AIMS

AIMS Newsletter no. 17, April 2013

Release of new Agrifeeds version

AgriFeeds, the agricultural news, events and job opportunities aggregator, has been enhanced. The service is now built on the latest version of Drupal, relies on a more robust technology and uses better methods to aggregate contents and browse them.

All contents aggregated by Agrifeeds are categorized under broad topics based on the topics of the data sources and are automatically indexed by country. Users can subscribe to RSS feeds by topic and feeds by country.

Two Drupal modules have been written purposely for Agrifeeds. Both modules can work on any other Drupal website, as they have been designed for a generic use. For more background information on these modules or on what changes have been made exactly please visit the following blog posts:

Highlights

  • LODE-BD Recommendations 2.0 are now available in HTML. More info
  • New support material released for the Spanish AgriOcean DSpace community. More info
  • AgriOcean DSpace installed at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI). More info
  • The new "Open Access Interviews@AIMS" service published an OA interview with Mr. Muthu Madhan about ICRISAT. More info
  • New AGROVOCFIELD available together with video tutorial about how to use automatic indexing. More info
  • Growth of the Open Access movement reflected in the AGRIS service. More info
  • Presentations from RDA Launch meeting now available. More info
  • New article about VOA3R in Italian. More info

Upcoming Events

Glossary

What is Open Data Commons? An Open Knowledge Foundation project that provides a set of legal tools to help provide and use Open Data.
More information:

5 Questions in 5 Minutes with Guntram Geser

Who are the users of AIMS and what do they think about agricultural information management standards? In this section AIMS users from all around the world answer five questions on the benefits and use of the AIMS website.

This month we interviewed Guntram Geser, Senior Researcher at the not-for-profit ICT research and development centre Salzburg Research in Austria.

Tell us something about yourself... what is your background and role in the organization you are working for?

I have a background in social sciences, especially communication studies and, since about 15 years, research on the use and impact of information and communication technologies (ICT) in various sectors such as media, education and cultural heritage. The organization I am working at is the not-for-profit ICT research and development centre Salzburg Research in Austria.

For 10 years I was head of the department Information Society Research, a role which two years ago I was happy to hand over to a younger colleague. Recently the department was renamed to Innovation Lab, but the focus of my research work is still the same: what changes in practices, business models, collaborations, etc. take place when novel ICT are introduced in organisations.

Many of our projects are funded through European Union research programmes. Two current projects are in the area of digital research infrastructures, one in the field of agriculture and one in archaeology. So now I am working on innovations in the sharing of research results, for example, through open access repositories and novel information portals and services.

How did you get in contact with AIMS?

Through the EU-funded project agINFRA - A Data Infrastructure to Support Agricultural Scientific Communities in which FAO is one of the lead content and technology partners. When checking the AIMS website it became clear to me that it is the place to go for up-to-date information and communication about standards and tools for agricultural information management and sharing.

What is your opinion on AIMS?

I mainly follow the AIMS news feeds and many are directly relevant to the agINFRA project. They go much beyond the core topics of AIMS and provide a highly valuable radar on on-going and new initiatives, projects, reports, events, etc. in the sector.

According to you, what is the most important benefit that AIMS provides to the agricultural information management community?

It is the community of practice that AIMS mobilizes and connects through a place for sharing knowledge and experiences. It has the right spirit of openness based on common goals and values of agricultural research for development.

How do you think that information management standards can contribute to agricultural research for development?

Using common standards allows for interoperability and, thereby, more effective sharing of research results across institutions and scientists in different regions. Knowing what others already know helps to reduce duplication of work, sharpen research questions and methods and, hopefully, speed up the development and dissemination of solutions for critical issues, in particular, food security for all based on sustainable agriculture.

The scope of the AIMS Newsletter is to bring under the attention of the AIMS community recent news, events and achievements in the field of agricultural information management. If you have any contribution, suggestion, or need assistance with the newsletter, please contact us at [email protected]

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