[AIMS Consultative Group] News on AIMS: new features, new services
Dear AIMS Consultative Group,
We have more news with regard to technical improvements on AIMS. And once again we would apperciate if you can provide any feedback.
1.) Subscriptions by topic
In the next days we are planning to implement the possibility for any authenticated user to subscribe to any topic covert on AIMS. The subscription is based on the taxonomy of AIMS.
It is going to be accessible from the homepage, in every product page (e.g. AGROVOC principal page) and the new topic pages that we are also preparing. In practice a person is going to be able to subscribe by specific topics without being part of any community of practice.
We hope that the service will help users to filter the news to be received by e-mail.
2.) Questions and Answers (Q&A) Service
It is already implemented and accessible at http://aims.fao.org/questions-and-answers. The rationale of this new service is that Groups of Interest tend to attract persons that are interested, use or develop the product that Groups of Interest is based on. The information available from the CoP is oriented to this product (only metadata and open access are broader than that) and reaches those that are subscribed.
Considering this, many users on AIMS are not interested to be part of a CoP but to receive only news (newsletter for many is enough). They are not Groups of Interest members and will not make part of them. However, these persons can have questions like What is the tool more recommended for XXX? Or today for instance I received an e-mail from a librarian who is asking for bibliography on digitization. These questions do not fit in any CoPs but any user on AIMS could help to other members to answer. These means that the questions are not related to a Groups of Interest , but products.