Best English language Web sites in agriculture from an international perspective
| Date | 01 February 2001 |
| Pages | 37-42 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000005397 |
| Published date | 01 February 2001 |
| Author | Geli Zhang,David M. Lane |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Best English language
Web sites in agriculture
from an international
perspective
Geli Zhang and
David M. Lane
Introduction
Searching for the desired, or for specific,
information through the Internet is a great
challenge to most library patrons, and even
to some very experienced librarians as well.
In spite of all the excellent search engines
like Yahoo, Alta Vista, and Google to name
but a few, it is still not easy to find specific
and
in-depth information from the millions of
ever-changing Web sites. Searching tools for
individual subjects are often badly needed,
and would be very helpful in increasing the
efficiency and effectiveness of searches. The
purpose of writing this paper, then, is to
develop a short list of excellent Web sites in
English and provide brief reviews of those
sites for librarians, agricultural researchers,
and professionals. This study was modeled
after a paper on best free reference Web
sites appearing in Reference & Users Services
Quarterly (RUSA, 1999).
Definitions and criteria
Based on practical day-to-day usage, and
using the Commonwealth Agricultural
Bureau (CAB) Thesaurus (CAB
International, 1995) as a reference, we define
the term ``agriculture'' here as primarily
focused on agriculture research, agricultural
education, and agricultural economics. Web
sites listed below may involve agriculture,
agronomy, farming, horticulture, forestry,
husbandry, agricultural colleges and
universities, agricultural production,
agroclimatology, agricultural development,
agricultural policy, and some special topics
such as sustainable agriculture and precision
agriculture among others.
In using the phrase ``international
perspective'' in the title of this paper we mean
that either the site was created by an
international body, or the selected site has
links to Web sites in other countries, or the
site was selected to provide worldwide
coverage.
The criteria we used to select the best Web
sites are as follows:
The authors
Geli Zhang is an Associate Professor at the Library of
Changsha Institute of Agricultural Modernization, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, The People's Republic of China.
E-mail: wxqb@ms.cslam.ac.ch
David M. Lane is an Associate Professor at the Biological
Sciences Library, University of New Hampshire, Durham,
New Hampshire, USA. E-mail:davidlane@unh.edu
Keywords
Agriculture, Referencing, Internet, Information retrieval
Abstract
A short list of English language Web sites in agriculture
from an international perspective is given, together
with brief reviews of each site, to assist librarians,
agricultural researchers, and other professionals. Sites
were selected on the basis of a comparative study of a
large number of information resources on the Internet.
Electronic access
The research register for this journal is available at
http://www.mcbup.com/research registers
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
http://www.emerald-library.com
The authors would like to acknowledge the
assistance of Deborah Watson, Diane Tebbetts,
Peter Crosby, Emily Poworoznek, Francis
Hallahan and Katherine Wright.
37
The Electronic Library
Volume 19 .Number 1 .2001 .pp. 37±41
#MCB University Press .ISSN 0264-0473
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