AGRIS has for many years provided a huge collection of bibliographic references, such as research papers, studies and thesis, each including metadata such as conferences, researchers, publishers, institutions, and keywords from different thesauri as AGROVOC. With the rise of full text search and online availability of more research material, the role for bibliographic metadata can appear redundant. When considered instead as a form of modelling that emphasizes relationships, connections and links, bibliographic metadata grows in value as the Web grows in connectivity, and can provide researchers with a map of the global research community, linking formal outputs (papers, data) with a wider grey literature (preprints, drafts) and with communication platforms (blogs, forums) that help researchers put formal findings into a wider context. This paper describes the evolving role of the AGRIS bibliographic database as it becomes a hub of agricultural research literature. The huge silo of 3 million agricultural resources, collected by more than 150 institutions over the last 35 years, becomes the starting point to access the diverse knowledge in agricultural science and technology available globally on the Web.