Using web services to promote library‐extension collaboration
| Pages | 126-141 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830610652158 |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| Author | Jerry Henzel,Barbara S. Hutchinson,Anne Thwaits |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
OTHER ARTICLE
Using web services to promote
library-extension collaboration
Jerry Henzel
Maldives Monetary Authority, Economic Research and Statistics Division,
Chandhannee Magu, Male, Maldives, and
Barbara S. Hutchinson and Anne Thwaits
Arid Lands Information Center, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of a web services application
to deliver a calendar of events from the Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC) portal to
County Extension web pages.
Design/methodology/approach – To provide a context for this work, the paper begins with
background on AgNIC, an initiative of the USDA National Agricultural Library, land-grant
universities, and others, to build a portal to deliver agriculture-related information and resources.
Featured is the University of Arizona’s (UA) contribution to AgNIC, Rangelands West, which has
become a model of collaboration between land-grant libraries and Cooperative Extension units. The
UA first implemented web services to allow harvesting of Rangelands West metadata by the central
AgNIC database. This experience provided the framework for further exploring this technology as a
means for delivering customized content.
Findings – By instituting a service oriented architecture (SOA) using web services technologies
(XML, WSDL, UDDI, and SOAP), developing a Master Service Bus to coordinate the application, and
creating Flash plug-ins and a Profile Manager for delivery, a calendar web service based on customer
specifications was developed.
Originality/value – The paper discusses the implications for web services technology to offer new
ways to share information and build stronger collaborations for delivering customized services
Keywords Worldwide web, Information services, Libraries
Paper type Technical Paper
Introduction and background
The Arid Lands Information Center (ALIC) at the University of Arizona has been
involved in a unique and highly successful library-Cooperative Extension
collaboration for ten years. This resulted from developing a web resource on
rangeland management as part of the Agriculture Network Information Center
(AgNIC) (www.agnic.org) initiative. Begun as a basic web site organized and
maintained by librarians at ALIC and the University of Arizona’s Science-Engineering
Library, and guided by an Arizona rangeland extension specialist, the rangeland
management site has evolved over time into a more complex interface to a wide variety
of information, educational resources, and data. In addition, in 2002, the
Arizona-focused site was expanded to include regional partners and now ha s
library, extension, and rangeland professionals from nineteen western and north
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0737-8831.htm
LHT
24,1
126
Received 10 September 2005
Revised 2 December 2005
Accepted 3 December 2005
Library Hi Tech
Vol. 24 No. 1, 2006
pp. 126-141
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0737-8831
DOI 10.1108/07378830610652158
central land-grant institutions involved in developing the Rangelands West portal
(http://rangelandswest.org).
Undergoing a similar transition, the AgNIC Alliance has continued to grow both in
number of member institutions and linked web sites, and in the extent of its technical
architecture. Begun in 1995 as an initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
(USDA) National Agricultural Library (NAL) and four land-grant institutions to build a
distributed web gateway to evaluated agriculture-related information, the AgNIC
Alliance currently has a membership of 49 institutions (www.agnic.org/agnic/About/
subject.html). AgNIC member institutions select a topic(s) in an area where they have
expertise and develop a web site and web resources for that topic as an educational
resource for multiple audiences. These sites are available for browsing, but also can be
located by searching the AgNIC database from the AgNIC home page or by browsing
the controlled vocabulary taken from the online NAL Thesaurus (www.agnic.org/
agnic/Browse/browse). The home page also provides access to special portal features
including a calendar of events and news service. To populate the AgNIC database,
members enter metadata based on Dublin Core standards for each resource in their
respective web sites. An internal site gives members the opportunity to use online
forms for entering news and calendar items. Much of the technology behind these
applications comes from enabling a web services architecture using open source
software. Although it remains primarily a library-driven effort, a recent survey
identified the AgNIC initiative as a primary vehicle for collaboration among land-grant
libraries and extension programs (Hutchinson et al., 2005).
Although AgNIC Alliance members can enter their metadata directly into the
AgNIC database, the distributed nature of the Rangelands West web site provided an
opportunity to test web services technology for mining remote databases. With
funding from a one-year Agricultural Telecommunications grant in 2002 from the
American Distance Education Consortium (ADEC) and USDA, the University of
Arizona implemented a project that included developing a metadata database to
accommodate data entry from Rangelands West partners and enabling web servi ces to
create an interface with the central AgNIC portal database. In this way, the AgNIC
portal was positioned to mine the Rangelands West database for resources and
information requested by customers using the AgNIC home page search function. The
experience in bringing this project to a successful conclusion provided the skills
necessary for further testing web services as a means for customizing applications t o
meet specific user needs.
Expanding library-extension collaboration
The close ties developed between the library and extension communities at the
University of Arizona largely due to the Rangelands West effort, has fostered
continuing discussion on how to further enhance this collaborative model. At the same
time, there was interest at the national level to establish the usefulness and potential of
AgNIC as a foundation for a more broad-based national agricultural information
system. To this end, ALIC determined to initiate a small prototype project to
demonstrate how an AgNIC service could directly serve the Arizona Cooperative
Extension community. In Arizona, this community includes 15 widely dispersed
county offices and web sites. The idea was to assemble multiple streams of
information, personalize and repackage them, make them easy to work with, and then
Library
extension
collaboration
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