Program . Abstracts

Interest Group Panels :: Contributed Papers :: Posters

Interest Group and Other Panels

Monday

Tapping Technology As a Conduit for Communication

Presenters: Amy Shannon, University of Nevada Reno; Sarah Williams, Illinois State University; Allison Level, Colorado State University
Moderator: Allison Level, Colorado State University

Librarians are always looking for new and better ways to foster communication with our constituencies and receive feedback from them. This panel presentation includes three speakers, each with a new transitional idea or project that addresses traditional roles of collection development, instruction, and research.

• They Use WebCT, So Why Shouldn't We? Some Novel Uses of Online Courseware to Further Communication with Faculty and Students.

  Amy Shannon, Life and Health Sciences Librarian, University of Nevada Reno

  Courseware packages, such as WebCT or Blackboard, provide an ideal platform for librarians to interact with faculty.  The many communication tools available can be used for collection development interactions, announcement of new materials and services, and delivery of instructional tools and modules to be used in course development. An initial framework for such a "course" has been developed and serves as a template to be easily adapted for interaction with a variety of faculty departments or disciplines.

• Putting Student Input to Work: Using Low-tech Methods to Gather Feedback on a New Technology

Sarah Williams, Science & Technology Librarian, Illinois State University

Federated search engines provide a new way to access traditional library resources.  This new technology certainly has benefits and limitations, so a user-centered approach to implementation is very valuable.  Usability testing and focus groups are effective, low-tech communication methods for gathering user feedback on federated search engines.  One institution will share details about its usability testing and focus groups, as well as highlights of the feedback received

• Beyond the Coconut Telegraph: A Web Instruction Idea for Master Gardeners

Allison Level, Natural Resources Librarian, Colorado State University

One of the most successful Extension programs involves volunteer master gardeners at the county level. It is important that master gardeners take advantage of sources of information and tips and tricks to find quality information on the Web. A traditional classroom instruction session for master gardeners was expanded into Web-based tutorials. The tutorials were then offered via the Web and used as part of that state's master gardener training.

Animal Health Interest Group

Moderator: Heather Moberly

Preservation Committee, Collection Management and Animal Health Information Interest Groups: Saving the Elusive Past for the Future: A Case Study in Collaboration

Presenters: Trenton Boyd, University of Missouri-Columbia; Vicki F. Croft, Washington State University; Gayle Willard, Kansas State University; Diane Fagen, American Veterinary Medical Association; Gretchen Stephens, Purdue University; Heather K. Moberly, Oklahoma State University; Esther Carrigan and Joe Jaros, Texas A&M University
Moderator: Joe Jaros, Texas A&M University

The "elusive" or "grey" literature remains a problem for all research and special libraries. Often, this type of material is difficult to locate, may be in foreign or very irregular publications, yet it also may include material that is important to researchers. Preservation presents additional challenges. This material frequently becomes the "nightmare" of many librarians. This program will be a panel devoted to a study of how veterinary libraries are coming together to manage and preserve elusive/grey material, a cooperative effort to deal with a common problem. In September 2007, seven veterinary librarians from around the country came together at Texas A&M University for a 3-day summit to discuss the issues, brainstorm ideas, and create a plan. They represented several different academic veterinary libraries and also included the American Veterinary Medical Association. This group is functioning as a Steering Group in a cooperative venture that will hopefully extend to the veterinary libraries in the United States and Canada. The group developed policies and guidelines for dealing with elusive/grey material and has taken tentative steps towards possible digitization and common repository efforts. Our experiences would be of interest to any library, but of particular interest to smaller, specialized libraries. The panel will include representatives from the libraries who attended the summit meeting. We will discuss the common needs and then highlight our charted path towards solutions. We will present concrete examples of problems and how we arrived at possible solutions together. The program will include time for questions and answers with group discussion.

Linking Research and Entrepreneurial Commercialization

Presenters: David Boulay, Director, Small Business Development Center; Meagan Barnes, Business Development Specialist; Tom Worley, Director, The Ohio State University South Centers
Moderator: David Boulay

Agriculture, traditionally known for the production of safe and abundant supplies of food and fiber, is now transitioning to a more science-based innovation and entrepreneurial environment. Increasingly, the agbioscience sectors produce safe, efficient, and environmentally friendly food, fiber and energy from renewable resources. An agbioscience-based entrepreneur is faced with many opportunities in this new environment with emphasis on renewability. The successful commercialization of new products in this industry requires appropriate and flexible resources for the process. Ohio's Entrepreneurial Signature Program focuses on providing many of the necessary resources to facilitate the commercialization of research and new products developed by entrepreneurs.

The Ohio State University South Centers has received a $2.1 million sub-award to implement the Entrepreneurial Signature Program (ESP) in support of moving new agbioscience innovations into the marketplace. The purpose of ESP is to significantly increase the technology-based entrepreneurial commercialization activities in Ohio. The efforts will focus on strategic technology-based sectors such as agbioscience that offer exceptional economic development prospects for the rural regions of Ohio.

This new resource for the agbioscience industry will focus on providing funding, operational and technical assistance to promote the growth and development of new innovations and technologies. This presents dual opportunities for university researchers. First, these resources can assist the commercialization of research into marketable products. Second, university expertise can provide crucial expertise and support to entrepreneurs. The efforts of The Ohio State University South Centers assistance and funding will concentrate on the complete supply-chain of all agricultural and natural resource based innovations. Potential focus areas include: the wood industry, advanced foods development, bio-capacity development, and environmental-related technologies. Session attendees will leave with an understanding of the requirements and resources available to assist with the commercialization of new agbioscience products.

Transition with Tradition: Demonstrating Creative Approaches to Apply Information, Knowledge Sharing, and ICTs in the Agbiosciences Worldwide

Presenters: Barbara Hutchinson, University of Arizona; Mary Ochs, Cornell University; Peter Ballantyne, IAALD President

Several international efforts are exploring opportunities to build more collaborative and user-directed agricultural information systems at the macro-level while at the same time determining how to scale up innovative local information and communications technologies (ICTs) that build on traditional systems. These efforts are ultimately aimed at improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and rural communities, in part, by establishing a more level playing field in who has access to current knowledge in agbiosciences research and development. This panel session will provide three perspectives on such efforts. The first panelist will outline the issues, discussions, demonstrations, and outcomes of "e-agriculture" week held in September 2007 at FAO, with particular emphasis on the state of major agricultural information systems and their ability to deliver current agbioscience knowledge both cost-effectively and in a ubiquitous manner. Also included will be an overview of interoperability as well as overall coherence issues. The second panelist will summarize the results of two WorldAgInfo symposia, held in October and November 2007, and sponsored by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. These symposia involved selected agricultural scholars and practitioners along with information and educational technology experts to explore knowledge and delivery systems for the small-scale farmer. Significant findings will be described and demonstrations will be made of transformative approaches, both technical and non-technical, in the creation and distribution of agbiosciences information. The third panelist will present case studies on the use of social/participatory networking tools, such as presented at the September 2007 'web2fordev' conference, and on the local use of ICTs for sharing and delivering agbiosciences information. Together, these presentations will provide a view of potential future directions in the development of agricultural information and communications systems to serve the worldwide community.

Tuesday

Technology Trends Interest Group: Leaving the Barn Door Open: Utilizing Technology to Enhance Traditional Roles and Values

Conveners: Martin Kesselman, Rutgers University; Claudine Jenda, Auburn University

This year's conference theme "Tradition in Transition" is quite apropos; Wooster is right next to the largest Amish community in the United States and most would say, you can't get any closer to tradition than that!  No matter how traditional their life might seem, the Amish have embraced some technologies when the result of the technology is of service to the community and brings people together. This session's presentations demonstrate how libraries are utilizing technologies for the same purpose, enhancing our traditional roles and values to improve access to information and to explore new ways to personalize communication with users wherever they are.

• Reaching Out Through Web 2.0

Valerie Perry, University of Kentucky, will describe the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, for libraries to connect with students for reference, instruction, and current awareness. She will also discuss how the university of Kentucky is using the virtual world of Second Life to reach first semester freshmen and a professional development program called Blue 2.0 to enhance the technology skills of library personnel.


• Virtual Worlds for Virtual Collaboration

Utilizing emerging virtual collaboration technologies, librarians have a unique opportunity to find ways to both facilitate student learning and be an integral member of science research teams. Martin Kesselman, Rutgers University, will discuss a Rutgers Second Life initiative that uses Selma Waksman's work with soil microbiology to immerse science undergraduates into the ways scientists do research and help them develop a professional identity. Kesselman will also discuss the potential of virtual environments for librarians to collaborate with scientists across disciplinary and global boundaries.

• Emerging Roles for Librarians in Scholarly Communication and Science Data Curation

Librarians are positioning themselves as active partners in changes taking place in scholarly communication in the sciences, in particular when it is only available in digital formats (born digital). With increased requirements by funding agencies and the needs for others to access data from scientific research, who better than librarians and libraries to organize, enhance access, and preserve these unique digital data assets. Presenter: Barbara Hutchinson, Arizona State University.

• Agriculture Librarians Harnessing Technology in Innovative Ways: Results of a Survey

This program only provides a flavor of the many ways librarians are using technology to enhance library services in creative ways. Claudine Jenda, Auburn University, reviews the results of a study of agriculture librarians that highlights the large spectrum of creative and innovative uses of technology for library information services, teaching, collections, and research.

Wednesday

Preservation Committee Update

Presenters: Joy Paulson and Nan Hyland, Cornell University

• Topics in Preservation:

Update on the USAIN Preservation Projects funded by NEH.  We will report on the current phase of the project (Phase VI), funding for Phase VII, and the submission of a proposal to begin digitizing the microfilm created during earlier phases of the project.

• The National Preservation Plan for Agricultural Literature: moving into the 21st century.
• CROP (Coordinated Retention of Print): a potential new project of NAL and the land-grant universities. Space is at a premium in many of our libraries. NAL will lead a discussion on a possible collaborative plan to coordinate weeding and withdrawal of print copies, when electronic copies are available.

Social Issues-Rural Information Interest Group: National Animal Identification System: A Trojan Horse or National Need?

Presenters: Margaret Merrill, Kyrille Goldbeck, and Althea Aschmann, Virginia Tech

The National Animal Identification System is being promoted by the USDA and agribusiness as the best means of tracking and eliminating animal disease. At this point in time it has not been mandated at the national level. States are being encouraged to make the National Animal Identification System regulations mandatory. Some states have done so. Other states, responding to input from farmer groups, have bills in their legislatures to repeal or prohibit the NAIS regulations.

As written, the NAIS regulations will have a profound impact on animal agriculture wherever they are implemented. The costs of complying with NAIS are significant. Attorneys analyzing the NAIS regulations are raising significant legal questions about invasion of privacy and federal control of private property. Farmers opposed to NAIS contend that, if fully implemented, it will bring about the demise of small-scale animal agriculture and the total dominance of confined animal feeding (factory) farm operations. In Michigan, for example, passage of the NAIS regulations as part of the bovine tuberculosis testing program, has already resulted in significant numbers of cattle being sold or sent to slaughter as small farmers, unable to afford the costs of NAIS and unwilling to accept the invasion of privacy, are going out of business.

The Social Issues-Rural Information Interest Group will provide a synopsis of the NAIS regulatory requirements and some of the implications; a summary of information available from areas of the world where a NAIS has already been implemented; and a summary of the arguments for and against NAIS. An annotated bibliography of key information sources on NAIS will be available.

Collection Management Interest Group: Information Harvest: Strategies for Successful Digital Collections

Presenters: Rob Luikart and Tschera Connell, Ohio State University
Conveners: Valerie Perry, University of Kentucky; Diana Farmer, Kansas State University

Changes in technology have resulted in corresponding social and cultural changes. For many institutions, one of these changes is that of the "Institutional Repository." Currently there are a variety of models for how to collect, store and provide access to the information located in these collections. The presenters will discuss the lessons to be learned [and the pitfalls to be avoided] regarding the implementation and ongoing service of an institutional repository, with particular emphasis on issues related to born-digital publications. Rob Luikart will discuss the reengineering of Ohio State University's Ohioline site from the extension perspective, which includes the use of OSU's Knowledge Bank, the development of metadata, rethinking the process of article development and publication, and development of a new interface.  Tschera Connell will provide a more hands-on perspective (technical services aspects) of the OSU institutional repository. There will be a question and answer period.

AgNIC Interest Group: Putting the NEW in AgNIC: Highlights of New Content, Committees, and Technologies Used by AgNIC Partners

Presenters: Julia Kelly and Louise Letnes, University of Minnesota; Bonnie Waddell, Nova Scotia Agricultural College; Cindy Watkins, New Mexico State University
Moderator: Allison Level, Colorado State University

This is the USAIN AgNIC Interest Group sponsored panel program presentation. The program will focus on speakers who have created substantial new content for their AgNIC sites, a speaker from the new AgNIC Mentoring Committee, and a speaker discussing new technologies used by their AgNIC site. The program will include time for a group discussion on new ideas and technologies that AgNIC partners are using. You don't have to be an AgNIC partner to attend this program, everyone is welcome. Are you thinking about joining AgNIC? If so, come to the program and meet USAIN members who are also active in AgNIC.

The USAIN AgNIC Interest Group sponsored panel will include the following three segments:

• AgEcon Search:  Research in Agricultural and Applied Economics

Presenters: Julia Kelly and Louise Letnes, University of Minnesota

AgEcon Search (http://ageconsearch.umn.edu) is a free-to-user Web resource with full-text of working papers, conference papers and journal articles from small press journals in agricultural, energy, environmental, resource and other areas of applied economics.  Over 150 institutions contribute their material to AgEcon Search, and its 29,000+ papers have been downloaded over 1.5 million times since 2001.

During the last year, AgEcon Search has added several new journals and migrated to a new software platform which provides RSS feeds, enhanced browsing and searching, better archiving of materials, and enhanced exposure to Google and other search engines.

• The Wild Blueberry Network Information Centre

Presenter: Bonnie Waddell, Nova Scotia Agricultural College

The Wild Blueberry Network AgNIC website (http://www.nsac.ns.ca/wildblue/) is a source of wild blueberry production and marketing information for producers, agricultural professionals, researchers and students. The Centre has undergone some exciting changes. Chief Librarian Bonnie Waddell will discuss the site changes, along with information about the new look and content provided. As other AgNIC partners work to update their sites, we can learn from the Wild Blueberry site successes.

• AgNIC Mentoring Committee

Presenter: Cindy Watkins, New Mexico State University

The AgNIC Mentoring Committee was set up to communicate information for those new to AgNIC and create opportunities for AgNIC members to support newer participants.  The Mentoring Committee held two conference calls during the fall: one meeting was an introduction and an overview of the committee’s plans; the other meeting was about the AgNIC database, standards for entering metadata, and the role of partners to add metadata.  All partners are encouraged to participate. The minutes of the conference calls are posted on the AgNIC website.  The committee is in the process of creating a FAQ for new members and we are putting together a list of names of people who would volunteer to be mentors to new members. 

Contributed Papers top

Tuesday, Session A

The Potential Impact of 'Public Access' Legislation on Access to Forestry Literature

Presenter: Bradley Brazzeal, Mississippi State University

According to U.S. law, "[c]opyright protection ... is not available for any work of the United States Government." This clearly applies to works that are published by the federal government, and publishers normally recognize this as applicable to articles published by federal government employees. There is, however, a growing demand for free public access to all articles resulting from federally-funded research in the United States, regardless of who writes it or publishes it. This demand led to the proposed Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, which stipulated that a final version of all publications resulting from federally funded research in the United States would be freely available to the public. This study examines core forestry journals to determine the percentage of articles falling into the following categories: (1) articles authored solely by federal government employees, (2) articles partially authored by federal government employees, and (3) articles reporting research for which federal funding is acknowledged. As the conference theme indicates, the agbiosciences are fueled by information and this study provides data to demonstrate the potential impact that public access, as described above, would have on overall access to scholarly information.

Preserving Federal State Market News Service Data

Presenter: Susan Garbarino, University of California, Berkeley

This paper reports on a recently completed preservation project of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics Library at UC Berkeley. The project preserved a unique collection (~1100 reels of microfilm) of USDA Federal State Market News Service data. This was a challenging project, since the original data only existed on poor quality 16mm microfilm and the collection was very large (~4000images per reel).

The Giannini Foundation Library has the most complete collection of this data of any library in the world. The data consists of daily, weekly, monthly and annual price information for commodities. It was collected by the USDA's Federal State Market News Service from 1915-1995.

The project was jointly funded by the Giannini Foundation and the USDA and completed in 2007. The collection was preserved on archival microfilm with on-demand scanning to pdfs made available in the library. This approach both preserves the content and provides digital access to it.

Using GIS to Breathe New Life Into Historic Soil Surveys

Presenters: Marianne Stowell Bracke and Christopher C. Miller, Purdue University

Soil surveying was begun in 1895, creating a century-long legacy of information. Modern soil surveys are born digital and used largely in electronic contexts (including GIS) but there are decades of rich comparative data being left to atrophy in the undigitized copies of aging paper surveys. Librarians were curious to see if there was a way to make the historic data available in a way that would be relevant and compatible with the contemporary digital data.

The librarians completed a project that digitized both components of the 1906 Tippecanoe County survey - the text and map - and extracted both into useable, modern data formats. In addition to OCRd, fully indexed, fully searchable full text, the soil zone data from the map was extracted into a useable, queryable, studyable GIS dataset. Now agronomy students and faculty can download this information to rugged tablet PCs to be used in the field and compared to the 1906 data.

The paper will describe the impact of this project for librarians to apply modern technologies to re-invigorate existing collections, the use of various GIS programs, and the partnerships that were created with the Agronomy faculty consultants. It will also explain the project outcomes and the additional projects that grew from the initial survey digitization.

Tuesday, Session B

FAO as a Knowledge Organization - Leveraging on Partnerships to Promote Knowledge Exchange in Agricultural Domain

Presenter: Stephen Katz, Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations leads international efforts to defeat hunger. It is a source of knowledge and information and serves both developed and developing countries in improving agriculture, fisheries, forestry, sustainable development and ensuring good nutrition for all. Its four main areas of activity are comprised of: (i) putting information within reach; (ii) sharing policy expertise; (iii) providing a meeting place for nations; and (iv) bringing knowledge to the field. FAO's information is often contained as explicit knowledge in its information systems and publications while the tacit knowledge is available by means of its staff members working around the world with expertise in subjects and thematic areas within the agricultural domain. In recent years, FAO has been visibly active in the area of providing on-line access to its information via the Knowledge Forum (http://www.fao.org/knowledgeforum) to its knowledge and staff expertise through a) the Ask FAO Service, b) the Best Practices Web site, and c) the Thematic Knowledge Networks Web site. However, to be able to reach a wider audience and to scale up to the requirements of such an audience, the process of sharing information and knowledge needs to leverage on its existing partnerships with other UN family members, CGIAR institutions and other partner organizations. With this in mind, FAO is now involved in establishing strong partnerships with national, regional and international partners and informing them of FAO's initiatives and inviting them to start a more shared approach to sharing similar and related information where appropriate. Working towards such collaboration will not only help FAO and its partners, especially in times of depleting resources, but more importantly will help create value-added services for the benefit of the agricultural community and promote knowledge-sharing across organizations.

 New Traditions and Transitions: A Web Portal to Discover, Create and Exchange Knowledge of the Sonoran Desert

Presenters: Jeanne Pfander, Kimberly Chapman, and Jim Martin, University of Arizona

The Sonoran Desert Knowledge Exchange (SDKE) is an initiative created by a collaboration of libraries, community organizations and academic researchers, whose goal is to develop a distributed, dynamic, online portal facilitating the discovery, organization, and dissemination of information resources about the biodiversity of the Sonoran Desert. SDKE will collect and provide one-stop shopping access to digital content that is of interest to diverse audiences including teachers and students of all grade levels, scientists, decision-makers, and amateur enthusiasts. The project will have a strong outreach component aimed at making scientific materials useful to the general public while encouraging audience participation in resource development and discovery.

The Sonoran Desert Knowledge Exchange will feature advanced tools for intellectual property rights management (public domain materials, creative commons licenses, etc.) as well as subscription-based resources. It will also include data management and infrastructure support for community projects; multimedia services; web templates for interactive identification guides and keys; geospatial applications/map-based tools; and tools for amateurs to share their discoveries and learnings with other Sonoran Desert enthusiasts. The data registry will catalog resources, providing metadata to increase access points and relevancy from SDKE partners and other content providers. Partners will be able to both link to the main portal site and/or feature SDKE search and browse facilities on their own web pages.

The authors will describe the history of the Sonoran Desert Knowledge Exchange initiative, the collaborative partnerships critical to the success of SDKE and progress in developing the web portal design and content.

Biofuel in the Bank Library: CSR vs. Bottom Line

Presenter: Dan Cherubin, Rabobank International

As a large agribusiness-based financial company has moved over to a global Corporate Social Responsibility mandate, it has become imperative that the Corporate Library maintain its reputation as a central access point for all material used by the institution. The company has begun to look towards alternative energy, as both an internal utility and a potential client base. But how does one reconcile the needs of our current clients, some of the world's largest agribusiness companies, while promoting a new agenda among our employees? This paper will discuss the action plan of Information Department to help our staff gain access to and understanding of the company's approach to this new sector.

Tuesday, Session C

Faculty Response to Internet-based Teaching Aids: a Case Study at the University of Arkansas

Presenter: Lutishoor Salisbury, University of Arkansas

This presentation will report on a case study at the University of Arkansas where the opinions of science faculty were sought regarding the importance of web-based tutoring videos in their own professional development. The implications of the findings will be discussed in relation to library outreach activities and proactive collection development.

Outreach Information and Technology Needs Survey

Presenters: Sheila Merrigan and Robert Armstrong, University of Arizona Cooperative Extension

Arizona Cooperative Extension, which faces continuing budget cutbacks, has a need to find more efficient ways to connect with clientele, as well as conduct everyday business. One method explored has been to increase the use of new technology, particularly Internet related. To better find current and future needs, we surveyed our faculty and staff to see if 1) they use the technology that is currently in place; 2) what other information and technology needs they have; 3) if they use non-university managed technology, and 4) perceived technology uses and needs of clientele. This paper focuses on the methods, analysis, and implications of this survey.

Transcending Traditional Research Assistance: Embedded Librarians in an Ag Econ Class

Presenters: Mary Dugan and Marianne Stowell Bracke, Purdue University

Undergraduate students have immediate access to more information than ever, but are often not savvy information consumers. This situation requires that librarians find new and novel ways to help students use information effectively and efficiently. Traditional "one-shot" classroom presentations and waiting passively at reference desks are becoming less and less a strategy for success. Purdue librarians have begun taking a more proactive approach that works with students on a point-of-need basis.

Purdue has begun using an "embedded librarian" approach in teaching information literacy in an Advanced Agribusiness Marketing class. In this class, a team of 2 librarians (a business librarian and an agricultural sciences librarian) were assigned to 1 of 3 teams as actual members of the group to act as consultants throughout the process. This new approach combines conventional classroom instruction with semester-long monitoring to assess the progress and effectiveness of the students' search strategies.

This class applies marketing principles and strategies to a real-world agribusiness project. In this semester, the goal was a group-designed proposal that would hopefully result in the successful sale of many pounds of pork, which is produced by the Animal Science meat shop.

This presentation will talk about the advantages of the concept of the embedded librarian and how it differs from our traditional instructional role. We will also cover which aspects of our participation were effective and what we will do differently the next time.

Wednesday, Session D

Transition through Collaboration: Internal and External Partnering to Build a Regional Rangeland Ecology and Management Web Resource

Presenters: Barbara Hutchinson and Jeanne Pfander, University of Arizona

True collaboration involves risk, sharing of financial and intellectual resources, and the challenge of bringing diverse perspectives and operating styles together in ways that are positive and productive. This presentation, given by two authors, will outline the nature and dimensions of cooperation and collaboration in the context of an electronic agricultural information initiative that has involved both internal campus collaborators and external (outside the institution) partnerships. The development of the Rangelands West portal (http://rangelandswest.org), which covers all aspect of rangeland science and ecology, will be documented and framed by its involvement in the Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC) and the outcome of a 2005 AgNIC survey on land-grant university collaborations among libraries, extension, and agricultural experiment stations. Beginning as a University of Arizona (UA) Libraries project with an Arizona-focus, it quickly expanded to involve range extension specialists and information systems technicians at the UA and, in 2001, became a regional multidisciplinary partnership that now involves 19 Western land-grant universities. In 2005, Rangelands West also became an officially sanctioned program under the auspices of the Western Regional Agricultural Experiment Station Directors. This presentation will provide insights into the challenges, benefits, and opportunities of this collaborative effort through the results of a 2007 survey of Rangelands West partners and will discuss how those insights are informing governance structure, working relationships, and funding mechanisms.

Advancing Institutional Repositories: A Case Study in Digital Agricultural Publication Management

Presenter: Laura Hanson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Institutional Repositories have been implemented by many university libraries as a means to gather and make accessible the intellectual output of their researchers. The Institutional Repository model of gathering university-produced publications fills the need for the roughly ten-year-old problem of preserving agricultural publications that are no longer published in their traditional print formats. Libraries historically collected and preserved these materials in print, especially agricultural experiment station and extension publications. At our university, we are now in the process of capturing these publications that migrated to digital-only formats. Our Institutional Repository is also conceived as a way to archive and make accessible versions of faculty peer-reviewed research articles that have been commercially published elsewhere.

We are approaching our Agricultural Institutional Repository Collection as two separate phases. Phase I involves the identification and archiving of informal agricultural publications (non-peer reviewed papers, presentations, extension and experiment station publications, proceedings, etc.), and phase II, which involves the identification and archiving of peer-reviewed articles published elsewhere by university faculty. Each phase presents a variety of unique challenges and issues, including identification, selection, maintenance, quality control, knowledge management, and copyright. This paper will cover the experiences of our library, including our specific project management methods and our plans for the future.

AgOAI - Let's Get the Good Stuff!

Presenters: Melanie Gardner, AgNIC Coordinator, and Vern Chapman, AgNIC IT Coordinator, National Agricultural Library

The Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC), www.agnic.org, is a 12-year-old voluntary partnership of over 50 institutions with the goal of offering access to quality agricultural information and resources. In an effort to take advantage of the institutional repository work among AgNIC partner institutions and others, AgNIC created a new service called "AgOAI." This service harvests target full-text from selected repositories and collections and combines it into a searchable database. The easiest part of the service was conceptualizing it. The presenters will give an overview of the concept, how the service was created, what standards were used, the challenges of "making it real," and what you can do to participate.

Wednesday, Session E

Using Google to Drive Library Usage

Presenters: Shaun Hobbs and David Smith, CABI

Google is often cited as the first stop in any student's, or even researcher's, search for relevant information. But if users by-pass their library's rich content holdings and navigational tools, key material will remain undiscovered. Although it may be a concern that "good enough" replaces "the very best" in terms of the attitude towards retrieving material, Google is here to stay and has proved to be the user's search engine of choice. It is important, therefore, that publishers and librarians work together to ensure that the very best resources can be discovered by their end users using Google as their preferred starting point. For over a year CABI has been working with Google, allowing it to index and freely expose a limited amount of selected content from its CAB Abstracts database. A search on an agricultural topic in Google can now bring end users to a single CABI abstract on a landing page, giving them information they need; however, through IP recognition, that page can also have a link through to the library subscription relevant to the searcher. Hence, the end user is taken to the full resource of the CAB Abstracts subscription that their institution has paid for but by using Google, not the library listings, as the starting point. The library might even be given its own branding on the CAB Abstracts landing page to highlight the value that the institutional purchase brings to the user. Several million visitors have now been to the free CAB Abstracts pages with 10-20% of them obviously from academic backgrounds. Details will be given during the talk on the strategy developed to expose free content and protect the value of the subscription product, the methodology used, topics most searched by all end users, profiling of end users by country and institution, and ways in which interested institutions can link their holdings to bring increased traffic.

Information Search Strategies of Ohio Farmers

Presenters: Florian Diekmann and Marvin T. Batte, Ohio State University

This study examines farmers' use of agricultural information. The primary objective is to identify current information search patterns of farmers and their determinants. The study is based on a recent mail survey of a representative sample of 3,000 Ohio farmers. Respondents were asked about their needs and usage of educational information and services, preferred sources of agricultural information and delivery methods, and attitudes towards information search. Factor analysis of 34 agricultural information topics and 28 attitudinal variables measured in the questionnaire produced six overarching measures of farmers' topics of interest and six overarching measures of farmers' attitudes toward information search. The questionnaire also inquired about the frequency of use of 25 sources of agricultural information identified from the literature and about the perceived importance of these information sources for acquiring agricultural information. K-means cluster analysis was used to identify information search strategies among farmers using the information-source items and resulted in four distinct information search types representing a high-information strategy (19% of all farmers), a moderate-information strategy with high use of online sources (21%), a moderate-information strategy with low use of online sources (28%), and one low-information strategy (32%).
Further analyses are currently conduced. Multinomial regression analysis will identify the predictors of information search behavior comparing the four information strategies. An ordinary least squares regression model will be fitted to identify the variables that predict interest in certain topics of information.

This research has both theoretical and practical implications. It contributes to the literature on information search by suggesting a new set of variables that is relevant in predicting the information search behavior of farmers. Findings from this research have relevance for information practitioners and specialists disseminating educational information and services to farmers and agricultural professionals.

The Communication Function in American Land Grant Universities in Transition: Implications on Library and Information Services

Presenter: Deva Eswara Reddy, Texas A&M University

Telling rural people about scientific innovations has been one of several communication processes important to land grant universities. Land grant universities have been people's colleges, resulting in continual dialog with all the individuals and groups who feel entitled to a voice in how these universities operate. To a greater degree, the opinions of the people outside the academic world have influenced curriculum, programs of public service or extension, and research activities. It is a tradition that has survived vast changes in higher education in agriculture. Every university continues to be concerned about how well its purposes and needs are understood by government officials, legislators, farm organizations, special interest groups, and ordinary citizens in the community. Many of the external groups with which agricultural colleges now deal are sources of communication and objects of it. It may not be possible to separate the communications activities of the college from those of its parent land grant university. In recent years, the programs are being revitalized by incorporating a global dimension. An overview of the literature on globalization also shows that most of the major land grant universities in the U.S. are heading towards the internationalization of their teaching, research, and extension programs. The areas of restructuring include human resource development; development of market, trade, and business information systems; collaborative global partnerships; making imported food safe; securing the homeland from poisonous plant materials; meeting the skills and knowledge requirements of foreign countries; meeting the human resource needs of multinational companies operating in other countries; and providing international experience to students and faculty. Balancing change and tradition in global education reform is an invaluable resource for policymakers, faculty, and students. This paper examines how the universities inform themselves and communicate to others on these matters and discusses the implications on library and information services.

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Using LibraryThing to Display a Specialized Collection, Encourage Faculty Participation in Collection Development, and Open the Door to a Multi-institution Codified Core Literature

Heather K Moberly and Rachel Pittman, Oklahoma State University

Veterinary medical education, and therefore its libraries, relies heavily on a "core" of specialized literature unique to each schools curriculum. In this way veterinary medical education is more akin to human medical education than to the other sciences. Many disciplines do not have a codified "core" literature beyond a well-rounded reference collection. Our "core" literature encompasses the required and recommended readings for the DVM curriculum, national veterinary board study materials, and a well-rounded reference collection.

We often shelve our core literature separately, similar to a reference collection. We are repeatedly asked for a list of this collection, but it is not possible to easily separate it in a catalog search. Faculty want to see what other classes require. Current students want a shelf list for immediate use or a list to peruse when supplementing their personal collections. New graduates want a consultation list when starting their professional collection. Alumni want to verify and update their collections or identify "reliable" resources outside their immediate expertise.

We are frequently challenged to identify and acquire all of the appropriate materials. Faculty input is not automatic. An easily available and distributable list of our "core" literature could provide a good base assuring these materials are current. Our library embarked on an experiment by creating a "LibraryThing Catalog" for this collection and added "tags" for each instructor, course number, and important series.

We were curious whether this publicly available tool would satisfy the populations who request this list of materials. We wanted to try leveraging it, with our instructors, to achieve a more up-to-date and complete "core" collection. This poster displays our results.

In the future, by collaborating, we hope to create a tool that can be used for veterinary collection development in non-veterinary focused libraries.

Partnering with Agronomy Faculty to Create a Framework for Data Sharing

Marianne Stowell Bracke and Michael C. Witt, Purdue University

Our librarians are partnering with scientists to help them describe, preserve, manage, and share the data generated by their research. In one instance, the librarians are working with an Agronomy faculty member to create a data collection of water quality samples gathered at the University's Agronomy Center for Research and Education (ACRE).

The project has two phases: the first to ingest and archive five years' worth of past data as a batch process, and the second to integrate our tools into the data collection process so that current and future data flows into the repository. Metadata from the water quality sample data collection is harvested, aggregated with metadata from other repository collections, indexed for searching, and presented on the web in a context with other digital library content such as e-prints and digitized archival collections.

But completion of the technical aspects of the project is not the only goal for librarians. Building relationships with the faculty is also an integral component to success of this data project. This is so faculty can understand and utilize the skills that librarians bring to the table. Librarians bring a blend of traditional skills, such as searching, and other less recognized skills: awareness of scholarly communication issues, interest in improving and increasing access to information, preservation of information and the broader impact of information beyond a single discipline.

This poster will describe the technical specifications of the data ingestion and will demonstrate the construction and maintenance of a successful partnership with a faculty member.

Literary Gardens: Cultivating a Partnership between the Library and the Horticulture Center

Sarah Williams, Illinois State University

In 2006, Illinois State University's Milner Library and Horticulture Center began a partnership to establish literary gardens at the Horticulture Center, which supports horticultural education and research and serves as a community outreach. While still in the planning phase, the literary gardens will be spread throughout the Horticulture Center, and they will focus on Midwestern authors who have written about plants, trees, gardens, or natural habitats. This poster provides background information on the Horticulture Center and the literary garden project, and shares initial plans such as the authors and their works, garden designs, and grant possibilities.

Gateway to Student Success: Convertible Notebook Laptops in the Natural Resources Classroom and the Field!

Jeanne Pfander, University of Arizona

Many readers continue to prefer print to electronic when it comes to reading books. A project is in progress during Spring semester 2008 to investigate whether laptop use will encourage e-book readership and at the same time enhance the learning experience in the classroom and the field. The librarian is partnering with a professor teaching an upper-division course Vegetation Management of Wildlands.

Sixteen Gateway E-295C Convertible Notebooks have been loaned to each student in the course for the duration of the semester. The professor and librarian both also have the same model laptop. At the end of the project, the professor and the librarian will retain their laptops. Students will return the laptops which will be integrated into the Libraries Laptop Loan service.

The E-295C Convertible Notebook converts from notebook mode to tablet mode and allows for both keyboard and digital pen input. It has a 14-inch screen and weighs 7 pounds.

The professor, students and Libraries staff will receive training from Gateway. Ongoing technical support will be provided by the Libraries.

Project assessment will include a pre- and post-course surveys and focus groups to assess impact of E-295C Convertible Notebooks on project participants teaching and learning experience and their use of e-books and other full-text content.

The benefits of this project are expected to include:

For the students: 1) Versatile Gateway E-295C Convertible Notebooks for reading e-books and completing course assignments; 2) New ways to take/share notes and data

For the professor and the librarian: 1) Opportunity to learn new instructional technologies and methodologies;

For the Libraries: 1) Increased understanding of how to introduce Tablet laptops to library customers; 2) Increased customer acceptance of e-books.

This poster will report on progress and learnings to date. 

The DigiTop Dashboard

Matthew Treskon and Stan Kosecki, National Agricultural Library

Although the National Agricultural Library has been collecting usage statistics on electronic resources for several years, due to a high number of data providers with varying file formats, it has been difficult to compare usage across publishers. In response, we developed a system for managing usage statistics that includes a database and accompanying dashboard, designed and implemented to meet the reporting needs of the National Agricultural Library and its DigiTop program, USDA's Digital Desktop Library. The database ingests and manages the following usage statistics (as defined by the COUNTER Code of Practice, v2): full-text journal downloads, database searches, and database sessions. In addition, the database counts web log transactions. Custom PERL scripts are used to ingest both COUNTER-compliant and non-compliant publisher usage data reports, compiling usage data from 20+ data providers into one Microsoft Access database. Using Access' data access pages, the DigiTop dashboard numerically and graphically represents usage of DigiTop's electronic resources on-demand to decision makers within the library.

Static to Dynamic: Growing a Wildflower Web Site

Yongli Zhou, Colorado State University; Mike Haddock, Kansas State University

Though database driven web sites are becoming more dominant world wide, many web projects are still static, i.e. they have been created with flat HTML pages which are difficult to maintain and update. "Kansas Wildflowers and Grasses," one of four Kansas State University AgNIC sites, was begun in 1996 and has been considerably enlarged over a ten-year period. It was originally hand-coded in HTML with each page created separately. As more data was added to the site, maintaining and updating the pages became very time consuming. In the spring of 2007, it was decided to give the web site a new look which would also present new features such as a consistent metadata display, an easy-to-update web interface, and web forms for inputting metadata.

The poster will describe the goals of this project and focus on the techniques and procedures used to convert the original static site into a dynamic database-driven web resource. It will cover:

The selection of programming language, web server, and software
Database (MySQL) design
Creation of dynamic pages coded in PHP
Metadata updates

• using a free database management software
• using customized web forms
  
  

The Forecast Evaluation Tool: What Role Can Librarians Have in the Dissemination of Web Tools?

Carla Casler, Holly Hartmann, and Damian Hammond, Arid Lands Information Center

The Forecast Evaluation Tool (FET) is a web-based tool facilitating customized comparisons of climate forecasts. It can compare all forecasts made since 1994 by the National Weather Services Climate Prediction Center (CPC) and other agencies. It is being developed to address the need expressed by decision-makers for a way to assess the accuracy of seasonal climate forecasts.

The Forecast Evaluation Tool is a product of several research programs, including:
CLIMAS: The Climate Assessment for the Southwest Project, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Global Programs.
GAPP: The GEWEX Americas Prediction Project, funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs.
SAHRA: The Semi-Arid Hydrology and Riparian Area Science and Technology Center, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
HyDIS: (The Hydrologic Data and Information System): Funded by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).
EOSDIS Synergy: Funded by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) through Raytheon.

Complex scientific tools are usually shared through scientific meetings and publications. Do librarians have a role in explaining and disseminating complex web tools?

Seeking Grape and Wine Information: A How-to Guide

Suzi Teghtmeyer, Michigan State University

Grapegrowing and winemaking are booming industries not just in Ohio but nationwide. Homegrowers, business start-ups, tourism bureaus, and Departments of Agriculture are scrambling for information on how to grow grapes, make wine, and find enjoyment and profit in the process. In all cases they need information, so when contacted for such, where does a librarian look? This poster will identify and describe the best grapegrowing (viticulture) and winemaking (enology) resources, including Websites, online extension publications, journals and books.

The Early Films of Cooperative Extension

Jan Scholl, Penn State University

Tradition in Transition: View film clips from Extension's earliest years that have relevance in our lives today. The segments represent all types of subject matter, technological advances and artistic experiments. Documentation will be provided on early film making for the benefit of individuals and organizations.

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