A posting from Johannes Keizer (FAO, Library and Documentation Systems Division) announces the availability of a draft XML DTD which will provide a standard exchange format for literature and database resources published through the AGRIS network. The draft DTD is based upon the existing AGStandards specifications and the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. In anticipation of March 2002 publication of the DTD, the developers invite public comment. The Agricultural Metadata Standards Initiative "was launched in November of 2000 at a workshop in Brussels jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and OneWorld Europe." The current project goal is to encode and publish the Application Profile both as an XML Document Type Definition as well as an RDF Schema. The schema will be put to immediate use as part of pilot project between FAO and a number of important and successful agricultural gateway services. The project aims to provide a single access point with multi-host searching using the Agricultural Application Profile as the standard for linking common meta-data across the different gateway services." AGRIS Network resources are designed especially for the exchange of information among developing countries, whose literature would not be covered by other international systems."

"The Agricultural Metadata Standards Initiative was launched in November of 2000 at a workshop in Brussels jointly organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and OneWorld Europe... a working group was established which looked into the applicability of Dublin Core Elements and Qualifiers as a means for describing technical and scientific information on agriculture. The unanimous conclusion was that Dublin Core was indeed an optimal starting point for the Agricultural Metadata Standards Initiative... A task-force of experts within the AGRIS/CARIS Group then set out to establish a specification for the first metadata standard, based on the Dublin Core Elements and Qualifiers, as well as extensions which were considered necessary for Agricultural Information; the final draft of this specification has now been published... [the current activity is to] to encode and publish the Application Profile both as an XML Document Type Definition as well as and RDF Schema. The schema will be put to immediate use as part of pilot project between FAO and a number of important and successful agricultural gateway services. The project aims to provide a single access point with multi-host searching using the Agricultural Application Profile as the standard for linking common meta-data across the different gateway services..." [from the online Initiative description]

A related FAO activity is the Agricultural Ontology Service Initiative (AOS): "In the agricultural sector there exist already many well-established and authoritative controlled vocabularies, such as FAO's AGROVOC Multilingual Thesaurus, the CAB Thesaurus, and AgNIC, the thesaurus of the National Agricultural Library in the United States. However, for these semantic tools to be entirely effective on the Internet, there is a need to re-assess the traditional 'thesaurus' approach and move towards a more modern technique that better suits the Web environment, such as the development of 'ontologies'..."

AGRIS is an international information system for the agricultural sciences and technology "created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1974 to facilitate information exchange and to identify world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture. AGRIS is a cooperative system in which participating countries input references to the literature produced within their boundaries and, in return, draw on the information provided by the other participants. 199 national, international and intergovernmental centres participate and submit about 14.000 items per month... One of the main reasons for AGRIS' existence is to encourage the exchange of information among developing countries, whose literature would not be covered by other international systems... [the program endeavors to strengthen] national agricultural information management programmes using Internet-based technologies, [expecially] the exchange of information among developing countries, whose literature would not be covered by other international systems." [from the web site description]