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USAIN 2012 Conference Proceedings

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1813/39488

The United States Agricultural Information Network is an organization for information professionals that provides a forum for discussion of agricultural issues, takes a leadership role in the formation of a national information policy as related to agriculture, makes recommendations to the National Agricultural Library on agricultural information matters, and promotes cooperation and communication among its members. The USAIN Conferences focus on information resources for agriculture and life sciences research and practice. The conferences are sponsored by the United States Agricultural Information Network in order to offer librarians a forum for sharing professional information. The conferences are hosted every other year. This collection contains proceedings to past conferences. For more information about past and future conferences please visit USAIN.org.

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    Perspective on Government Information: Where Are We Going? (panel)
    Gardner, Melanie (2012-05)
    Get "up to speed" regarding changes in the Federal Depository Library Program. Learn about the role of the Digital Repository of the National Agricultural Library (NAL) in collecting and preserving USDA publications. Melanie Gardner from NAL presents various perspectives on these complex issues. There will be an opportunity to share ideas about inter-institutional efforts such as that of the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL). Let's brainstorm ideas for becoming proactive and engaged as USAIN members in these critical areas.
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    NAL Digital Collections - Building a National Resource
    Gardner, Melanie (2012-05)
    The National Agricultural Library (NAL) serves as the Nation's library for agricultural information. Its mission is "advancing access to global information for agriculture." As many large institutions have done, NAL began building a digital repository nearly seven years ago. Originally conceived as several separate projects, the multiple sources of digital content have now been unified into a single system. Over the past two years, NAL has worked to redesign, re-engineer, and re-Iaunch what is now the "NAL Digital Collections." The "digital collections" includes multiple types of content: historic, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) peer-reviewed research literature, rare, and special content and external content. A major component of the NAL Digital Collections will be comprised of content created as the outcomes of extramural grants - "U.S. government agencies with annual extramural research expenditures over $100 million make manuscripts of journal articles stemming from research funded by that agency publicly available via the Internet." In addition, the Federal government is moving to include collecting and storing all associated data sets. Currently, NAL Digital Collections is preparing to accept important external collections such as society publications, subject-specific and peer-reviewed collections, and other full-text research publications. Through the AgNIC partnership cooperative agreements, other fulltext content has been identified, digitized and stored. Attend this session and learn more about the new content and access to full-text information on a national scale.
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    Creating Meaningful Information Literacy Assignments for an Introductory Agriculture Course
    Bracke, Marianne Stowell (2012-05)
    Integrating information literacy into the curriculum is an ongoing challenge. Purdue has explored an approach of integrating information literacy into Agriculture 101. Agriculture 101 is a halfsemester, college-wide introductory class and is team taught by the Associate Dean of Agriculture and the librarian. This opportunity reassessed the approach to addressing ACRL Information Literacy standards. Librarians had attempted to address as many of these standards as possible in a session. In this case, being an instructor of record and part of the instruction team afforded a different approach to information literacy. The core approach was a guided writing assignment in which students were asked to contrast popular and scientific articles on a topic. A portion of the assignment evaluation was anonymous student peer review. Five information literacy objectives were addressed through this assignment, all of which were focused on evaluating information sources. Initially, it was found that freshmen found the search process a barrier to completing the assignment. As a result, students were given articles to work with, allowing them to focus on understanding content. The primary outcome was the ability to distinguish between popular and scholarly articles. Other outcomes, such as peer review in the scientific process and improved writing, were secondary. Three semesters of assessment data provide statistically significant evidence of this approach's success in improving students' abilities. Additionally, this has afforded an opportunity to demonstrate the value and dedication of librarians to improving student learning, and the value of incorporating information literacy into the curriculum.
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    Crop Sciences Data: A Review of Faculty Publications at the University of Illinois
    Williams, Sarah (2012-05)
    This study gathered information about the data used, generated and shared by researchers in the Department of Crop Sciences in University of Illinois' College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. Two recent articles from each Crop Sciences faculty member were reviewed over a few months in late 2011 and early 2012. Notes were made about specific types of data published, which could help inform discussions about crop sciences metadata and data repositories. Information was also gathered about data sources mentioned and data sharing methods used, such as depositing data in a repository and publishing supplementary files. Each article was also categorized to help identify any differences or similarities between types of research, such as field research and genetic research. This presentation will provide an overview of common data types in the crop sciences, discuss data reuse and sharing observations, and highlight specific resources for acquiring and sharing data relevant to crop sciences research.
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    Dataverse - A Data-Hosting Solution for AgEcon Search
    Kelly, Julie; West, Amy (2012-05)
    Dataverse, the software developed at Harvard for hosting social science data, is being used as a solution for hosting data associated with one group of papers in AgEcon Search. We are utilizing the Dataverse Network that is hosted by Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. It is free of charge and data is backed up in perpetuity. Dataverse software is also available for downloading and local hosting. AgEcon Search is starting to archive data with one association and its journal - Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES), which publishes the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AJARE). A member of the association approached AgEcon Search in 2009, asking if we would consider hosting data from their journal. We considered the option of using DSpace software, which was AgEcon Search's software at the time, but saw a number of possible problems. Economists Online, a large subject repository, had just begun using Dataverse for their data, and after careful consideration and consultation with their staff, we decided to follow suit. Dataverse has a number of features that make it a useful choice, including the ability to list data sets from other Dataverses, being able to theme each Dataverse instance with graphics and links, customize the ingest form, and set restrictions on use of data. One need not be a programmer to set up a Dataverse instance, and technical help is available via e-mail.
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    Creating Customization with Google Forms
    Kocher, Megan (2014-05-07)
    The University of Minnesota, like many institutions of higher education, recently adopted the Google Apps for Education Suite of tools for students, staff, and faculty. One particularly useful tool in this suite is the Google Form, which collects responses from a form in a Google Spreadsheet. Members of the University Libraries' Personal Information Management Collaborative (PIM) built a customized Google form using a few lines of Javascript code. The customized form asks respondents to indicate topics they'd like to know more about, and the code triggers an email to the respondent with links to tutorials, workshops, and other instruction in their areas of interest. This unique solution can be adapted for a variety of uses in higher education, increasing the basic functionality of the standard Google Form. This presentation gives an overview of the customized form created by PIM, and highlights resources and tools that enable participants to create their own custom solutions with Google Forms.
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    USAIN 2012 Conference Program
    United States Agricultural Information Network (United States Agricultural Information Network, 2014-05-07)
    Program of the 13th Biennial Conference, April 29 - May 2, 2012 at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.
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