The Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC): Building on the Past, Looking to the Future

Abstract

The Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC) began in 1995 as the Agriculture Network Information Center, a group of four academic libraries and the National Agricultural Library (NAL), with the goal of improving access to reliable agricultural information. One aspect of involvement during the early years was to develop unique subject sites that contained or linked to reliable, curated information on a particular agricultural topic. As the world of online information grew, the focus of AgNIC shifted. In 2013 AgNIC changed the "C" from Center to Collaborative, highlighting a substantive change for the group that had grown to fifty-three members. It moved the partner-members' vision of AgNIC from a series of subject silos, each staffed by librarians who built and maintained them, into a group with a much wider range of goals and interests. This reimagined collaborative explores and acts on agriculture information trends of mutual interest and international importance, including discovery, access, and preservation. Current activities include digitizing and preserving historical agricultural literature as part of Project Ceres, promoting NAL's PubAg portal, and enhancing HathiTrust by systematically requesting the release of state agricultural documents. Moving forward, this long-term partnership provides an avenue for collaboration between the libraries and NAL and opportunities for professional development.

Perception and trends towards research and technological development in the avocado value chain using data science tools

“…The configuration of research networks and platforms for indexing results enables correction of duplication in research (Olsen et al, 2017). A limitation found was the absence of repositories and databases.…”

Ten Years and Counting: Preserving and Sharing Colorado’s Agricultural History Online

“…A summary of the history of AgNIC and the subject websites, associated partnerships, cooperative agreements for digital projects, and the expansion to include international partners can be found in Olsen, Kelly, and Kopriva (2017). They also outlined recent projects, including crowdsourcing for extension and experiment station documents, working with the NAL to promote PubAg, and working to build a broader coalition within AgNIC.…”