Conference Blog

Awards Luncheon

2005-05-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 18

The awards luncheon recognized the following individuals:

USAIN Scholarships
Innocent Awasom - University of Minnesota
Jill Dotts - West Virginia University
Amelia Flores - Colorado River Indian Tribes Library/Archives
Leslie Delserone - University of Iowa

Service to Profession Award
Toni Greider - University of Kentucky

Jefferson Cup
Dana Boden
Jodee Kawasaki
Pat Wilson

Overcoming the Digital Divide

2005-05-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, May 18

Peter Young (NAL) moderated the session, which was opened by Elizabeth Dodsworth from CABI. She spoke of CABI's role in providing research tools and knowledge management with tools such as the Compendia.

Stephen Rudgard (FAO) emphasized that information is vital to the fight against hunger and that FAO is interested in providing content. One of FAO's main objectives is to reduce the rural digital divide.

Dorothy Mukhebi (RAIN) gave a thought-provoking presentation as the self-proclaimed "least digital" on the panel. She described some of the contributing factors to the digital divide, as well as some of the interventions, such as catalyzing national policies and strategies and sensitizing policy makers. Dorothy closed by questioning whether we should focus on the digital divide or just the divide.

Gracian Chimwaze (TEEAL/AGORA) spoke on the work of TEEAL and AGORA in disseminating journal literature, outreach, and training. He also mentioned future issues such as bandwidth availability and networked computers.

Professor Mei Fangquan discussed three subjects: evidence of the digital divide in China, reasons for the divide in China, and countermeasures in China.

Dylan Winder (DFID) closed the panel presentation by emphasizing the themes of partnership and opportunity. He explained that information and communication are drivers of change for development; they are a means to an end.

A lively discussion/conversation took place between panelists, moderator, and the audience members. Ideas from Wendell Berry's presentation (from the All-Conference Dinner) often emerged--the idea of a conversation rather than communication and of the center and the periphery. Much of the discussion involved political, cultural, and technological threads. Another recurring idea was that the digital divide is not really about the technology, but about the people, content, and processes.

Our thanks to Sarah Williams, Illinois State University, for summarizing this session.

Colorado River Indian Tribes Library

2005-05-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17

Amelia Flores, a member of the Mohave tribe, works as the Director of the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) Library. Amelia's session gave general information about tribal libraries, with a caution to remember that each tribal library is unique.

She respectfully started her talk by greeting the local tribes of the Lexington, KY area, although unknown, for allowing her to speak at this conference.

Background
The Colorado River Indian Tribes Reservation was established on March 3, 1865 with four main tribes: Hopi, Navajo, Mohave, and Chemehueve. There are currently 3,000 members that are enrolled at CRIT with one half living on the reservation while the remaining half lives away from the reservation. This reservation is located in the western Arizona and eastern California are aon 269,000 acres of land.

History of the Library
Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) Library is recognized as the first tribally-funded library in the United States. Dr. Spencer Hatch and Emily Hatch were instrumental in founding the library. The late Dr. and Mrs. Hatch, who have been honored for their outstanding work among the Colorado River Indian Tribes, approached the tribal members in 1957 to find out the needs of the community. Tribal members agreed to establish and maintain a library.

Library Service
The library is open to all tribal members and members of the general public for free. The library is made up of 12,729 volumes and has 1,727 registered users.

The collections contain unique archival materials on native Americans and some Japanese internment camp collections. Formats of materials in the collections include primary and secondary documents, microforms, photographs, and video and audio tapes.

The library has been fully automated since the early 1990s and has computers for the public to use to access the library catalog and search the internet. The library archives collection is not automated and is available for use within the reservation.

Special Initiatives
In 2003, the library did a 3-4 year strategic plan, "Planning for Results in 2003," using a facilitator and involving the community in identifying the needs of the community. The process resulted in the formulation of a mission statement of the library that contains two key guiding principles:

1. The Colorado River Indian Tribes Library will promote intellectual freedom.
2. The library will support and encourage efforts to understand the cultures and personal heritage of the Mohave, Navajo, Chemehueve, and Hopi tribes through preservation, documentation, and cultural awareness activities for future generations.

In 2004, Amelia Flores serves as a facilitator for a city library. The community produced two coloring books that documented the use of the endangered languages of the Mahave and Chemehueve.

The library has also collaborated with state libraries. For example, through the Bill Gates grant, "Native American Access to Technology," the library acquired four computers. The Tribal Council approved the addition of a fourth staff member to serve as a Library Technician Specialist.

Through the work the library does with the University of Arizona, the library engages linguist researchers from the university in grant work and research that aims to document and translate tribal languages by having some tribal elders speak in languages that are endangered.

The library has also developed some library literacy promotional posters that feature tribal elders as library users and readers to serve as an incentive to encourage youth to pursue education and reading.

Our thanks to Claudine Jenda, Auburn University Libraries, for providing the summary of this conference session.

Indian Country Extension

2005-05-23T06:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17

Dr. Joe Hiller, Director of University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, provided an overview of cooperative extension services that target the native American communities in Arizona. To provide context, Dr. Hiller began by explaining the term Indian Country and by describing the school systems and extension research related to native American tribes.

What Is Indian Country?
Indian Country is a legal term that refers to most reservations located in the western United States. Indian Country also refers to much of Oklahoma, which has Indian jurisdiction areas, and Arizona, where there are local native American communities.

Among native American communities, there are different tribes. Each tribe is unique, so generalizations cannot be made. There are over 175 languages spoken among the tribes, although some languages in California are dying out.

Who Is Indian?
Tribes define and decide who is Indian based on lineage and descent.

What Is a Tribe?
A tribe is an ethnic, cultural, and political group of indigenous native Americans. Except for the Navajo nation, tribes are governed by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 that identifies 562 federally recognized tribes and 314 reservations of which 21 are in Arizona.

The 1887 Act allowed for the disposal of surplus land from native Americans to address the pressure for more land needed for grazing. This resulted in reservation land getting shrunk and allotted land being split among multiple non-native owners.

Most reservations are in the west. For example, there are 175,000 Navajo who live in Arizona on land that is divided up following the land grant model. An estimated 33% of the land is under Indian Country. There are no property taxes on reservations, for the same reasons the Federal Parks and Recreation Lands are not taxed.

Half of the tribes are involved in gaming. Federal guidelines regulate how money generated from casinos is used. A portion of the money must be used for schools or dialysis centers.

Schools
There are four types of schools in Indian Country. Public Law 93-638 allows native Americans to have contracts with the Department of Justice to run their own police departments. While Public Law 280 affects how the extension service is run, the 1990 Farm Bill - EIRP allows extension services to be provided on reservations. So far there are 28 programs established on 27 reservations in 15 states.

The Improving American Schools Act of 1994 has resulted in the establishment of accredited community colleges that are tribally owned. The legislation also allows access to money for education, research, and extension. Only in CRIT is the county extension also located on the reservation.

Research in Indian Country
There are no institutional review boards to facilitate research involving native American subjects. Instead researchers should check with Tribal Council or the attorney general. It is recommended that prospective researchers create partnerships with community and legal entities. It is possible that extension and other researchers may have permission to do the research involving native American subjects or interests but the publication of sensitive cultural or intellectual property knowledge is restricted.

For example, refer to the Havasupai Case, where research done near the Grand Canyon made assumptions about the Havasupai that were published beyond the agreement made with this community. The tribe sued and banished further research by the University of Arizona or Arizona State University entities in a $52 million pending lawsuit.

Our thanks to Claudine Jenda, Auburn University Libraries, for providing the summary of this conference session.

eXtension: Tapping the Power of Cooperative Extension

2005-05-23T06:50:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17

Dr. Carla Craycraft and Dr. Craig Wood, eXtension Content Coordinators, gave an outline of the development of the eXtension (e-extension) project. They emphasized its connection to the traditional cooperative extension, land-grant-based system. Dr. Craycraft described the system as an “internet-based, customer-centered, virtual and evolving educational environment.”

The system is built around communities of practice and, like traditional extension service, is meant to serve the local needs of communities. eXtension includes: access to basic information, an “ask the experts” feature, FAQs (frequently asked questions), news, and educational opportunities.

The user’s experience using eXtension is based on their location and affiliation with a partner land-grant institution. Dr. Wood demonstrated one of the subject specialties which is operational in the eXtension prototype (horsequest.info).

The presentation also included video commentary from subject experts on their views of the eXtension system.

Our thanks to Gracie Hale, University of Kentucky Libraries, for providing this summary of the eXtension session.

Creating Collaboratories, Communities, and Collections in the Digital Age

2005-05-20T07:03:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17

Harry Samuels, Endeavor
Harry Samuels opened the panel discussion by talking about “knowledge infrastructure.” Knowledge infrastructure encompasses means of storing, sharing, and accessing digital information, as well as linking information items (“silos”) together. Mr. Samuels also talked about sharing information. The mission statements of IAALD and USAIN include a clause about sharing information. There are two types of digital information collections:

collections of resources we’ve created and want to share via the web

collections of resources we’ve bought or licensed

In order to share and provide access to collections, a portal is needed. Google will not suffice as a portal, as some information is licensed and not available to the public. For collections of abstracts and indexes, linking to full-text is a very desirable feature that facilitates greater access to the information. However, link resolvers may be needed for this to occur. This is where OpenURL linking is very useful, because the OpenURL standard works across platforms.

Mr. Samuels concluded by highlighting several Endeavor products. Compass pulls together multiple collections for searching. Meridian has been created as an electronic resources management system.

Jon Corson-Rikert, Cornell University
Jon Corson-Rikert spoke about VIVO as an example of a virtual community. VIVO was created as part of a new initiative to foster interdisciplinary awareness at Cornell. Many departments have a share in this initiative: medicine, business, ethics, etc. The goal in creating VIVO was to integrate information for users. Content was indexed to facilitate searching and metadata was created. An ontology was created by assigning relationships to information objects.

A demonstration of VIVO was provided. Mr. Corson-Rikert demonstrated the seamless navigation from one part of the website to another. He highlighted special features of VIVO such as a facilities and equipment database, where searchers can find information about the facilities and research equipment available at Cornell. This feature has become a recruitment tool for Cornell. Corson-Rikert also hightlighted the structured search results. When the VIVO site is searched, results are divided into groups by the kind of result: people, courses, resources, etc.
The presentation ended with a discussion of several issues related to the creation and upkeep of the resource.

Brent Seales, University of Kentucky

Brent Seales discussed problems in digital libraries, specifically how to digitize information items not born digital. He highlighted three projects on which he has worked:

1. Digitizing petroglyphs from Costa Rica - The Taino people of Costa Rica have created many three-dimensional petroglyphs. Dr. Seales explained the process of creating a digital, three-dimensional version of these petroglyphs. Pictures of the glyphs were used to create the images. This was a relatively easy digitization project, because rocks are stationary and many pictures could be taken easily.

2. Digitizing cattle - Creating digital versions of animals in motion is a very difficult endeavor. In order to create digital cattle, real cattle must be run through a chute and recordings of the motion captured as they move. Acquisition of the data is the hardest part, in this case. In order to design the optimal method of motion capture, sed footage of a runner on a treadmill is used.

3. Digitizing objects you can't open - This is especially a concern for very brittle books and other items that need to be digitized in order to be used. Dr. Seales used papyrus scrolls encased in lava as another example of an item that must be digitized in order to be read. He demonstrated how CT scanners can be used to create a three-dimensional image of the item and how imaging programs can "unroll" the image to display the text inside.

To conclude, Dr. Seales emphasized that acquisition of the image or data is the crucial issue for things not born digital.

Our thanks to Katie Clark, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for providing the notes for this posting.

Technology Keynote - Whither Institutional Repositories: Documents to Data

2005-05-20T06:31:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, May 17

Kimberly Douglas (CalTech) discussed the history of repositories of information. To introduce the topic, she shared a short history of computer and communications technology. She noted that the human relationship with this technology has not always been positive.

Starting in 1939 with the World's Fair, we wanted technology to save us and shape our future. We imagined robots, plastic furniture that could be hosed down for convenience of cleaning, and computers that would hold the information from all books. The social aspects of technology was not well thought out. Theorists surmised that telephones would one day replace travel, when, in fact, telephones have increased travel.

In 1994 when the web first appeared, we thought that technology would foster sharing and overcome our barriers to access of information. The amount of content did indeed grow very quickly in the next three years. However, since the trend on the web is NOT to adopt a common metadata standard and most content is in English, access to information is not entirely improved. Information on the web needs to be organized so that we can find the information we need.

Open Archives and Open Access have protocols and standards for interoperability. There are many standards and many languages, but there are attempts to make these more formal and consistent.

There are many problems when moving from print to electronic (when creating a repository, for instance). These issues include copyright issues and social constraints. While intellectual property rights are also a consideration, they need to be balanced against the need not to stifle creativity. There is a need for a "creative commons" in which the creator of the information has the right to reuse and reissue information

Methods for gatherine data are overwhelming in an environment in which machines, not humans, are gathering data, but in which the output needs to be meaningful and usable for purposes of education or research.

Authority tools that capture information as it is generated and in a usable format do not currently exist. Work is currently being done to develop such tools, though.

The issues and challenges of dealing with technology are the same now as they were in 1939. Technology is only part of the environment--people, practices, and vaues are also an important part of the environment and need to be considered when moving documents to data.

Our thanks to Sheila Merrigan for providing notes from this session.

Introducing IAALD Luncheon

2005-05-20T06:19:00.000-07:00

Monday, May 16

Peter Young (National Agricultural Library) presented "Introducing IAALD." This luncheon presentation highlighted the past, present, and future of the IAALD organization. IAALD began in 1955 as the International Association of Agricultural Librarians and Documentalists. Since 1955, the organization has grown to include members from 80 countries. The organization underwent a name change in 1990 to become the International Association for Agricultural Information Specialists. The familiar acronym IAALD was retained at that time. For a complete chronology of IAALD, visit this page.

In describing the future of IAALD and of libraries in general, Peter Young highlighted the importance of expertise, cooperation, collections, access, and technology. Each of these elements is crucial to the future success of libraries.

The Role of the Organization in the Digital Age

2005-05-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

Monday, May 16

Panel Members:
Peter Ballantyne (INASP)
Gerhard Schiefer (INFITA)
Danielle Jacques (CALS)
Peter Young (NAL)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peter Young summarized the spirit of this session as follows:
Issues -> What’s Needed to Move Forward
Content -> Cooperation
Conduit -> Convergence
Connectivity -> Communication
Computing ->Coordination

Peter Ballantyne – "Our Choices are at the Crossroad, the Global Crossroad"

The choices we make are influenced by policy context and environmental context.

The policy context is the vision that "everyone will be able to: create, access, utilize, and share information and knowledge.” This is taken directly from The Millennium Development Goals (September 2000) World Information Summit on the Information Society (http://www.wsisgeneva2003.org/home.html.

The environmental context is composed of a number of factors:

social change (rural people are less likely to be directly involved in agricultural production and they have different needs)

diversification of information sources

integration of information tools

“The Web” has spawned an information explosion which is unstructured and chaotic; an environment in which it is difficult to retrieve the best resources (more misses than hits)

In today’s world many more people are involved because technology has enabled new collaborations across disciplines and time zones. In the new Open environment (think Open Access movement) we need to slow down enough to make sure we get the process right, that good standards are developed to move us forward.

What does the disappearing patron mean to libraries? It is an opportunity to rethink our services and mission. Libraries need to move beyond a focus on access to facilitate communication, community building, and collaboration.

Gerhardt Schiefer – "International Network for Information Technology in Agriculture"

Information technology drives many changes in society: agricultural production, marketing, food security. This change is not wholly to the good, we have seen the emergence of a “digital divide.” The question becomes who will solve the problems brought about by technology.

The problems and opportunities opened up by technology are complex systems which involve many specialties. Integration of information systems can help to resolve many of these problems. We need to develop digital knowledge networks to solve societal/agricultural problems of: production and market infrastructure; rural development; and food security.

Common needs across disciplines have led to duplication in system development because these diverse communities of specialists have not communicated with each other. Integration is needed to avoid duplication.

Institutional development is needed to foster systems integration and communication. The Information Technology in Agriculture cluster of associations has grown from regional associations into an international network. This includes Europe (EFITA); Asia (AFITA); and pan-America (PanFITA) which come together to form the International Network for Information Technology in Agriculture (INFITA).

What’s Needed:

INFITA lacks coverage in Africa

Identify a role for the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Agriculture Information Center (WAICENT)

A World Conference to discuss E-journals

Bring diverse groups together to facilitate greater integration

USAIN involvement

Danielle Jacques – "The Canadian Agriculture Library (CAL)"

CAL is the largest agricultural library in Canada and the oldest Federal library. It has 21 service centers located across southern Canada serving the Department of Agriculture and the Inspection Service. Service is provided in French and English.

CAL has offered an online catalog for more than 20 years. The catalog and interlibrary loan are available through CISTI. CAL began with 20 e-journals subscriptions in 1996. Today electronic journal subscriptions are greater than print subscriptions.

Agri Web Canada is a Web based service for agricultural and food information of and about Canada, excluding commercial resources.

Global Challenges:

Information overload – customers want filters

Google is taking over first level needs; customers are less likely to come into the library

Librarian skills are becoming more important than information technology skills: records management; archiving; Web services

CAL faces institutional challenges in better marketing of its services; budget; and reduced physical space. To address these challenges a new vision statement was created:
“CAL will provide the right information to the right person (by the right person), at the right time, in the right form, at the right cost”
This vision aims to move CAL from a back office operation to the front office. The vision recognizes the role of librarians needs to expand to include knowledge facilitation, to go beyond the published literature to better serve customers.

An assessment identified the silo nature of information development; in this environment standards were not applied consistently across the board. Applying proper metadata is key to the integration and reuse of these resources.

CAL as an institution is undergoing a reorganization to better deliver information. The institution will be realigned by service function instead of “type” of information. The reorganization will be developed around an E-library service delivery model. A reorganized CAL will emphasize strategic alliances, and pursue consortial procurement.

In 2003 a feasabiltiy study was conducted. Scientists were spending on average 3 hours per week reading the literature in their fields. Desktop access encouraged the reading of a broader range of papers including those outside their immediate field of study.

CAL initiatives:

Revise collection development policies

Rationalize the collection (eliminate duplicates)

Coordinate metadata services

Provide advice for Web services

Marketing CAL

Developing branded services

The digital age has forced the redefinition of services, creation of new services, and the redefinition CAL’s role.

Peter Young – "Defining the Role of Libraries in the Digital Age"

The National Agricultural Library has been working hard for a number of years on this question: planning for the national digital library for agriculture; DigiTop digital desktop access for USDA; Relais and Voyager; and most recently re-scoping the AGRICOLA database.

We need to learn the lessons of the past to better meet our current challenges in order to prepare for future opportunities.

Not only do we need expertise in subject matter and technology; we also need political expertise; skills that are not typically developed in librarians.

We need to understand the challenges and opportunities made possible by services such as Google Scholar. Human intermediaries will always trump robots in bringing greater knowledge to our customers.

Our challenge is to move from business practices built in the print environment to the new realities of the digital environment. Today we are less likely to “own” the content and more likely to merely “lease” the content. In this transitional period, we need to develop a higher tolerance for ambiguity and to realign priorities: people come first, robots are built to help us.

Discussion:
Question: How stable is the electrical infrastructure and what is the impact of this vulnerability on digital collections?

Answer: Communications are a greater problem. Storage is cheap; we’ll be able to read the files in 10 years.

Answer: Depends on priorities of needs; libraries are struggling – no funding base; better to focus on our mission. Maybe look at batteries and low energy instruments.
This is beyond what a departmental library can address; we’ll need to work in collaboration on large issues such as this
Even with power cuts – there are ways to work out solutions
We need to design robust systems; we don’t have the knowledge and cooperation needed.

Question: Can you speak to the issues raised by the Open Access movement?

Answer: Developing countries have moved pretty far forward; this is not the case in the least developed countries (LDC) and the developing world. There isn’t much knowledge about the implications of the Open Access movement for LDC researchers and libraries.

Answer: Books and documents are not needed as much in libraries. What is needed is more conversation.

Question: Universal digitization – what’s sustainable?

Answer: Some one will have to curate these works. Other questions come up with this, what the work, especially for “living” works; how do you authenticate the work?

Question: How will customers change their behaviours?
Answer: We may need to reposition ourselves based on customer behaviour.

Question: How can USAIN/IAALD help integrate IT infrastructure?

Answer: No master will work. Knowledge exchange is needed. Interfaces between different platforms are difficult. Joint basic planning and development approach is needed. We need to integrate, integrate, integrate.

This conference session was sponsored by Thomson Scientific.

Thanks to guest blogger Susan McCarthy, National Agricultural Library, for this post.

Welcome and Opening Keynote Address

2005-05-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Monday, May 16

Conference chair Toni Greider kicked off the XIth World Congress of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) and the 2005 Biennial Conference of the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) (my that's a mouthful, but then it's already quite a conference) with a rousing welcome to all of us.

Toni said the conference was 4 years in the making. Two major conferences will be packed into 4 days. The conference has lined up 31 major speakers, 40 presentations for the Contributed Sessions, 18 exhibitors, and 34 posters. Attendance includes 18 scholarship winners from developing countries.

Toni introduced Carol Diedrichs, UK's Dean of Libraries, who reminded the international gathering that "UK" on this turf stands for "University of Kentucky," not "United Kingdom." She welcomed us all to the bluegrass region, and extended greetings on behalf of the UK President, Provost, and Dean of Agriculture.

Toni introduced IAALD Acting President Pam Andre (past Director, National Agricultural Library). Pam welcomed conference attendees to the 11th IAALD World Congress and 50th anniversary. She noted that it was especially appropriate to be celebrating in the United States, as Foster Mohrhardt (former director of the then USDA library and now National Agricultural Library) was among the founding members of IAALD and its first President. She also introduced IAALD past-President (1990-1995) Joe Howard (also a former NAL Director) who was in town for the celebrations, and current NAL Director Peter Young. She saluted IAALD's "innovative 50 years" and the beginning of the next 50 years.

Pam said that papers from the conference will be published in IAALD's "Quarterly Bulletin," and introduced Bulletin Editor Debbie Currie (to whom papers should be submitted).

USAIN President Pat Wilson also greeted the audience, encouraging everyone to "have a good time, but work hard."

Conference Program Planning Chair Barbara Hutchinson (University of Arizona) introduced opening keynote speaker Dick Beahrs. Beahrs is a retired media executive (Time Warner, and past president of Court TV and the Comedy Channel), whose current focus is on global environmental issues. Beahrs serves on the United Nations Hunger Task Force, charged with developing a plan for halving the instances of extreme malnutrition throughout the world over the next decade.

Beahrs spoke on "Making Sense of it All: Coherence in the Age of the Internet." Beahrs told us that the"General health and even happiness of humankind are directly related" to what we do. He quoted H.G. Wells--"History is a race between education and catastrophe"--and Martin Luther King to caution us that "Progress is not inevitable."

Beahrs said, "Sustainability comes from process. I cannot envision a profession which represents this more than yours."

Beahrs said that none of us should be afraid of conflict, that we should address conflict while leaving it in the room.

"If you want a big opportunity, seek a big problem," Beahrs said. He cited the AGORA project and the library/Extension/Experiment Station collaboration as examples of this. He said we should focus on super-ordinate objectives and overarching goals, and always remember our core mission. "Don't be distracted by minutia," Beahrs said.

Beahrs told us to "Question every paradigm" and to challenge every assumption about how to deliver information, thinking about how to deliver information using new, innovative tools. He examined the role of extension and said that the value of extension could be greatly enhanced by strengthening local networks instead of intervention by government extension agents.

Beahrs said he had learned a lot by watching Ted Turner in action. He said that leaders know when to follow, and that Turner never hesitated to copy the business models of others. Turner was never distracted by the "flavor of the month" mentality which characterizes the world of international development. He believed that speed needed to be balanced by risk. He said that donors should view themselves more as venture capitalists, than simply as investors who provide the capital and then sit back for profits to accrue.

He said Norman Borlaug was very successful in launching the green revolution because he was a very good sales person. He said we need to be great sales people, who get our points across. Tactics for communicating our story, he said, are:

Simplify your message. Move away from acronym soup.

Humanize your message, framing it in stories which tell how your work impacts real people.

Repeat your message; the essence of education is repetition.

Beahrs said that we need to look at what has worked previously, and why. Examples to look at include the green revolution, development in Asia of the land grant university system, and how the National Park Service was formed.

Beahrs cited the need for "political will" in a media environment which focuses on ratings. "The clutter out there is incredible," Beahrs said, and we need relentless focus to break through the clutter of our daily lives.

Beahrs spoke about the Millennium Development goals (MDGs) set forth by the U.N. Development Project (an independent advisory body commissioned by the U.N. Secretary General. The MDGs are the world's quantified targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty by 2015--income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter--while promoting gender equality, education, health, and environmental sustainability. He said that task forces have formed and issued reports. This September, heads of state will return to the United Nations to look at what progress has been made. Beahrs was part of the Task Force on Hunger (for more information, contact htf@iri.columbia.edu).

Beahrs said that two areas where progress can be made against hunger are:

Focusing on soil fertility in Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

School feeding programs in Asia and Africa with locally grown foods.

In closing, Beahrs reasserted the need for "political will," and that we need to be persistent to make things happen.

Our thanks to guest bloggers Len Carey and Maria Pisa, National Agricultural Library, for writing the summary of this session.

The conference has begun!

2005-05-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

The IAALD World Congress/USAIN Biennial Meeting has officially begun! We will be posting entries for all main conference sessions, as well as for the preconference sessions. We also hope to post photos from the conference.

Please check back tomorrow for the first entries from the preconference and general conference sessions!

Welcome!

2005-05-05T14:46:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the official blog of the IAALD World Congress/USAIN Biennial Meeting! This blog will serve to cover the events of the conference. Please check back soon for updates.