AGRICOLA IND 92017551; Presented at the VIII World Congress of IAALD, May, 1990, Budapest, Hungary, CAB International (CABI) activities that enhance the dissemination of agricultural research results to and from Eastern European countries by close cooperation with national agricultural information centres are reviewed. CABI has been distributing abstract journals throughout Eastern Europe for many years and has regularly received direct from Eastern Europe abstracts of the region's agricultural research literature. In 1958, "World Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology Abstracts" was established with the International Economics Association and IAALD, based in Vienna, and most of the abstracts were contributed by a network of people linked to these two organizations. Input to WAERSA and other CABI journals from individual abstracters in Eastern Europe continues to this day. In the early 1980s AGROINFORM, within the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, began supplying CABI with abstracts of Hungarian agricultural publications. It acquired CAB ABSTRACTS on magnetic tape several years ago and in January 1990 became the first Eastern European country to acquire the database on CD-ROM. In 1988, Hungary became the first Eastern European country to join CABI, bringing its total membership to 30. In November 1989, CABI signed an agreement with VNIITEIAgroprom, the All-Union Research Institute of Information and Economic Studies of the Agro-industrial Complex, Moscow, with the dual aim of enhancing worldwide knowledge of Soviet agricultural research and access by Soviet researchers to global information sources.
Poem highlighting the problematic focus, incentives and effectiveness of farming systems research by universities and experiment stations around the world.
16 pages, via online journal article, This study examined the online content of interdisciplinary agricultural center webpages. Content modification dates, mission statements, and content were determined through a content analysis. Many of the websites did not mention a modification date for the content, while many websites had outdated content mostly older than six months. More than two-thirds of the websites provided PDFs that visitor could download to learn more about topics, by many of the websites lacked any media element that was being coded. Additionally, many websites did not use multiple forms of media. More than half of the websites were coded as lacking any social media content or plugins, but out of the websites that did include social media content, Facebook was the most prevalent. The commonalities between the center’s mission displayed on the website and the content theme were analyzed and chi-square tests provided the degree of association. A significant association existed and an alignment between communication strategies and missions of the centers was concluded, which is important when organizations communicate about agricultural science as indicated by previous literature. It is recommended that centers communicate via their websites in a timely manner and allow modification times to be seen to viewers to show their information is up-to-date. Website media content should also be diversified and communicators of these centers should explore the unique communication opportunities provided by social media. Future research should explore the target audience of interdisciplinary agricultural centers and should analyze the messages centers are using to communicate with those audiences.
