19 pages, The adoption of digital technologies is expected to impact the social sustainability of agriculture, in particular in the case of small and mid-sized family farms in Western Europe. Goal of this research was to assess these impacts, however widely accepted impact assessment schemes of social sustainability are missing. Against this background, a qualitative, two-stage Delphi survey was conducted in order to identify relevant impact categories of the adoption of digital technologies in family-operated small-scale farms of South-West Germany. The participating experts stated, for example, that the adoption of digital technologies on the farm could mean that new business models can be based on the use of digital technologies. However, they also stated that digital technology could overburden farmers, which could hinder digitization in this sector as a whole. Data protection and data security were also issues ranked highly important by the participants in the Delphi Process.
15 pages., via online journal., Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL) support the preservation of agricultural history, as evidenced by their participation in the Preserving the History of United States Agriculture and Rural Life: State and Local Literature, 1820–1945 project, administered by Cornell University. This article reviews CSUL’s work on this preservation project, including digitization of historical agriculture-related documents. CSUL’s latest effort to keep agricultural literature relevant and accessible includes moving the Colorado Agriculture Bibliography website to Springshare’s LibGuides platform (https://libguides.colostate.edu/agbib). Advantages and challenges of using the LibGuides platform for the promotion and sharing of such collections are discussed.
