40th ASFA Advisory Board Meeting
On behalf of the ASFASecretariat
The 40th annual ASFA Advisory Board Meeting was held at the Instituto Nacional de Pesca (INP), Guayaquil, Ecuador, 5-9 September 2011.
Opening
The meeting was opened by Ms Pilar Solis, Director of INP, Mr Alan Gonzalez, FAO Representative in Ecuador, Mr Richard Grainger, Chief of the FAO service responsible for ASFA, and Mr Nikita Gaibor (INP).
This year the Meeting was attended by 30 participants, representing 23 ASFA Partners (21 National ASFA Partners, 2 UN Partners, 1 International ASFA Partner, and the ASFA Publishing Partner).
The Agenda was completed on time and all of the Agenda items were addressed.
The Meeting saw 1 new ASFA Partner admitted into the Partnership: - National Marine Information and Research Centre (NatMIRC), Namibia. This brings the total number of ASFA Partners to 67 (plus 44+ Collaborating ASFA centres).
Approved Trust Fund projects
During the Meeting, a total of 6 ASFA Trust Fund projects were approved:
- Financial support to attend 2012 ASFA Advisory Board Meeting;
- Staff Support to ASFA Secretariat for 2012; Utilization of ASFA Trust Fund to pay IAMSLIC membership fees;
- IFOP (Chile): ‘Scanning of Fisheries Catch and Scientific Results from 1999-2011’;
- INIDEP (Argentina): ‘Digitization, Open Access deposition and addition of URIs into
- ASFA records of marine and aquatic sciences papers from a historical regional journal: Physis’;
- FAO Trust Fund Proposal ‘Mini-ASFA Meeting for African ASFA Partners attending IAMSLIC Conference, October 2011.
Presentations
The 4th “workshop” day of the ASFA Board Meeting included the following presentations:
- Comments on ASFA Input (records) - persistent problems encountered in Partners input and advice, by FAO (Helen Wibley);
- ProQuest ASFA Update: Illumina & New Platform, by ProQuest (Paula McCoy);
- IAMSLIC Z39.50 (resource sharing and document requests), by FAO (José Garnica);
- AgriOcean DSpace: FAO and UNESCO-IOC/IODE Combine Efforts in their Support of Open Access, presented by Linda Noble (NMBL) on behalf of Linda Pikula (Chair, GEMIM);
- Impact of ASFA usage, by FBA (Hardy Schwamm and Ian Pettman);
- Alternative business model(s) for ASFA, by ProQuest (Craig Emerson).
FAO ASFA Secretariat
The FAO ASFA Secretariat carries out the quality control of the ASFA input prepared by new or recently-trained ASFA Partners. When the Secretariat is in communication with an ASFA Partner regarding ASFA input problems (or other related issues) and the ASFA Partner is present at the ASFA Board Meeting, it is deemed opportune to discuss these issues in person. The meetings were held after the discussions on the Agenda Items of the ASFA Board Meeting had finished for the day.
The Secretariat met with the ASFA Partners NAFO and NaFFIRI (Uganda) to provide some informal training. Other meetings were held with various small groups of ASFA Partners, regarding: Geographic Authority List (GAL); Aquatic Commons; www-ISIS-ASFA software; Comments on ASFA Input – 2011, Powerpoint Presentation in Spanish, plus hands-on demonstration of topics covered in presentation.
Next (2012) ASFA Advisory Board Meeting
The ASFA Partner in Ireland (Marine Institute, MI) offered to host the next (2012) ASFA Advisory Board Meeting. The suggested dates are 25-29 June 2012.
