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Agricultural Economics Reference Organization (AERO)
Twelfth Workship/Meeting
September 27-30, 2000
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Wednesday, September 27, 2000
AERO members arrived throughout the day and evening. Some members enjoyed dinner together at the Nitty Gritty café.
Thursday, September 28, 2000
Welcome: Linda welcomed the group to the 12th AERO Meeting/Workshop. She then introduced Richard Bishop, Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics. Dr. Bishop gave interesting background information on the university and his department. Dr. Bishop encouraged AERO to enjoy the city during our stay, and suggested several places that are “must see/experience”.
Introductions: AERO members introduced themselves and shared a bit about their facilities/responsibilities.
USDA UPDATE (Marilynn Graham, USDA, ERS): Marilynn distributed Jim Horsfield’s “ERS Update”. She highlighted several areas of the report, including staffing vacancies and changes.
The Food Assistance and Nutrition Program is now being administered through ERS. This change has generated a new monographic series.
The relationship of ERS with NTIS is changing. One of the results of this change is that some longer reports will increase in price toward the end of the year, and some of the reports will be available only on the USDA’s new website, Web 2000, which should be up by the end of the year. A result of Web 2000 will be a phase out of their relationship with the Mann Library at Cornell. Marilynn requested that questions regarding ERS be directed to Jim.
Marilynn, who works in the ERS Reference Center said they have recently subscribed to JSTORE, which has freed up a good deal of space in their reference room. Marilynn asked for suggestions from the group regarding other full text publications/services that might be useful for the Reference Center.
There was discussion on the repercussions of the loss of the relationship between the ERS and Mann Library. The primary concern is whether or not there is a commitment to archiving materials.
ESIRC UPDATE (Pat Rodkewich): Doug Young of Washington State University is the new chair of the ESIRC.
There was much discussion on the Ag Census at the meeting Pat attended. Questions for the Census are still being formulated, but the date for the next Census to be released to the public is February 1, 2004. The Committee has devised a Data Use Policy with six policies. Much of the Data Use Policy addresses the issue of privacy for those providing data.
Pat also reported briefly on the High Performance Data Warehouse System.
Pat reported that Jim Horsfield attended the ESIRC meeting. His report to the group on Web 2000 included the fact that the new website should have interactive capabilities. He further mentioned that sometime in the future, actual reports will not be sent out via email. Instead an announcement that the publication is “up” will be sent via email. Jim also addressed the archival issue. So far no government agency wants to make the commitment of archiving.
The “Natural Resource Inventory Report” will be coming out shortly. Previously, the report was issued every five years. In the future, it will be an annual report.
USAIN UPDATE (Anita Battiste): Anita reported that the USAIN listserv is very good, and we should think about contributing to it. The next conference will be in April 2001 in Raleigh, NC (NC State University). USAIN is working on interest groups - - trying to come up with new interest groups, and also new “pre-conference” sessions.
The USAIN website is “USAIN.org”, and Anita urged members to go to the website for further information.
PROVIDING RESOURCES TO EXTENSION AGENTS (Jenny Vanderlin, Center for Dairy Profitability, University of Wisconsin, Madison): Jenny distributed brochures and handouts about her Center. The Center focuses on business and financial management when dealing with farmers and groups, although they do some work on human resources and strategic planning.
County Agents have to know a great deal to be affective in the field, and they rely heavily on the Center for Dairy Profitability for information. Agents may get questions such as “Will it be profitable for me to milk three times a day?” The Center then provides the agents with the needed information. Profitability in Wisconsin dairy farming is a big concern now, with milk prices being so low, and so that has been the Center’s current focus.
Funding for the Center comes from a line item in the state budget, along with funding through extension. Additionally, the university funds some staff positions.
Jenny demonstrated the Center’s website (http://www.wisc.edu/dairy-profit) for the group. She highlighted the Agriculture Financial Advisor (AFA) portion of the website. Registered users who wish to purchase the AFA program pay $150 plus $10 per farm. Intermediate level users can use the program for a fee of $10 per farm.
ELECTRONIC/ONLINE RESOURCE SHARING (Deb Moore): Deb distributed a handout of web addresses and comments submitted by AERO members. Members demonstrated some of their favorite sites.
AgECON SEARCH UPDATE (Louise Letnes and Pat Rodkewich): Louise distributed statistics on the activities of AgEcon Search during the past year. She also covered the top papers accessed June – September of this year. Wayne Olson has succeeded in getting NAL to include the AgEcon Search URL when they catalog papers. Louise is also happy to report that she no longer has to recruit schools/organizations to participate; they now come to her for information.
AgEcon search was represented at the AAEA meetings. Over 200 individuals signed up at the booth to receive the “New at AgEcon Search” emailing.
Louise reported that a new and improved AgEcon Search will be up shortly. Boolean searching will be possible, along with author, title, and keyword searching. Users will be able to select a “brief” or “long” version of the records and the submission form will again be operational.
Pat Rodkewich pointed out the fact that the new website calls AgEcon Search “a full text library”, which is the vision Pat and Louise have for the database. Eventually, they would like to archive many publications, and they feel that, in time, the archival aspect will be more important than the working papers portion of AgEcon Search.
When Pat was at AAEA, she met Jason Beddow, the creator of the AgEcon Virtual Library. He told her that funding had run out on his project, and he asked if AgEcon Search would be interested in continuing it. It was suggested that if AgEcon Search couldn’t do it, perhaps AERO or AgNIC might take it on. The question was raised about possible AAEA financial support to help continue the project.
RESEARCHING A COMPANY AND ITS COMPETITORS: (Katherine St. John): Katherine spoke about Industry Classification Codes (SIC codes and NAICS), and provided URLs for both. She discussed several databases that are helpful in researching/comparing companies that are fee based: ABI/Inform, Business and Company Profile ASAP, Dow Jones Interactive and Gale Business Resources. Several free websites that are useful for this type of research are “CompaniesOnline”, “Forbes Top 500 Private”, and “Hoover’s”. There are several census webpages that can be useful – the “Economic Census” and “Annual Survey of Manufactures”. Print resources covered were Agriculture, Mining and Construction USA, American Wholesalers and Distributors, Brands and their Companies, Business Ranking Annual, Encyclopedia of American Industries, Encyclopedia of Associations, Market Share Report, and Ward’s Business Directory.
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT: PRINT OR ELECTRONC IN THE 21ST CENTURY? (Moderator: Grace Dote. Panelists – Marilla Klima, Maureen Vincent, and Jane Wershay): Grace Dote distributed and reviewed the results of her survey of Departmental Libraries represented in AERO.
Marilla spoke on the situation at Texas A&M. At Texas A&M, most of their publications are working papers. Having access to AgEcon Search has freed up a good deal of space in her room. Her faculty and grad students now have access to the library’s electronic resources, which is something relatively new for them. She finds that instead of having patrons coming and wanting specific resources available in the room, she has people asking her to help them find resources on the Web, and asking for help to discern which web resources are reputable. Marilla publicizes helpful websites in the department’s weekly newsletters, which she edits.
Maureen spoke about the resource room at Colorado State where she has been working on building a database of the holdings. Primarily, the resource room deals with print rather than electronic resources. Colorado State is experiencing budget cuts. Additionally, there has been a proposal to close the reference room, using the salary savings to support departmental seminars.
Jane Wershay, from University of Arizona, covered the issue of paper vs. electronic copies. A big consideration remains the issue of archiving. (Do I keep things for 10 years? Twenty? Can I trust someone who deals in electronic formats to maintain archives?) The question seems to be a new economic one: the economics of trust. Do we trust the accessibility of electronic sources as promised now, when companies are bought and sold, software changes, etc. Jane stated further that senior faculty remain strongly attached to paper copies, plus many people would rather photocopy from print versions because it often takes considerable time to download the electronic version. Jane further faces a change in the department chair position – which can often times change the focus of print vs. electronic publications.
Grace called on Judith Dow regarding her “vision” of moving toward an all-electronic library, with few or no print resources at all. Judith’s feeling is that trends in her library at Michigan State show a marked decline in the use of paper sources. Judith feels her time could be better used asking professors and students what she can do to help them, rather than reshelving materials. Maria Porta said that their departmental reading room at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was closed because the department needed the space for other things. Patrons there now go to the main library for their resources. Judith’s vision, however, is not to do away with the departmental library, but to have a librarian that will maintain an electronic library.
Judy Nixon shared that she chaired a committee that looked at the future of libraries at Purdue. Their vision is that librarians will act more as “consultants” rather than “maintainers of physical collections”. In her particular library, they are also facing the possibility of losing some of their space. If the space is taken away, they estimate an additional $400,000 would be needed to purchase electronic resources to compensate for the physical collection.
Grace summed up the discussion saying that for now, it appears most libraries still need print copies of many publications, but that we also need to be open to change.
NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY UPDATE (Wayne Olson): The building housing NAL is now in the Abraham Lincoln Building. Additional NAL changes are expected in 2001. NAL has had a flat program budget since 1996 and it is facing a possible $1,000,000 deficit in FY2001. Because of this, the D.C. Reference Center has been scheduled for closing (currently on hold); expenditures on acquisitions (including serials) will be reduced; and some vacant positions will be eliminated. Initiatives to help cope include:
The first floor public services areas have been remodeled, and the number of workstations for the public has increased. Although the number of hard-copy journals available on the first floor public services area has been reduced, the availability of full-text, electronic journals through the public workstations has increased significantly. Some public services staff will be relocating to the first floor. Future plans (dependent on funding) include remodeling the 4th floor to accommodate the Library’s Special Collections.
A contractor has completed a retrospective conversion of older monographic records. The material is on ISIS and on the NAL’s Agricola website. (They are not yet available on the SilverPlatter or Dialog versions of Agricola.) There are now close to 300 links to AgEcon Search on Agricola bibliographic records. Wayne will continue to promote AgEcon Search within the NAL.
Four 16th century books were stolen from the NAL, but they have been recovered. It will cost about $4,255 to restore the books, which were damaged.
Web pages dedicated to invasive species (through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Geological Service), drought, and science for children are now up. Wayne will send the URLs to us via the AERO listserv.
In November, the NAL will have its first full time webmaster.
AgNIC has a new website. NAL is promoting it as a cooperative distributive reference source.
An interesting aside was that the NAL was contacted by a contestant on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” with a question on apple production.
COOPERATIVES IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, (Anne Reynolds, Assistant Director, Center for Cooperatives, University of Wisconsin, Madison): Anne distributed handouts, which included the Center’s website URL (http://www.wisc.edu/uwcc). Anne spoke about co-ops in general – defining what a co-op is, and covering the principles upon which cooperatives were founded. She presented statistics on cooperatives, and mentioned some of the better-known cooperatives.
COPYRIGHT UPDATE – ELECTRONIC AND INTERNET CONCERNS, (Rebecca Bernthal): The U.S. Copyright Office website, part of the Library of Congress website, is a good starting point to get information on copyright. Rebecca distributed copies of the Office’s homepage, along with several other informative handouts.
The “Digital Millennium Copyright Act” of 1998, represents a significant change in copyright law not seen in many years. The DMCA was passed to deal with international treaties on intellectual property and to update copyright law for the digital environment and the electronic issues related to that environment. Since the enactment of this act, the copyright office was assigned to study the issues associated with distance education and report back to Congress in 1999. The work of the copyright office regarding distance education is still being discussed.
Copyright is still changing and evolving. Rebecca used Brad Templeton’s “10 Big Myths about Copyright” and summary of copyright guidelines to indicate some of the continuing issues of copyright.
Rebecca spoke briefly about the controversial UCITA (Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act), which is now being considered by states. She suggested conference participants might want to check on the status of this legislation in their home states. Rebecca also recommended we look at “The Journal of Electronic Publishing” on the web for additional copyright information.
BUSINESS MEETING: The business meeting was held at the AERO dinner, held at the Wilson Street Grill in Madison.
Friday, September 29, 2000
CORE LITERATURE IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS (Louise Letnes and Pat Rodkewich): Louise and Pat were invited to write the chapter on ag econ for the forthcoming book, Using the Agricultural Literature. Pat distributed an unabridged copy of their chapter and encouraged AERO members to submit suggestions and comments as soon as possible.
Louise spoke on the methodology on writing the chapter. She located the resources listed in the chapter, while Pat wrote the introduction to the chapter and the introductions for each section. Louise found it difficult to limit herself on materials, since ag econ is a broad field. Louise briefly reviewed each section of the handout, covering formatting, and explaining her rationale for including the chosen materials.
Pat spoke about her frustration with compiling the material for book form, since the material is ever changing. She felt it would be more appropriate to have it on the web, where entries can be changed as new materials are available. She mentioned the article, “Wide Wide World of Statistics: International Statistics on the Internet,” by Geraldine Foudy, which addresses this issue.
COMPILING AND DISTRIBUTING DEPARTMENT PUBLICATION LISTS – ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION (Moderator – Judith Dow): Judith presented the preliminary results of a survey she did of Ag Econ Departments, explaining methodology and responses.
Group discussion included ways to encourage faculty input and the reasons for compiling such lists.
Anita Battiste feels that each department’s website should have faculty members’ publications listed on it (in addition to paper copy or web version on a different website). Several people involved in their departmental websites felt that they would have trouble getting all faculty members to go along with the idea.
Grace Dote’s department (UC Berkeley) doesn’t promote the idea of publications being accessible on its web, but Grace has a section of departmental publications on her library’s website.
Susan Casement said at UC Davis, her library creates the citations and then sends them on to the departmental office, with the administrative office creating the list itself.
Louise Letnes’s (U of MN, St. Paul) method of assembling citations for her list was born of frustration with the old system. She began to publicize new faculty publications in the department’s newsletter, which increased faculty awareness and facilitated their participation. Louise requires that faculty members submit a copy of the publication to be publicized in the newsletter – they cannot just tell her about it. This helps Louise to have correct citations, and cuts down on having to compile everything for the publications list at the end of the year. As the end of the year approaches, she sends a list of all the publications she knows of for each faculty member, and asks them if the list is complete. If they have additional articles, they submit copies of the publications they wish to have included. Additionally, Louise includes the publications on her library’s on-line catalog.
Linda Davis (U of WI, Madison) questioned the usefulness of a publications list. In Linda’s facility, paper lists are not used. Linda is thinking about entering publications in a database that would be searchable, rather than distributing a paper copy. The drawback with this method would be that it would not allow browsing as a paper copy would.
Susan Logan (Ohio State) asked whether we could use AgEcon Search as a resource that could take the place of these lists.
Susan C. said that in her case, the department wants to have an annual paper copy to submit to the dean. The dean would be less likely to check a website, Agricola, or AgEcon Search, but would review a paper copy.
Deb Moore, (Iowa State) suggested that members consider “passing the buck” to have the department chair or administrative assistant make the request for citations. Faculty response to a “main office” request might be better.
Judith plans to continue to work on this topic and prepare a final report to the members.
AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIC JOURNALS HOLDINGS UPDATE (Janet Wilson): Janet distributed the Scholarly Journal List of Surveyed Departmental AERO Members. She wants everyone to double check their entries and report changes to her. She will revise the list and send out updated copies.
USING FACULTY PREFERENCES TO SELECT BOOKS IN AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS (Jeff Kushkowski): Preferences for journal titles is relatively easy to assess, monographs less so. When Jeff was doing the research for a paper, he had a student prepare a list of the top 100 subject areas for which he was collecting. The list was then sent out to faculty members, who were asked to indicate which of those 100 areas they felt were important. The feedback was useful in not only deciding which areas needed developing, but also in realizing some areas that were not covered at all. From the information received, Jeff knew which subject areas he should focus on. Jeff’s survey covered three universities, but his method could be tailored for any group, including agricultural economics libraries. Something else Jeff does is to contact new faculty members in his areas after they have been on campus six months, in order to get individual feedback. He finds this to be especially useful because new faculty bring in new ideas. Jeff said he tries to keep in mind the “big picture” of the institution, its goals, etc., when ordering books.
AERO WEBSITE (Ellen Reneke): Ellen shared the AERO website URL (http://cherokee.agecon.clemson.edu/aero.htm). She asked for input from the membership. Ellen said if the AERO listserv needs to be moved, she thought it could be moved to Clemson
SHARING OF PRINT RESOURCES (Linda Davis): Members shared print sources they have found to be useful. The difficulty libraries have in ordering materials via the web was discussed. Often times electronic books, or ordering paper copies via a source such as Amazon.com can be more efficient and timely than ordering through a traditional distributor. Very few libraries are set up to order materials this way, however.
AFTERNOON ACTIVITIES: The afternoon sessions included information on the University of Wisconsin – Madison library system, a tour of Steenbock Memorial Library for Agricultural and Life Sciences, a visit to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Dairy Store at Babcock Hall, and a tour of Taylor-Hibbard Library, Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.
Saturday, September 30, 2000
Saturday activities for those who stayed after the “official” meeting/workshop, included visits to the Dane County Farmer’s Market, and a tour of the Capital Brewery in Middletown, Wisconsin.