changes could be made on-line and then easily downloaded onto the software.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to send a list of approved terms (after review/"weeding" by the Thesaurus Committee) to Ms. Cameron (Canada). She and Ms. Hudson will provide a cost estimate for structuring the terms, incorporating them in the MTM software, and formatting the print version.
11.7 ASFIS-7, Geographic Authority List
Regarding the action item (37, 38) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(37) CSA agreed to send an updated file. FAO would ... prepare it for loading by Partners into the ASFISIS ... ."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that there was no action regarding the DOS ASFISIS software.
"(38) The Board requested that the new www-ASFISIS interface contain a geographic authority list which is thesaurus-like or searchable. FAO agreed to include this in the discussion of the ASFISIS Working Group."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that an updated version was sent to Dr. H. Rybinski for inclusion in the new www-ASFA-ISIS software, and that it would be displayed in KWOC format.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat suggested that the need for a Thesaurus-like structure for the Geographic Authority List (GAL) should be discussed further.
The Representative of CSA mentioned the high cost of producing a �full structured thesaurus� version of the Geographic Authority List (GAL). CSA matches all geographic descriptors against an authority list (of approx. 14,000-15,000 terms) as a measure towards eliminating errors in the Geographic indexing.
It was suggested that something in between a fully structured "thesaurus" and the present "list" would not be as costly but still beneficial. CSA suggested that the possible existence of other structured geographical authority lists should be investigated.
The Representative of BF stressed the importance of the hierarchical structure of the current terms in use and that this structure should be maintained. The Representative of DFO noted the importance of including detailed instructions in the indexing guidelines on how to structure the terms.
The Representative of NOAA suggested the re-formation of a GAL committee, who should discuss the situation and come up with suggestions for review by the Board.
11.8 ASFIS-8, Taxonomic Authority List
Regarding the action item (39) contained in the 2000 ASFA Board Meeting Report:
"(39) FAO reported that Dr DeSmet, soon after the release of this list, had prepared a beta version for testing within the ASFISIS software, however the ASFA Group did not yet have time to test it."
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported no action due to work on www-ASFA-ISIS.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat mentioned that the 10,300 records taxonomic species list file, related to fisheries/aquaculture, computerized by the Statistical Section of FIDI was sent to Dr. H. Rybinski for incorporation in the www-ASFA-ISIS software. Note, the previous taxonomic file that is being used in the DOS ASFISIS contained only 1500 terms.
This 10,300 records taxonomic file can be downloaded from the FAO Fisheries Web page site (http://www.fao.org/fi/statist/fisoft/asfis/asfis.asp). The file is in a .txt format, easily importable in Excel or Access software.
The terms cover Pisces, Crustacea, Mollusca, Mammalia, Amphibia, Reptilia, Aves, Invertebrata aquatica, and Aquatic plants.
The Representative of FAO agreed to follow up the request of the Representative of CSA regarding the possibility (with the new www-ASFA-ISIS software) to enter the Latin name in the Taxonomic descriptor field and simultaneously to enter the common name in the Identifier field. Dr. H. Rybinski replied that this might be possible.
Considerable discussion followed regarding the procedure to follow when coming across �incorrectly� spelled Latin names. It was noted that �incorrect spellings� cover typographical errors as well as spellings that may be under dispute between scientists. The general consensus was, when in doubt, leave the incorrect name in the title or abstract, and put the correct taxonomic name in the Taxonomic descriptor field and the incorrect name in the Identifier field.
The Representative of FAO pointed out that when obvious errors were come across in the title field during ASFA input, they should be followed by the word [sic] in square brackets followed by the correct word. This ASFA rule also applies to obvious typographical mistakes in species names.
11.9 ASFIS-9, Database User Guide - Nothing to report.
11.10 ASFIS-10, Authority List for Corporate Names
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the most recent edition was sent to Partners 13 December 1999 with instructions for up-loading into the DOS ASFISIS (release-3) software. An updated version was sent to Dr. H. Rybinski from CSA for inclusion in www-ASFA-ISIS software.
11.11 ASFIS-11, Magnetic Tape Specifications and Record Format - Nothing to report
11.12 ASFIS-12, International Directory of Serial Publications in Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries
Nothing to report.
11.13 ASFIS-13, ASFIS Database Indexing and User Guide (Chinese)
Nothing to report
11.14 ASFIS-14, ASFISIS (Release-3 User Manual)
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that the most recent version of this publication is that issued in 1998: ASFIS-14, ASFISIS (Release-3 User Manual). It is available in English and Russian on the ASFA Homepage FTP site (/fishery/docs/asfa/ )
12. EXPANDED LANGUAGE CAPABILITY IN ASFAThere was much discussion as to the utility of a multilingual thesaurus, considering also problems related to the maintenance and cost of such a thesaurus.
The Representative of INIDEP said that the translation of the thesaurus into Spanish would not be useful for Argentina, although she mentioned that it could be of use to other Spanish-speaking countries. She believed that a Spanish glossary would be of more use. The Representative of CIP believed a Spanish version of the thesaurus would be of great use to the Cuban partners in preparing ASFA input.
The Representative of YugNIRO questioned the use of a multilingual thesaurus, but agreed to its usefulness as a tool, rather than for entering multilingual terms. The Representative of CSA replied that it is a user aid to help in searches, and that IFREMER provided CSA with a French lexicon, which may be incorporated on the on-line version of the database.
The Representative of BF pointed out that the translation of thesaurus terms is very complicated, and suggested that only the English thesaurus should be taken as a master version.
Dr. H. Rybinski (ICIE) mentioned the AGRIS multilingual (English, French and Spanish) thesaurus that was incorporated in the English language interface of AGROVOC.
The Representative of NOAA suggested the establishment of a committee to examine the feasibility of multilingual /expanded language capability for ASFA.
The Representative of CSA mentioned the good user feedback that they were receiving now that non-English abstracts were being included on the database. The Representative of FAO added that English capability should not be undermined, but the addition of other languages is a very good feature.
The Board agreed to maintain this item on the Agenda for future discussions.
13.1 Status of the ASFA Trust Fund
The balance of the ASFA Trust Fund account is US$ 173,340.00. CSA deposited US$127,846.00 in royalties for 2000 and BF deposited US$61.00. Annex-37 gives a slight breakdown of the calculation of CSA Royalty payment and Annex-38 provides details on the status of the Trust Fund.
13.2 Proposals in Progress, Completed or Pending Further Discussion
13.2.1 Conversion - ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format for 1972 (in progress)
The Representative of NMDIS agreed to begin this project (US$15,000) following this Board Meeting.
13.2.2 Conversion - ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format for 1973
(almost completed)The Representative of KMFRI reported that this project (US$15,000) was, for the most part, completed and the records would be sent to FAO shortly.
13.2.3 Conversion - ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format for 1974
(completed)NIO reported this project (US$15,000) was completed during the intersessional period, and the records already appear in the ASFA database. A report of this project is included in the NIO Report (Annex-22).
13.2.4 Support to attend annual 2001 ASFA Advisory Board Meetings ($15,000) (
completed)The following 7 ASFA Partners were provided with full or partial assistance to attend the 2001 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting: 1) Kenya KMFRI-ODINEA/RECOSCIX-WIO (also with funding from IOC), 2) Russia, (VNIRO), 3) Ukraine (YugNIRO), 4) Cuba (CIP), 5) Poland (SFI), 6) Cote d'Ivoire (CRO), 7) Argentina (INIDEP). The proposal is ongoing, therefore it requires updating of the funds to be made available for the Meeting in the year 2002. See item 13.3.1 below.
13.2.5 Staff support to FAO ASFA Secretariat (for period Jan-Dec 2001) (
underway)This proposal was agreed at 2000 Board Meeting (US$31,460). The committed funds are being spent to support the FAO ASFA Secretariat. This proposal is ongoing, therefore it requires review and approval for the year 2002. The terms of reference for this proposal have been slightly changed. See item 13.3.2 below and Annex-3a.
13.2.6 Support to the Development of Web based interface to ASFISIS together with GILW/AGRIS group
(FAO)( $10,000 from ASFA Trust Fund and $11.045 from FAO Regular Program) (almost completed)Dr. H. Rybinski presented a prototype of the software at the Board Meeting. See Agenda item 9.2
13.2.7 Improvement of ASFA Database (BF) ($15,000)
(completed)This project was completed the week before the Board Meeting. See Agenda item 7 for further discussion. For information see also BF E-mail to ASFA-Board-L (29 December 2000), which contained some statistics about errors found on database.
13.2.8 Addition of 45,000 abstracts to 1975-77 ASFA database (NMDIS) ($17,000)
(completed)The Representative from NMDIS reported the work completed and it would soon be sent to FAO.
13.2.9 Provision of ASFA Centres in former USSR with reference materials for input (ASFIS-2 Subject Categories and Scope Descriptions), (YugNIRO) ($1,500)
(underway)The proposal is underway. The four other translations under this project have been completed (Indexing, Bibliographic, and Abstracting Guidelines and ASFISIS User Manual).
13.3. New Proposals
The Board discussed the following proposals:
13.3.1 Supporting attendance to Board Meeting (for year 2002) ($15,000)
This is an ongoing proposal up for renewal each year. The proposal was originally agreed by Partners at the 1997 ASFA Board Meeting with $6000 being allocated to support attendance to the 1998 Meeting. At the 1998 and 1999 Meetings, the sum was increased to $10,000, and $15,000, respectively. At the 2000 Meeting, the sum was not increased (i.e., it remained at $15,000).
The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that there had been difficulties in dealing with all requests from Partners to attend this year�s Board Meeting, and there was some over spending. The Board appreciated the fact that with the increased number of Partners a larger sum of money would be required.
The Representative of PIMRIS suggested increasing the sum to $20,000, and the Representative of Canada stressed that it was very important to bring Partners to the Board Meeting and suggested the figure be increased to $25,000.
The Representative of NIO noted that some money could by saved be allowing Partners to buy their own tickets. The Representative of FAO replied that this was the procedure used for some tickets.
The Board agreed to raise the sum allocated for the 2002 Meeting to $25,000 and accepted the Trust Fund Proposal "Supporting attendance to Board Meeting".
13.3.2 Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat (for year Jan -Dec 2002) ($30,000)
This proposal (Annex-3a) is to assist the FAO ASFA Secretariat in carrying out work/initiatives that are for the collective benefit of the ASFA Partnership. The FAO ASFA Secretariat proposed this as an ongoing proposal, which the Board requested be discussed each year before renewal.
The Board agreed to the Trust Fund Proposal �Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat�
13.3.3 Support to implementation of www-ASFA-ISIS interface (US$10,000.00).
This proposal (Annex-3b) is to assist the FAO ASFA Secretariat in the implementation of the www-ASFA-ISIS software.
This Trust Fund Proposal was discussed and agreed under Agenda Item 9.2. The proposal was amended to include eventual travel and "per diem" for Dr. H. Rybinski to attend the next ASFA Board Meeting in Rome, and the part of the proposal dealing with enhanced uses was deleted.
13.3.4 Maintenance of the ASFA Thesaurus
The proposal is to structure and enter the new terms into the Thesaurus maintenance software and to format the thesaurus for printing.
The Board agreed to this proposal in principle, but is pending cost estimates from the Representative of DFO and Ms. J. Hudson (thesaurus consultant). See Agenda Item 11.6.
ASFA-FIGIS Interaction Project The Representative of the FAO ASFA Secretariat introduced and described this Trust Fund Proposal regarding ASFA-FIGIS interaction (Annex-40). The overall goal of the project is to increase the visibility of ASFA and its dissemination, through the development of a map-based query facility (GIS) and generally to improve access to fisheries information through the Web. The benefits to both the ASFA Partners and FIGIS were mentioned. Dr. R. Grainger requested the ASFA Board to agree in principle on funding this activity, but confirmation will be subject to final approval, by correspondence, following agreement on implementation details with CSA and BF.
Phase 1 of the project aims at establishing all specifications for interactions between the FIGIS and ASFA systems and some developments and the outcome of this phase will be presented at the ASFA Board 2002 Meeting. The major objectives during this phase will be to develop the GIS layers required for the integration of all categories of geographical indexes, harmonizing the various thesauri (Agrovoc, FIGIS, ASFA Geographic Authority List) and developing a web-compatible Geographic Query Interface building on the prototype developed by FFRI.
The Representative of DFO raised the question as to the meaning of �harmonizing thesauri�. The Representative of FAO said that, in this case, it principally implied the mapping the ASFA terms with those of Agrovoc, and explained that FIGIS strives to integrate all the aquatic sciences information databases in FAO and externally.
The Representative of BF gave a brief demonstration of the Baltic Database, as an introduction to the use of GIS interfaces, showing how data is linked to maps and how it may be observed. He noted that such a GIS interface would provide ASFA with yet another unique feature.
With respect to the ASFA-FIGIS interaction project, the Representative of BF pointed out that since there was no clear definition as to how far the ASFA GIS and FIGIS should go, there would be a slight overlap between the two. He added that it was rather difficult to decide on the project, seeing that it has not yet been clearly defined. Dr. W. Kirchner suggested that the Board give the go ahead, providing that technical details would be provided to explain clearly the role of ASFA.
Considerable discussion and comment followed the introductions to this Trust Fund Proposal by Dr. R. Grainger and Dr. W. Kirchner.
The Representative of NOAA noted that FAO would be working in close collaboration with CSA in order to smooth out initial problems and eventually come to a defined agreement. She also pointed out that the use of such GIS interfaces is the new trend in searching and that ASFA should take this opportunity of being amongst the first to use this type of interface, considering that it would increase the visibility of ASFA.
The Representative of CSA mentioned that there was a great deal of interest regarding the use of geographical location and noted that the result of this project would act as a promotion for ASFA.
The Representative of NOAA mentioned NOAA's efforts to use GIS interfaces in the combining of data/ literature with geographical information.
The Representative of BF pointed out the utility of the system for searching in regions without having any knowledge of specific ASFA geographical coding. He suggested the development of a clearly defined ASFA GIS (as an independent tool) rather than being merged with that of FIGIS. CSA noted their agreement with this point.
There was some confusion as to exactly how the system would work regarding the access to the ASFA records.
The Representative of CSA pointed out that ASFA subscribers could probably not access ASFA directly via FIGIS due to difficulties in identifying subscribers. However public access to the ASFA records, via FIGIS, could take the form of a "limited" access (i.e., only a part of the bibliographic record being displayed). In this case, the records would probably need to be loaded on the FAO server.
The Representative of NOAA mentioned that with this type of system, the end user gets an indication as to the information which is potentially available and re-iterated the fact that this is the new trend of how things are developing in the field of literature searching.
The Board agreed to support the proposal in principle.
The Representative of FAO said that once something more definite was determined, it would be circulated via the ASFA-Board�L for consent.
The Representative of BF pointed out that Phase-2 is required to produce a fully functional GIS facility.
13.3.6 Draft Concept for project "Correction the ASFA Database Descriptor Fields"
The Representative from BF presented this proposal (Annex-20a). He explained that it should be considered as the second step to BF's previous ASFA Trust Fund Project proposal: "Improvement of the ASFA database" (which was completed in June 2001 and corrected more than 150,000 errors in the Subject Descriptor Field). The aim of this 2nd project proposal is to clean up the "Identifier" field and to clean (down to a finer level) the subject, taxonomic, and geographic descriptors. Detailed analysis of the data obtained during the 1st project showed that there was a need for such an extended correction of all descriptor fields, so as to obtain consistency in the fields to facilitate retrieval of the documents.
The Representative of BF pointed out that BF could not carry out all the work, and would require assistance from ASFA Partners in the cleaning up of the lists of descriptors. BF agreed to put Excel tables on the web (i.e., ASFA-Board-L) with the fields descriptors in need of correction and Partners could tender for making the corrections and would be paid by BF by number of lines edited.
The Representative of BF agreed that a clean tape with all of the material would be provided within 1 year of starting the project and sent to CSA, who would merge the cleaned up material with their database.
The Board agreed in principle to proceed with "cleaning" the identifier field and a further cleaning (down to a finer level) of the subject and geographic fields. BF presented a proposal (of a sum of US$19800 - subject to negotiation) of the consulting company which did the programming and parts of data processing in the preceding project. Dr Wulf Kirchner reported that he wishes to involve other ASFA partners in the project. This should reduce the necessary workload for BF (BF/Brockmann/ZADI), however it would cause additional coordination and management for BF. For the extension of the project to other Partners, a sum of up to US$5000 was agreed upon. The proposal of the Consultant needs further negotiation: additional costs occurring at BF and ZADI on one side, and on the other side, some downsizing to the possibilities of BF will be necessary. BF will present the final cost calculations to the Board via FAO/ ASFA Secretariat for approval.
One master database
Considerable discussion followed as to which database was/would be used as the master upon which the "cleaning-up" exercise was/will be carried out. The Representative from BF said that they used their database for the 1st clean-up exercise, and that they would supply CSA with the corrected data in order to be merged into CSA�s database. Also, BF would use their database for the 2nd cleaning exercise.
The problem of merging the ASFA database maintained at CSA (with its set of unique corrections made by CSA across all fields) and the ASFA database as maintained by BF (with its set of unique corrections made by BF to the subject, taxonomic and geographic descriptor fields) was discussed.
The Representative of CSA stated that CSA is committed to incorporating into their copy of the ASFA database all the changes/corrrections made by BF under the 1999 BF Trust Fund proposal "Ïmprovement to the ASFA Database", and agreed to make the complete database available to all those Partners with the tape rights.
However in the meantime, the Representative from CSA stated that he would not like to delay the loading into the system of the 1975-1977 records, held by BF and would like to load them into the system as soon as they are made available (note, NMDIS is adding the abstracts to these records under a separtate Trust Fund proposal).
The Representative of NMDIS agreed to send the 1975-1977 records with abstracts to FAO as soon as they were ready.
The Board agreed to the terms of reference, tabled by the FAO ASFA Secretariat (Annex-41), for an FAO consultant to prepare a "Proposal on Criteria for Priority Setting for Future Expansion of the ASFA Partnership".
Once completed, the ASFA Secretariat would circulate the "criteria" to ASFA Partners for comment via the ASFA- Board-L in order to be adopted at the next ASFA Board Meeting.
15. PLACE AND DATE OF NEXT MEETINGThe Representative of Cuba and Kenya reiterated their offers to host the next ASFA Advisory Board Meeting.
The Representative of BF reminded Partners of the former practice (abandoned a number of years ago) of hosting the ASFA Board Meeting every other year in Rome. He pointed out that since there were some very important decisions to be made next year, it would be of great importance that as many ASFA Partners as possible should attend the next Meeting and therefore suggested that the 2002 ASFA Board Meeting should be held at FAO in Rome, Italy because it was more centrally located than the other venues.
The Representative of FAO said that holding the meeting in Rome was useful for the other ASFA staff at FAO to meet the ASFA Partners, and vice versa, but added that it was good and very educational for ASFA Partners to visit other Partner's Institutes/Input Centres and that this also boosts the importance of the Institute in their own country.
The Board agreed to choose the venues for the next two years� Meetings, 2002 and 2003.
The Board agreed to hold the next Meeting at FAO headquarters in Rome in June 2002 (the date to be confirmed by FAO).
The Board agreed to hold the year 2003 Meeting at CIP in Cuba.
The Chairperson, Ms. J. Beattie, thanked all the ASFA Partners for their cooperation in the Meeting.
Mr. R. Gruszka expressed his gratitude, on behalf of all the participants, to IFREMER and the ASFA Secretariat for all the work involved in the organization of this meeting.
Ms. H. Cameron, on behalf of all the participants, also thanked Ms. J. Beattie for her hard work in chairing the meeting.
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
UN CO-SPONSORING ASFA PARTNERS
FAO
Dr. R. Grainger
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit (FIDI)
Fisheries Department
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00100, Rome, Italy
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.fao.org/fi / Tel: (39) (6) 570 54828 / Fax: (39) (6) 570 52476
Mr. R. Pepe
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit (FIDI)
Fisheries Department
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00100, Rome, Italy
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.fao.org/fi / Tel: (39) (6) 570 56380 / Fax: (39) (6) 570 52476
Ms. H. WibleyFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
Fishery Information, Data and Statistics Unit (FIDI)
Fisheries Department
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla
00100, Rome, Italy
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.fao.org/fi / Tel: (39) (6) 570 56380 / Fax: (39) (6) 570 52476
IOCMr. Mika Odido
IOC/IODE Consultant
Head, IOCINCWIO/OCINAFRICA Project Office
IOC-UNESCO
P.O. Box 95832
Mombasa, Kenya
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.ioc.unesco.org / Tel: (254 11 47 25 27 / Fax 254 11 47 51 57
UN/DOALOSMr. R. Gruszka
United Nations Secretariat
Division for Ocean Affairs and
The Law of The Sea (UN/DOALOS)
Office of Legal Affairs, Room DC2-414
2 U.N. Plaza
New York, N Y 10017, USA
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.un.org/Depts.los / Tel: (1) (212) 963 3926 / Fax: (1) (212) 963 5847
INTERNATIONAL ASFA PARTNERS
ADRIAMEDMs. Nicoletta Milone
Scientific Cooperation to Support Responsible
Fisheries in the Adriatic Sea
Corso Umberto I, 30
86039 Termoli (CB), Italy
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.faoadriamed.org / Tel: (+39) 0875.708252 / (+39) 0875 708240
ICESMs. M. Ovens
International Council for the Exploration
of the Sea (ICES)
Palaegade 2
DK 1261 Copenhagen K, Denmark
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / URL: http://www.ices.dk
Tel: (+45)33 15 42 25 / Fax: (+45) 33 93 42 15 / Telex 22498 ices dk
ICLARMDr. Sandra Child
ICLARM - The World Fish Center
PO Box 500, GPO
10670 Penang
Malaysia
E-Mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.iclarm.org / Telephone : (604) 626 1606 / Fax: (604) 626 5543
PIMRISMr. G. Rao
Pacific Islands Marine Resources Information System (PIMRIS)
Marine Studies Programme
The University of the South Pacific
P.O. Box 1168
Suva, FIJI Islands
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / ARIEL Internet Protocol: 144.120.26.115
Tel: (679) 313 900 ext. 2284 or (679) 212 284 / Fax: (679) 301 490 or (679) 300 830
NATIONAL ASFA PARTNERS
ARGENTINAMs. G. Cosulich
Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo Pesquero (INIDEP)
Biblioteca y Servicio de Documentación
Casilla de Correo 175
7600 Mar del Plata, Argentina
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.inidep.edu.ar / Tel: +54 (23) 86 0963 / 2404 / Fax: +54 (23) 86 1830 / 1831
CANADAMs. H. Cameron
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Library Policy and Services
200 Kent Street
Ottawa, ON, K1A OE6, Canada
for
National Research Council Canada
Building M-55, 1200 Montreal Rd
Ottawa ON K1A 0R6, Canada
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca / Tel: (613) 993-2926 / Fax: (613) 990-4901
CHINA, PEOPLE'S REPUBLICMr. Xu Chenge
National Marine Data and Information Service (NMDIS)
State Oceanic Administration of China (SOA)
93 Liuwei Road, Hedong District
Tianjin 300171, People's Republic of China
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.coi.gov.cn / Tel: (86) (22) 240 108 02 / Fax: (86) (22) 24010926
Mr. Yang YingNational Marine Data and Information Service (NMDIS)
State Oceanic Administration of China (SOA)
93 Liuwei Road, Hedong District
Tianjin 300171, People's Republic of China
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.coi.gov.cn / Tel: (86) (22) 240 108 27 / Fax: (86) (22) 240 10 926
COTE D'IVOIREMs. Diakite épouse Ehui Sarata
Centre de Recherches Oceanologiques (CRO)
29, rue des Pêcheurs
B.P. V 18 Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: (225) 21.35. 50.14 / Fax: (225) 21.35.11. 55
CUBAMs. Marisela Hernandez Ceballos
Centro de Investigaciones Pesqueras (CIP)
Ministerio de la Industria Pesquera (MIP)
5TA, Ave. y 248 Barlovento
Habana, Cuba
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: (537) 298966 / Fax: (537) 249827
FRANCEMs. J. Prod'homme
Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)
Service de la Documentation et des Bibliothèques (SDB)
Centre de Brest, B.P. 70
29280 Plouzane, France
E-Mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: 33 298 22 4019 / Fax: 33 298 22 45 86
Mr. F. CabaneInstitut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)
Environnement � Littoral (DEL)
Centre de Brest, B.P. 70
29280 Plouzane, France
E-Mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: 33 298 22 4364 / Fax: 33 298 22 45 48
Mr. G. ChatryInstitut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la Mer (IFREMER)
Service de la Documentation et des Bibliothèques (SDB)
Centre de Brest, B.P. 70
29280 Plouzane, France
E-Mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: 33 298 22 4019 / Fax: 33 298 22 45 86
Collaborating Centres
M. Margout
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
Lab. D'Ichtyologie Generale et Appliquée
43 rue Cuvier
75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
E-mail: [email protected] / http://www.mnhn.fr / Tel: (+33) 01 40 79 37 46
J. Grall
SHOM/EPSHOM
Service Hydrographique et Océanographique de la Marine
Etablissement Principal du SHOM
13 rue de Chatellier
BP 30316
29603 Brest Cedex, France
E-mail: [email protected] / http://www.shom.fr / Tel: (+33) 02 98 37 78 86 /
GERMANYDr. Wulf Kirchner
Bundesforschungsanstalt fuer Fisherei (BF)
Informations- und Dokumentationsstelle
Palmaille 9
22767 Hamburg, Germany
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / Tel: (+40) 38 90 51 13 / Fax: (+40) 38 90 52 61
URL: http://www.bfa-fisch.de
GREECEMs. S. Goulala
National Centre for Marine Research (NCMR)
Library, Documentation and Information Centre
Ag. Kosmas, GR. 16604 Elliniko
Athens, Greece
E- mail: [email protected] / URL: http://atlantis.fl.ncmr.gr / Tel: 0030 1 96 53 520-21 / Fax: 0030 1 96 53 522
INDIADr. M. P. Tapaswi
National Institute of Oceanography (NIO)
National Information Centre for Marine Sciences (NICMAS)
Library
Dona Paula, Goa 403 004, India
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.nio.org / Tel: 91 -(0) 832 22 62 53 ext.4276 / Fax: 91 -(0)832 22 33 40
JAPANDr. Kazufumi Takayanagi
Fisheries Agency
1-2-1 Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo 100-8907, Japan
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (81) 3 3502 8111 / Fax: (81) 3 3591 5314
Mr. Sei MizobuchiFisheries Research Agency (FRA)
2-12-4 Fukuura, Yokohama 236-8648
Japan
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (81)45 788 7524 / Fax: (81)45 788 5006
KENYAMr. J. Macharia
Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI)
RECOSCIX-WIO
P.O. Box 81651
Mombasa, Kenya
E-mail: [email protected] / [email protected] / http://www.recoscix.org
Tel: 254 11 47 11 29 / 254 11 47 25 27 / Fax: 254 11 47 51 57
NORWAYMs. T. Espelid
Institute of Marine Research (IMR)
c/o The Library / Directorate of Fisheries
Postboks 185 - Sentrum
N-5804 Bergen, Norway
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.imr.no / Tel:(0047) 55 23 85 50 / Fax: (0047) 55 23 85 85
POLANDMs. Z. Brzeska
Sea Fisheries Research Institute (SFI)
Kollataja Street 1
81-332 Gdynia, Poland
E-mail: [email protected] / Fax: +48 58 620-28-25 / Telx: 054348 mir pl
Tel: +48 58 620 17 28 278 (Library) / 620-28-25 (Director)
Ms. M. RomanowskaInstitute of Oceanology PAS
Powstancow Warszawy 55
81-712 Sopot, Poland
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: +48 58 551 72 83
RUSSIADr. A. Zhavoronkov
Federal Research Institute of Fisheries andOceanography (VNIRO)
17, V. Krasnoselskaya
Moscow, 107140, Russia
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (095) 264 9498 / 264 9289 / Fax: (095) 264 91 87
SPAINMr. Eduardo Prieto Fernandez De Toro
Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO)
Avenida del Brazil, 31
28020 Madrid, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Concha Ronda LainConsejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Centro de Información y Documentación Científica (CINDOC)
Centro de Información y Documentación en Acuicultura
Joaquin Costa, 22
28002 Madrid, Spain
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel.: (91) 563 54 82 / fax: (91) 564 26 44
Dr. Manuela Vazquez ValeroConsejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Centro de Información y Documentación Científica (CINDOC)
Centro de Información y Documentación en Ciencia y Tecnología
Joaquin Costa, 22
28002 Madrid, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]
SWEDENDr. V. Oresland
National Board of Fisheries
Institute of Marine Research (IMR)
Turistgatan 5
S-45321 Lysekil, Sweden
E-mail: [email protected] / URL http://www.fiskeriverket.se / Tel: +46 (0) 523-18734 / Fax: +46 (0) 523-139 77
UKRAINEDr. E. Romanov
Southern Scientific Research Institute of Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (YugNIRO)
Chief, World Ocean Fishery Resources Department
2 Sverdlov Street, Kerch, 98300
Crimea, Ukraine
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (380) (6561) 21065 / Fax: (380) (6561) 21572
UNITED KINGDOMMs. L. Noble
Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences
Plymouth Marine Laboratory (CCMS/PML)
National Marine Biological Library
Library and Information Services
Plymouth PL1 2PB, United Kingdom
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (44) (1752) 633 282 / Fax: (44) (1752) 633 102
USAMs. Janice Beattie
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
Library and Information Services Division
NOAA Central Library (SSMC3, 2nd floor),
1315 East-West Highway
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, USA
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.lib.noaa.gov / Tel: (1) 301 713 2607 ext 139 / Fax: (1) 301 713 45 98
PUBLISHING ASFA PARTNERCSA
Dr. C. Emerson / Ms. V. Soto
CSA
7200 Wisconsin Ave.
Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA
E-mail: [email protected] / URL: http://www.csa.com / Tel: (301) 961 67 00 / Fax: (301) 961 67 40
E-mail: [email protected] / Tel: (301) 961 67 00
OBSERVERS
Mr. Henryk Rybinski
Institute for Computer and Information Engineering (ICIE)
ul. Mazowiecka 14,
Warsaw, Poland E-mail: [email protected]
AGENDA
1. Opening of the Meeting
2. Administrative Arrangements
3. Election of Chairpersons and Rapporteurs
4. Adoption of the Agenda
5. Adoption of the Summary Report of the 2000 Meeting
5.1 Matters Arising
6. Status of ASFA Partnership
6.1 Report on the Inter-sessional Activities of ASFA Partners
6.1.1 United Nations Co-sponsors
6.1.2 ASFA Partners
6.1.3 ASFA Publisher (CSA)
6.2 New and Potential ASFA Partners
6.2.1 Admission of new partners
6.2.2 Consideration of potential partners
6.3Co-operation with AGRIS
6.4ASFA Partnership Agreement
6.5ASFA Publishing Agreement
7. ASFA Scope, Coverage and Monitoring and Timeliness
8. ASFA Products and Services
8.1 Quality of Outputs
8.1.1 ASFA Journals, CD-ROM and Database
8.2 New Outputs and Services
8.3 Public Relations Activities, Marketing
8.4Entitlements
8.5Increasing Distribution of ASFA Information Products and Services
9. Progress with Machine Readable Input
9.1 ASFISIS
9.2WIN/ASFISIS
10. Report on ASFA Training activities
11. Status of ASFIS Reference Series Publications
12. Expanded language capability in ASFA
13. ASFA Trust Fund
13.1 Status of the Trust Fund
13.2 Proposals in progress, completed or pending further discussion
13.2 New Proposals
14. Other Business
15. Place and Date of Next Meeting(ASFA/2001/ 49)
ASFA Trust Fund Status
(as of May 2001)
1. HISTORY OF TRUST FUND DEPOSITS
(since fund resides in FAO)1.1 CSA Royalty Payments for:
Year
US$
2000
(US$127,846.27)
1999
(US$ 85,412.46) deposited May 2000
1998
(US$ 80,003.75) deposited 4/1999
1997
(US$ 70,315.76) deposited 4/1998
1996
(US$ 64,596.00) deposited 4/1997
1995
(US$ 61,543.51) deposited 5/1996
1994
(US$ 34,473.77) deposited 4/1995
1.2 BF Royalty Payments:
Year
US$
2000
(US$ 61.00)
deposited Dec. 20001999
(US$ 72.00] deposited 1999
1998
(US$ 86.00) deposited 1998
1997
(US$ 112.00) deposited 1997
1996
(US$ 67.00) deposited 1996
1995
(US$ 241.72) deposited 11/1995
2. TOTAL AND BALANCE
TOTAL ASFA Trust Fund deposited in FAO (total of above deposits)
(+) $ 524,830.00
(committed funds)
(-) $ 394,120.00
(committed unspent funds returned to balance)
(see section-5, numbers: 22, 27, 29, 30 below)
(+) $ 42,630.00
BALANCE
(+)$173,340.00
(one hundred and seventythree thousand three hundred and forty US dollars)
ASFA Trust Fund Project Proposals
(CHECK LIST)
NEW Proposals (for discussion at this Meeting). Submitted as of 8 May 2001NOTE: New proposals may also be presented during the Meeting, where they may be: 1) approved for immediate implementation or 2) approved in principle (but requiring further discussion/formulation)
2.PENDING Proposals (pending further discussion and/or action)
UNDERWAY Proposals COMPLETED Proposals (during this intersessional period) HISTORIC FILE (of past completed proposals)_________________________________
1. NEW PROPOSALS(*) 2001-2002
(submitted as of 8 May 2001)(*) Full text of most 1995 to 2000 Trust Fund Proposals are contained in the respective ASFA Advisory Board Meeting Reports
(Hamburg, 30 May-2 June 95) (Rome, 28-31 May 96) (Gdynia, 22-25 April 97) (Rome, 9-12 June 98) (NOAA, 25-28 May 99), (NIO/NICMAS 19-22 September 2000).
FAO proposals
1.1 Supporting attendance to Board Meeting (for year 2002) ($15,000)
Ongoing proposal up for renewal each year - This proposal was originally agreed by Partners at the 1997 ASFA Board Meeting with $6000 being allocated for attendance to the 1998 Meeting. At the 1998 Meeting, the sum was increased to $10,000, and at the 1999 Meeting to $15,000. At the 2000 Meeting the sum was not increased (i.e., it remained at $15,000).
(At this Meeting, the Board should decide on the sum to be allocated for the 2002 Meeting)
1.2 Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat
(for year Jan -Dec 2002) ($30,000)See (ASFA/2001/3a)
This proposal is to assist the FAO ASFA Secretariat in carrying out work/initiatives that are for the collective benefit of the ASFA Partnership. FAO proposed this as an ongoing proposal, which the Board requested be discussed each year before renewal.
(At this Meeting, the Board will be asked to support the proposal for Jan-Dec 2002)
Support to implementation of www-ASFA-ISIS interface (US$10,000.00).See (ASFA/2001/3b)
This proposal is to assist the FAO ASFA Secretariat in the implementation of the www-ASFA-ISIS software.
(At this Meeting, the Board will be asked to support the proposal in principle)
Maintenance of the ASFA Thesaurus (US$ _,__) The proposal is to structure and enter the new terms into the Thesaurus maintenance software and to format the thesaurus for printing and prepare the Introduction.
(
At this Meeting, the Board will be asked to support the proposal in principle)Translation of the ASFA Thesaurus (US$ _,__) At this Meeting, the Board will be asked to support the proposal in principle)The proposal is to translate ASFA Thesaurus into French and Spanish and enter it into the Thesaurus maintenance software and eventually www-ASFA-ISIS.
(
Other ASFA Partners Proposals
See individual ASFA Partners Reports
PENDING PROPOSALS (pending further discussion and/or action)2.1 Conversion of ASFA Printed Journals into machine readable format (1971-1974) - 1972 ($15,000). Agreed at 2000 Board Meeting, but China (NMDIS) requested to begin the project after June 2001, in order to complete the project to add 45,000 abstracts to the 1975-1977 ASFA database.
(This proposal requires confirmation from NMDIS that it is still planning to carry out the proposal)
2.2 Convert 500 Records from PIMRIS database into ASFISIS format. Pending PIMRIS since 1997.
(This proposal requires confirmation from PIMRIS that it is still willing to carry out the proposal)
2.3 ASFA User Survey.
This idea was proposed by FAO at the 1996 Meeting and discussed at subsequent Meetings with no conclusion. At the last Meeting, it was decided to circulate user comments/complaints/suggestions (via ASFA-Board-L) during the inter-sessional period and based on these comments to decide on the need or not for an eventual user survey.(This proposal still requires discussion)
2.4 Workshops for familiarization (training) in ASFA input methodology
($28, 800). Pending release of www-ASFA-ISIS.(This proposal could be increased in funds if, the introduction of www-ASFA-ISIS proves to require training )
UNDERWAY PROPOSALS
3.1 Support to attend annual 2001 ASFA Advisory Board Meetings ($15,000 + $4,629 unspent from last year's allocation). Underway and completion (for this year) coinciding with this Meeting. The following 7 ASFA Partners were provided with full or partial assistance to attend the 2001 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting: 1) Kenya KMFRI-ODINEA/RECOSCIX-WIO (also with funding from IOC), 2) Russia, 3) (VNIRO), 4) Ukraine (YugNiro), 5) Cuba (CIP), 6) Poland (SFI), 7) Cote d'Ivoire (CRO), 8) Argentina (INIDEP). This proposal is ongoing therefore it will require updating of the funds to be made available for the Meeting in the year 2002. See item-1.1 above.
3.2 Staff support to FAO ASFA Secretariat (FAO) $31,460 (for period Jan-Dec 2001). Underway. Agreed at 2000 Board Meeting. Because Ms Wibley was hired as a regular FAO staff member prior to this period the committed funds are being spent to support the FAO ASFA Secretariat. This proposal is ongoing, therefore it requires review and approval for the year 2002. The terms of reference for this proposal have been slightly changed. See item-1.2 above.
3.3 Support to the Development of Web based interface to ASFISIS together with GILW/AGRIS
group. (FAO) $10,000 from Trust Fund (and $11.045 from FAO Regular Program). Underway. Agreed in principle at 2000 Board Meeting. In November 2000, the proposal by ICIE (Dr Rybinski) for the development of the Web ISIS interface was circulated to the ASFISIS working Group for comments. Only positive replies were received so FAO proceeded with drawing up the Letter of Agreement with ICIE. Intense work followed by ICIE and FAO and the ASFISIS working Group. Dr Rybinski will present a prototype of the software to the Board Meeting.
3.4 Conversion of ASFA Printed Journals into machine readable format (1971-1974).
1973 Conversion ($15,000). Underway. During the intersessional period KMFRI send a test batch of input to FAO regarding this project and comments were exchanged.3.5 Improvement of ASFA Database (Germany-BF, $15,000). Underway. See BF E-mail to ASFA-Board-L (29 December 2000) which contained some statistics about errors found on database.
3.6 Addition of 45,000 abstracts to 1975-77 ASFA database (China-NMDIS) with initial BF collaboration ($17,000). Underway. In April 2001, NMDIS reported to FAO that the input work was almost completed and the proof reading stage was underway. NMDIS reported that it was missing two issues to complete the work (ASFA Vol.5, no.1, 1975 and Vol.6, no.8, 1976), but PML (UK) offered to supply the missing copies.
3.7 Provision of ASFA Centres in former USSR with reference materials for input (ASFIS-2 Subject Categories and Scope Descriptions), (YugNIRO) ($1,500). Underway. The four other translations under this project are completed (Indexing, Bibliographic, and Abstracting Guidelines and ASFISIS User Manual).
4. COMPLETED PROPOSALS (during inter-sessional period)
4.1 Conversion of ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format (1974 volume) (India- NIO/NICMAS), ($15,000).
4.2 Staff support to ASFA Secretariat (FAO) ($31,460) (period Jan.- Dec.2000). This project was completed, but its is ongoing see item 1.2 above. Ms Wibley, who was working under this proposal was hired by FAO as a regular staff member in October 2000. The left over US$7800 was spent on ASFA related activities (e.g. toward funding Dr. Rybinski attendance at 2001 ASFA Board Meeting, and distribution of ASFA CD-ROMs to Low Income Food Deficit Countries).
4.3 Formatting ASFA Thesaurus (J. Hudson) ($2,000).This project was completed see item of FAO Report for further details regarding Thesaurus.
4.4 Support to attend annual 2000 ASFA Advisory Board Meetings ($10,000). The following ASFA Partners were provided with full or partial assistance from the ASFA Trust Fund to attend the 2000 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting at NIO, India: China (NMDIS), Estonia (EMI), Kenya (KMFRI-ODINEA/RECOSCIX-WIO)*, Russia (VNIRO), and Ukraine (YugNiro).*(partially funded by IOC: for Kenya).
5. HISTORICAL FILE (of all proposals ongoing and completed)
2000 Proposals
(COMMITTED)
(DISBURSED)
(NOTES)
1.Support to attend annual ASFA Advisory Board Meetings (extra $4,629 from unspent 2000 allocation) $15,000
$19,629* +
underway
2. Staff support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat
(for year 2001)
$31,460
$7,727
(Rybinski to Meeting, Travel J. Cort to L.America)
3. Workshops for familiarization (training) in ASFA input
$44,000
$ 0
Pending
www- ASFA
release
4. Support to the Dev. of Web based interface to ASFISIS
$10,000
$6,313
underway
5. Provision of ASFA Centres in former USSR with translation (ASFIS-2, Subject Categories and Scope Descriptions)
$1,500
$ 0
underway
6. Conversion of ASFA Printed Journals into machine readable format (1971-1974). 1973 Conversion.
$15,000)
$8,000
underway
7. Conversion of ASFA Printed Journals into machine readable format (1971-1974). 1972 Conversion.
$0
to begin after
June 2001
1999 Proposals
8. Staff support to ASFA Secretariat (Ms Wibley) period January 2000 -December 2000).
$31,460
$23,660
bal. to Project. Distr. ASFA to LIFDC countries
9. Support to attend annual ASFA Advisory Board Meetings(unspent $4,629 moved to support attendance at 2001 Meet.)
$15,000
$10,371*
completed
10. Improvement of ASFA Database by Germany (BF)
$15,000
$4,500
underway
11. Request for training from Kenya (RECOSCIX-WIO)
$3,000
$2,825
completed
12. Conversion of ASFA printed journals into machine readable format (1974
volume) by India (NIO)
$15,000
$5,000
underway
13. Addition of 45,000 abstracts to 1975-77ASFA database (China) $17,000
$17,000
$5,000
underway
14. Formatting ASFA Thesaurus by Julia Hudson
$2,000
$2,000
completed
1998 Proposals
15
A systems analysis specification for a Windows-based data entry software (ASFISIS/Win) (Dr. DeSmet)
$10,000
$0
cancelled
16
Support to attend annual ASFA Advisory Board Meetings
$10,000
$12,500
completed
17
Staff support to ASFA Secretariat (Ms Wibley) (for the period January 1999 - December 1999)
25,200
25,200
completed
18
Extension of ASFA Potential in Lithuania
$ 2,500
$ 2,500
completed
19
Coverage of Fishery Economics and Related Subjects in ASFA
$ 5,000
$5,000
completed
1997 Proposals 1997 Proposals
(COMMITTED)
(DISBURSED)
(NOTES)
20.
Extension of ASFA potential in Ukraine (YugNIRO)
$3,000
$3,000
completed
21
Provision of ASFA Centres in former USSR with reference material for input (translations) (YugNIRO)
$3,500
$3,500
completed
22
ASFISIS Maintenance (Dr. DeSmet)
($600 returned to balance due to over budgeting)
$2,000
$1,400
completed
23.
Training for PIMRIS (travel Mr. Rao)
(disbursed exceeds committed, because for administrative reasons FAO could not issue the most economic ticket as per original
estimate)
.$3,000
$5,200
completed
24.
Convert 500 Records from PIMRIS database into ASFISIS format
$3,500
$0
pending
25
Staff support to ASFA Secretariat
(Ms Wibley) (for the period January 1998 -December 1998)
$25,200
$25,200
completed
26
Analysis of ASFA for Scope and
Coverage with eventual recommendations for improvement.
$6,500
$6,500
completed
27
/P> Support to attend annual ASFA Advisory Board Meetings ($ 2,500 unspent - to be transferred to 1998 proposal - see item-9)
$6,000
$3,500
completed
1996 Proposals
28
Manual on ASFISIS software and Data Entry (funds still to be transferred to FAO (because FAO carried out the work)
6,,000
$6,000
completed
29.
Logo for ASFA competition
($2,500 returned to balance)
$2,500
$0
cancelled
30.
Statistical Analysis of ASFA Database ($7,000 returned to balance)
$7,000
$0
(no charge
by CSA)
31
ASFA User Survey
--
--
(Pending re-formulation of proposal)
1995 Proposals
32
Workshops for familiarization with the
ASFA input methodology (ASFA Training Session, 3-7 June 1996, FAO)
(unspent $22,335 returned to Balance, due to cancelled proposal, over budgeting etc.)$34,000
$11,645
completed*
33
Review of the ASFA Partners Monitoring
of Serials for ASFA
(unspent $22,335 returned to Balance, due to cancelled proposal, over budgeting etc.)5,000 .
$5,000
completed
34
IOC Study Grant.. ($8,000) *
(cancelled-funds moved to item 25)$0
$0
cancelled*
35
Chinese proposal sub-project 1, Identification of ASFA information users and suppliers in China
$4,000.
$4,000
completed
(TOTAL)
$394,120.
$226,670
(COMMITTED)
(DISBURSED)
DECISIONS AND ACTIONS AGREED BY PARTICIPANTS
(at ASFA ADVISORY BOARD MEETING IFREMER, PLOUZANE, FRANCE, 19-22 June 2001)
Adoption of Summary Report of the 2000 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting
1. The Report of the 2000 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting (Goa, India) was adopted by the Board. p.1
Status of ASFA Partnership
2. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to continue the follow-up [i.e. to get UNEP actively re-involved in ASFA]. p.2
3. The FAO ASFA Secretariat reported that they would follow up to see what the situation was regarding the Lithuanian ASFA Partner. p.4
Admission of New Partners
4. The Board welcomed two new Partners into the ASFA Partnership: Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto Oceanografico (Brazil) and Ministry of Fisheries, Fisheries Information Centre (Vietnam).
5. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agree to officially communicating the acceptance of Brazil and Vietnam into the ASFA Partnership by the ASFA Advisory Board, but also reminding them that entitlements and listing in the title pages of the journals will only commence with the submission of input for inclusion in the ASFA database. p.5
Consideration of Potential Partners
6. The Representative of PIMRIS agreed to continue follow-up regarding Nelson Polytech as a potential ASFA Partner in New Zealand. p.5
7. The Representative of BF agreed to follow-up with Egypt regarding a potential ASFA partner. p.5
ASFA Partnership Agreement
8. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to put on the ASFA homepage the criteria reflecting loss of entitlements and dismissal from Partnership. p.6
ASFA Scope, Coverage, Monitoring And Timeliness
9. Based on the discussions of the ASFA Board over the last few Meetings, the FAO ASFA Secretariat does not perceive the desire or need to make changes to the scope of ASFA.
10. FAO reminded Partners to carry out an independent survey of gaps in their monitoring lists.
11. The Representative of CSA agreed to provide interested Partners with a list of the Serial Titles currently covered by CSA. It was suggested that all Partners review this list to identify any titles that they would be prepared to take on monitoring responsibility. All transfers of Serial monitoring responsibility should be reported to FAO. p.7
12. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to modify the Thesis section of the Bibliographic Guidelines providing instructions to include information as to the availability of the thesis in the Notes field. p.
713.
The Representative of Greece agreed to post information on ASFA Board-L regarding the Ariel software (which facilitates document delivery) in order to facilitate the multiple buying of the software with special discounts. p.714. The Board agreed that electronically produced documents (the origin and the revision(s)) be treated as different records, in the same way as revised editions of publications produced on paper are treated. p.7
15. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to investigate the possibility of entering more than one URL address by making the appropriate field in the www-ASFA-ISIS software repeatable. p.8
16. The Representative of NIO mentioned the willingness of some developing countries to help other Partners in preparing input.
17. The Board agreed that should an ASFA partner identify a book that is not on the database, it should notify the Partner in the country of the place of publication. Should the Partner not be able to prepare ASFA input, then the Partner who is in possession of the book should carry out the input. p.8
18. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to add "future strategies for development" to next years agenda. p.8
19. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to prepare a paper on strategy and tabled a draft Terms of Reference for the task. See (Annex-52). p.9
20. The FAO ASFA Secretariat suggested the need to follow-up on previous studies carried out on coverage (fishery economics and fishery technology), and to accomplish this the FAO ASFA Secretariat will utilize some of the Trust Fund already allocated to FAO, last year, under the Trust Fund proposal entitled "Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat".
21. The Representative of CSA reported that records had been identified [from the sociology database] and that they were waiting on a priority list for addition to the ASFA database.
22. The Representative of ICES reported that the ICES CM papers would be input by CSA under contract.
23. The Representative of BF agreed to prepare a rough list of book publishers (commercial, academic etc.) which regularly publish titles within the subject scope of ASFA. This would serve as a check that the main publishers are being monitored. p.9
23.1 The Board agreed to BF carrying out a search on the ASFA database to identify a list of Publishers. The List would then be communicated to Partners by FAO. Each Partner, once receiving the list, would then contact the publisher to request that they be added to their mailing lists of catalogues and/or to receive complimentary review copies of new books so that they could be cited in the ASFA database. p.9
The Board suggested that if a partner received an unsolicited copy of a book, but did not have the time or the staff to prepare ASFA input for it, then the book could be passed on to another Partner who would be willing to prepare input, using the ASFA-Board -L.
ASFA Products and Services
Quality of Outputs
24. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to send a reminder to all ASFA Partners that when they send input to CSA they should ALWAYS send an E-mail to CSA giving details as to the range of TRNs and the number of records that the ISO file should contain. This will facilitate CSA’s retrieval of the records, should later any of the records appear to be missing from the database. p.10
25. The Representative of CSA agreed that they would check the IDS re-loads for eventual missing Partner’s records and try to fix the problem. p.10
26. The Board agreed that when an eventual base dictionary is constructed and a software identified, the spellchecking should be carried out at the input phase by the Partners rather than at the downloading phase with CSA. p.11
27. The Representative of CSA reported that nothing had been received from Partners, therefore there was no need for a formal user survey.
ASFA Journals, CD-ROM and Database
28. Representative of CSA informed the Board that when they receive the latest CD-ROM, a notice goes up on their home page, so that Partners can always be informed as to the latest update. How to access this page is described in the CSA report.
28.1 The Representative of CSA agreed to ask Silver Platter to notify Partners via E-mail when the CD-ROMs are being sent. p.12
28.2 Regarding monthly updates of the ASFA CD-ROM, the Representative of CSA agreed to make a request to Silver Platter for the availability of monthly updates. p.12
New Outputs and Services
29. Regarding new functionalities on the CSA/IDS, the Representative of CSA agreed to investigate:
- increasing the "save, print or e-mail" function to 500,
- increasing the number of sorting columns.
- saving of search strategies/searches (Search History/Alerts) for more than 6 months,
- improving and extending Boolean searches, with the "and/not" operators. p.12
30. The Representative of IMR (Sweden) agreed that the serial titles and other reference titles collected for the Cod bibliography, which do not appear in ASFA, would be communicated to the ASFA Partners, so that they can be eventually added to the ASFA monitoring responsibility. This would be done in autumn this year. p.12
Public Relations Activities and Marketing
31. The Representative of CSA agreed to provide Partners with pamphlets describing the searching of the IDS, as this information could also be useful in searching the CD-ROM product. Partners interested in receiving these pamphlets should contact CSA via E-mail. p.13
32. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to supply the ASFA PowerPoint presentation (in English, French or Spanish) to those Partners who requested it. p.13
Partner Entitlements
33. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to contact those Partners no longer fulfilling their input responsibility and to remind them of their ASFA responsibilities. p.13
Increasing Distribution of ASFA Information Products and Services
34. The Representative of CSA agreed to contact Wolters Kluwer regarding the continuation of the project to increase the distribution of ASFA information products to LIFDC countries worldwide for a further two years. Worldwide the number of LIFDC countries is 83. p.13
35. Regarding access to the ASFA database via the CSA/IDS service, the Representative of PIMRIS reported that various institutes had been identified in Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, and Kiribati, but problems in infrastructure (no definite IP address) was an obstacle to access. CSA said that could solve this problem by removing the IP restriction.
The Representative of PIMRIS agreed to put the relative institutes having trouble with IDS in contact with CSA. p.14
Progress with Machine Readable Input
www-ASFA-ISIS
36. Dr. H. Rybinski (ICIE) demonstrated the latest version (Version-0) of the www-ASFA-ISIS software. Most Partners appeared very impressed by the software and its functionalities.
37. The Representative of PIMRIS suggested that the format " Complete" should be the default rather than "Temporary" to avoid the possibility of exported incomplete records.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agree to communicate this to Dr. Rybinski. p.15
38. The FAO ASFA Secretariat explained that now that the www-ASFA-ISIS software had been developed, the next phase would involve:
- FAO familiarizing itself with the software and carrying out the testing (input of data and testing of utility programs) for bugs in the software.
- Once tested/debugged the software would be sent to the ASFISIS Working Group for further beta testing.
- The various data input manuals would also have to be modified.
- Then a decision would be made regarding the necessity of training courses before sending the software to the ASFA Partners for general use (see Agenda item-10.1, for further discussion regarding training).
- CSA will need to make some changes in its import procedures.
39. The Board approved the ASFA Trust Fund Proposal which would essentially provide a help desk service, by ICIE, to the ASFA Partners for one year after the release. p.15
39.1 The Board agreed that Dr Rybinski be invited to the next years Board Meeting and that the Proposal should incorporate additional funds for travel and per diem. p.15
39.2 The Board agreed the above mentioned Trust Fund proposal should not include the second activity listed concerning adaptation of the software to other databases, because this is a capacity building function better coming under the mandate of FAO and its regular Program funding. p.15
40. The Representative of CSA reported that they would send the ASFA relevant lines of their overall CSA database validation program to Dr Rybinski when possible.
Future ASFA Training Sessions
41. The Board agreed that new Partners should not be trained before the new www-ASFA-ISIS software is ready, which will be after FAO and the Working Group has carried out the beta testing etc. mentioned in Agenda item-9.2 and item 38 above. If FAO, and the ASFISIS working group judge the "change over" to www-ASFA-ISIS to require face-to-face training, the ASFA Trust Fund may have to be used to cover part of the costs for a series of ASFA training courses (one course, for Latin America, has already been approved at the last ASFA Board Meeting and offers to host the Training have been received in FAO from Argentina, Cuba, Chile, Mexico). p.16
Status of ASFIS Reference Series Publications
ASFIS-1, Serials Monitored for the ASFIS Bibliographic Database
42. The FAO ASFA Secretariat discussed the maintenance of the Monitoring List and all ASFA Partners are reminded of the necessity of notifying FAO (attention: Ms Lombardi) of any changes or additions or deletions to their lists, and to reply as quickly as possible to any FAO queries regarding the List.
43. Regarding the five new fields added to the Monitoring list master file, Partners were requested to follow the instructions sent by Ms. Lombardi on 4 May and 10 May 2001 via ASFA-Board-L and reminded that they should wait until receiving a text file of their Monitoring Lists from Ms Lombardi and then supply the necessary information as requested.
The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to send the individual lists out to all Partners for inclusion of the data required.
ASFIS-6, Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Thesaurus
44. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to provide a list of spelling mistakes in the ASFA thesaurus and distribute it on the ASFA-Board-L. Dr. Rybinski pointed out the possible use of the www-ASFA-ISIS software to maintain electronically thesaurus terms. Changes could be made on-line and then easily downloaded onto the software. p.18
45. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to send a list of approved terms (after review and "weeding" by the Thesaurus Committee) to Ms. Cameron (Canada). She and Ms. Hudson would provide a cost estimate for structuring the terms, incorporating them in the MTM software, and formatting the print version. p.18
46. The Representative of BF suggested that the frequency list demonstrated in BF’s presentation could be reviewed by the Thesaurus Committee to obtain a subset.
ASFIS-7, Geographic Authority List
47. The Representative of NOAA suggested the re-formation of a GAL committee, who should discuss the situation and come up with suggestions for review by the Board.
ASFIS-8, Taxonomic Authority List
48. The FAO ASFA Secretariat agreed to follow up on the request by the Representative of CSA regarding the possibility with the new www-ASFA-ISIS software to enter the Latin name in the Taxonomic descriptor field and simultaneously enter the common name in the Identifier field. Dr Rybinski replied that this would be possible. p.19
49. Regarding the procedure to follow when coming across ‘incorrectly’ spelled Latin names. It was noted that ‘incorrect spellings’ cover typographical errors as well as spellings that may be under dispute between scientists. The general consensus was, when in doubt, leave the incorrect name in the title or abstract, and put the correct taxonomic name in the Taxonomic descriptor field and the incorrect name in the Identifier field.
The Representative of FAO pointed out that when obvious errors were come across in the title field during ASFA input, they should be followed by the word sic in square brackets followed by the correct word. This ASFA rule also applies to obvious typographical mistakes in species names.
Expanded Language Capability in ASFA
50. The Board agreed to keep this Agenda item for future discussion. p.20
ASFA Trust Fund
Status of the ASFA Trust Fund
51. The balance in the Trust Fund account is US$ 173,340.00.
Proposals in progress, completed or pending further discussion
52. Conversion - ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format for 1972 (in progress)
The Representative of NMDIS agreed to begin this project (US$15,000) following this Board Meeting.
53. Conversion - ASFA Printed journals into machine readable format for 1973
(almost completed)The Representative of KMFRI reported that this project (US$15,000) was, for the most part, completed and agreed to send the records to FAO shortly.
New Proposals
54. Supporting attendance to Board Meeting (for year 2002) ($15,000)
The Board agreed to raise the sum allocated for the 2002 Meeting to $25,000 and accepted the Trust Fund Proposal "Supporting attendance to Board Meeting".
55. Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat (for year Jan - Dec 2002) ($30,000)
The Board agreed to the Trust Fund Proposal ‘Staff Support to the FAO ASFA Secretariat’
56. Support to implementation of www-ASFA-ISIS interface (US$10,000.00).
This Trust Fund Proposal was discussed and agreed under Agenda Item 9.2. The proposal was amended to include eventual travel and "per diem" for Dr. H. Rybinski to attend the next ASFA Board Meeting in Rome, and the part of the proposal dealing with enhanced uses was deleted.
57. Maintenance of the ASFA Thesaurus
The Board agreed to this proposal (to structure and enter the new terms into the Thesaurus maintenance software and to format the thesaurus for printing) in principle, but is pending cost estimates from the Representative of DFO and Ms. J. Hudson (thesaurus consultant). See Agenda Item 11.6.
58. ASFA-FIGIS Interaction Project (US$20,000)
The Board agreed in principle to support the proposal (to develop a map-based query facility (GIS) to ASFA, but confirmation will be subject to final approval, by correspondence, following agreement on implemenation details with CSA and FAO.
The Representative of FAO said that once something more definite was determined, it would be circulated via the ASFA -Board –L for consent.
59. Draft Concept for project "Correction the ASFA Database Descriptor Fields"
The Board agreed in principle to proceed with "cleaning" the identifier field and a further cleaning (down to a finer level) of the subject and geographic fields. BF presented a proposal (of a sum of US$19800 - subject to negotiation) of the consulting company which did the programming and parts of data processing in the preceding project. Dr Wulf Kirchner reported that he wishes to involve other ASFA partners in the project. This should reduce the necessary workload for BF (BF/Brockmann/ZADI), however it would cause additional coordination and management for BF. For the extension of the project to other Partners, a sum of up to US$5000 was agreed upon. The proposal of the Consultant needs further negotiation: additional costs occurring at BF and ZADI on one side, and on the other side, some downsizing to the possibilities of BF will be necessary. BF will present the final cost calculations to the Board via FAO/ ASFA Secretariat for approval.
BF agreed to put Excell tables on the web (i.e., ASFA-Board-L) with the fields descriptors in need of correction and Partners could tender for making the corrections and would be paid by BF by number of lines edited.
The Representative of BF agreed that a clean tape with all of the material would be provided within 1 year of starting the project and sent to CSA, who would merge the cleaned up material with their database.
One master database
60. The Representative of CSA stated that CSA is committed to incorporating into their copy of the ASFA database all the changes/corrrections made by BF under the 1999 BF Trust Fund proposal "Ïmprovement to the ASFA Database", and agreed to make the complete database available to all those Partners with the tape rights.
61. The Representative of NMDIS agreed to send the 1975-1977 records with abstracts to FAO as soon as they were ready.
Other Business
62. The Board agreed to the terms of reference, tabled by the FAO ASFA Secretariat, for an FAO consultant to prepare a "Proposal on Criteria for Priority Setting for Future Expansion of the ASFA Partnership". p.24
Place and Date of Next Meeting
63. The Board agreed to choose the venues for the next two Meetings. p. 24
64. The Board agreed to hold the next Meeting at FAO headquarters in Rome in June 2002 (the date to be confirmed by FAO). p.24
65. The Board agreed to hold the year 2003 Meeting at CIP in Cuba. p.24