de schot in de roos

Accessing, Sharing and Communicating Agricultural Information for Development: emerging trends and issues

peterballantyne — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:47:06 +0000

The recent food crisis has helped to push agriculture and food security back on to national and development agendas. Additional international funds have been mobilized, national and regional initiatives have been strengthened, and a wide range of new and innovative instruments and approaches have been promised. Most of these efforts call for greater investment in knowledge creation, information access, and the wider use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper explores what this renewed interest might mean for information and communication specialists working in agriculture.

Information Development, Vol. 25, No. 4, 260-271 (2009)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0266666909351634

Posted in agriculture, Information, innovation, journal article, Knowledge Tagged: aginfo

Agricultural Information and Knowledge Sharing: Promising Opportunities for Agricultural Information Specialists

peterballantyne — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:48:37 +0000

Presentation to the 15th RIBDA Congress in Lima, Peru.

The recent food crisis has pushed agriculture and food security back on to national and development agenda’s. Additional international funds have been mobilized, national and regional initiatives have been strengthened, and a wide range of new and innovative instruments and approaches have been promised. Most of these efforts call for greater investment in knowledge creation, information access, and the wider use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

This presentation highlights some promising opportunities for information and communication specialists in this wider environment.

Opportunity 1: Agricultural Innovation Systems.

An innovation systems perspective recognizes that the determinants of innovation, as a process of generating, accessing and putting knowledge into use, are the interactions of many different people and their ideas. We thus need to ensure that all the organizations involved in the R&D process are communicating and have equal access to knowledge.

Opportunity 2: Connect with Farmer Knowledge

It is often argues that farmers and local communities are the key actors in agricultural innovation systems and that we need to ensure that we have access to, and value, their knowledge and information. We thus need to explore ways to connect our activities into the existing rural and farmer knowledge systems, supporting their autonomous knowledge exchanges and helping bring their knowledge into the mainstream of agricultural science and development.

Opportunity 3: ICTs for Rural Communities and Livelihoods

One major driver of change is the increasing use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) – including mobile phones – to link farmers and producers to markets and credit as well as government services. Increasingly, farmers can receive timely information on markets, prices, and weather as well as technical advice; these services often draw in experts to answer questions. Through such systems, there is scope to reach new markets and customers with our information and content, we can develop new services that draw on different types of content and technology carriers, and there is need for some people to take on new roles as catalysts, facilitators and brokers of information and knowledge are emerging.
Opportunity 4: Public Goods

Research and other institutes traditionally produce a variety of ‘goods,’ typically new knowledge and technology for others to use. Depending how a research activity is sponsored, designed and communicated, these outputs may or may not be a ‘public good.’ Information and communication specialists have an important role to play to help ensure that the ‘goods’ are made public, i.e., that they are available, accessible, and applicable.

To make data, information and knowledge public, we need to manage them so they are created and deposited in formats and systems that allow perpetual access; are licensed to allow and encourage widespread use; are described and indexed to allow easy finding and dissemination; and are optimized to encourage widespread adoption.

Opportunity 5: The Social Web

One key feature of the innovation systems perspective is that many actors are involved. It follows that many different sources, types and forms of knowledge and information need to be circulated, communicated and aggregated to support ‘new-style’ agricultural research and innovation for development. Emerging ‘social’ media or ‘web 2.0’ applications such as blogs, wikis, RSS, and social networking offer a range of opportunities to reinforce participatory knowledge-sharing and to catalyze richer interactions among individuals.

Opportunity 6: Rethinking Future Roles for Libraries

What do these developments mean for traditional information management practitioners such as libraries?

• Future libraries will play a wider range of roles;
• Future libraries will be more and more ‘e-libraries’;
• Future libraries will increasingly be places to exchange and interact;
• Future librarians will increasingly become knowledge sharing catalysts and brokers.

Posted in Knowledge Tagged: aginfo, ribda

Towards a DFID Research policy on open access

peterballantyne — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:40:01 +0000

The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) is a major funder of development research. A recent news item in R4D reposrts that DFID “supports Open Access as a core component of its research commitment to ensure that research knowledge can be accessed, built upon and used in support of the objectives of the DFID Research Strategy.”

A scoping study [by Peter Ballantyne] has looked at how DFID Research can develop an open access policy that will lead to greater public access to the research outputs it finances. Read the report ‘Towards a DFID Research Policy on Open Access‘ and see the presentation based upon this report.

Posted in Information, report Tagged: dfid, open_access, research

Mobile phones: Opportunities and challenges for AgInfo in Africa

peterballantyne — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:52:28 +0000

From the IAALD Blog. (http://iaald.blogspot.com/)

de schot in de roos

Accessing, Sharing and Communicating Agricultural Information for Development: emerging trends and issues

Agricultural Information and Knowledge Sharing: Promising Opportunities for Agricultural Information Specialists

Towards a DFID Research policy on open access

Mobile phones: Opportunities and challenges for AgInfo in Africa

Putting public AgInfo to use requires repackaging, transformation, and innovative partnerships

Prospects for open access to AgInfo in Africa

Knowledge creation and knowledge systems for African agriculture

ICTs and agricultural science – notes from the Science Forum workshop

Traditional linear research is no longer valid

Improving research uptake – Along the value chain

The participatory web – New potentials for ICT in rural areas

Dgroups – migrating to a new platform in 2008

Translating and adapting research

Making research public and international

Making CGIAR research outputs available and accessible as IPGs

Communiquer l’action européenne de développement : quelle position occupe le citoyen ?

Communicating Europe’s development efforts, to or with citizens?

Communication, citizenship and the construction of a fair and responsible Europe

Making our aginfo permanently accessible?

ILEIA’s repository on sustainable agriculture