Thank you for the comment. I will try to answer your questions here.

1) To what extent is AGRIS-AP is currently used internationally?
- The AGRIS AP is currently used by ALL AGRIS resource centres. These are National Agricultural libraries, Agricultural organizations etc. (http://www.fao.org/agris). It has also been adopted by the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (http://www.egfar.org) and Global Forestry Information System (http://www.gfis.net). It is also basis for our vision of agricultural information management in the future (ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/ah766e/ah766e00.pdf)

2) What is the latest re harvesters equipped to handle AGRIS-AP?
We are currently working on this.

3) Also, is there any similar AP equivalent in existence for natural resources, parks and reserves etc?
For the moment not because the idea is for document-like information objects, instead of creating different APs, we should try to incorporate different schemes into the current AP. Thus, for example, if the subject keywords should come from Thesauri or Classification schemes from the domain of natural resources, these can be added to the AGRIS AP.

4) Re: affiliation
My colleague Ms. Irene Onyancha will answer you in a separate email.

5) Re: magic.
It’s simply a mistake! Thank you for pointing it out.

The correct transformation should be:
Ghamray, M.
Soil, Water and Environment Research Institute (SWERI)
Central Laboratory for Agricultural Expert System (CLAES)
The Second International Conference on Informatics and Systems March-6-8, Cairo, Egypt. (INFOS2004), 2004, Cairo (Egypt)

I will correct the document.

Hope this helps,
Gauri

I am currently working on a project to assist the Australian government to establish a repository for its national agricultural research and publications and am wondering about the value of including AGRIS-AP in the crosswalks for the data.

To what extent is AGRIS-AP is currently used internationally?

What is the latest re harvesters equipped to handle AGRIS-AP?

Also, is there any similar AP equivalent in existence for natural resources, parks and reserves etc?

And finally a tech question:

Regarding the AGRIS-AP element set page at http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/ae909e/ae909e05.htm#P460_23819 . . .

Am I correct in understanding that this is a recommendation for how data should be entered? If so: …..

The affiliation is separated from the creator’s name by a space and is enclosed in parentheses.

How does this affect crosswalking requirements and OAI Dublin Core harvesting? Does the affiliation always remain part of the name value? Or does a stylesheet recognize the space and parenthesis to code out the affiliation for more granular data migration and harvest?

Similarly, in the article “Benefits of AGRIS AP over simple DC”, in the section describing the Creator information (p. 3/5 in the pdf), the illustration shows that first listed ags.creatorCorporate is “dumbed down” into parentheses beside the value for the personal creator, yet the second listed ags.creatorCorporate is kept distinct. What is going on here? Is there some magic being worked by a stylesheet that tells it to “dumb down” like this — or am I missing something else basic?

Many thanks,
Neil Godfrey

Blog: http://metalogger.wordpress.com
RUBRIC Website: http://www.rubric.edu.au
USQ Website: http://www.usq.edu.au

Gauri

Hugo

For us, your file on Kenya is pretty interesting considering our main job in Latin America and the Caribbean. As you may know IICA has been a promoter of initiatives such as the one you mention. We just finish a one week mission in Haiti in order to create the Haitian Agricultural Information Network.

A group of 8 agricultural institutions in Haiti were trainned in the used of common methodologies, WEBAGRIS and building institutional repositories. Not only we are interested at the national level building network and communities in Haiti, but linking them to international services like SIDALC. (www.sidalc.net)

All the best,

Federico Sancho
IICA

As often the case, Kenya takes the forefront in promoting needed projects. Let’s hope DfID agrees to funding.

Given the current emphasis on promoting participatory and demand-led research and extension, it seems important to stress this dimension in the project. My own view is that researchers in the national agricultural research institutes, applied scientists in higher education research, and adaptive research extension officers would benefit from combined capacity building efforts.

I have just completed a report for the World Bank on “Transforming Post-secondary Agricultural Education and Training by Design: Solutions for sub-Saharan Africa, which seeks to promote a networking systems that promotes workforce education and ties the various research, education and extension system stakeholders into colloborative efforts to promote “targeted innovations.” If interested, please let me know and I will email copy.

All the best, Bill Rivera

PS It would be useful perhaps to bring your project to the attention of FAO Extension officers, especially Loy Van Croweder and Magdalena Blum, if this is not already the case.