Month: January 1998

How accurate are the market advisory services for crops? 

Two recently added reports in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center help answer that question.  They come from the Agricultural Market Advisory Service (AgMAS) and include:

• “1995 pricing performance of market advisory services for corn and soybeans” (published in March 1997)
• “1996 pricing performance of market advisory services for corn and soybeans”  (published in January 1998)

AgMAS is a collaborative effort of agricultural economists at Ohio State University, Purdue University and the University of Illinois.  It began during 1994 and, since then, has tracked the pricing performance of about 25 advisory services to which it subscribes.

Results may hold special value for communicators interested in topics such as risk communications and the quality, accuracy and economic value of agricultural information.  Details are available from the AgMAS web site, which you can view at: www.aces.uiuc.edu/~agmas/

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Other recent additions about risk communications.

Here are the titles of some other documents that we have added recently to the collection of literature about risk communications, as related to food and agriculture:

• “Cognitive determinants of risk perceptions associated with biotechnology”
• “Effect of risk perception on willingness to pay for water quality”
• “Farmer willingness to pay for herbicide safety characteristics”
• “Determinants of unsafe hamburger cooking behavior”
• “Voluntary economic and environmental risk tradeoffs in crop protection decisions”
• “Farmers’ decision processes and adoption of conservation tillage”

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Feedback about the “News and Announcements” page.

We’re pleased to hear from some readers who find useful information in this news page.  Recent examples of feedback:

• “Thank you for sending this to me.   ….  The capsulized reports of other meetings about what’s going on in our business are very, very helpful.”
• “Great idea.  Now I just need to tap into this resource.”

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History of NAFB now online.

The National Association of Farm Broadcasters web site recently added a page entitled, “History of NAFB.”   Written by NAFB Historian Dix Harper, it describes the development of NAFB during the past 55 years, from its origin in 1943 to its most recent technological development (a 1998 CD-ROM presentation about farm broadcasting).

Actually, this report traces back to the origins of broadcast information for farmers, more than 20 years before NAFB formed.  It begins with weather and grain reports aired during 1921, then briefly sketches some highlights in farm broadcasting throughout the U.S. during the 1920s and 1930s.

You can see this history page on the NAFB web site: www.nafb.com

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Here are calls for papers to be presented at two approaching conferences related to agricultural communications:

1.  Agricultural Communications Section, Conference of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists, January
   31-February 2, 1999, at Memphis, Tennessee USA.  Suggested topics: practical applications of new communications
   technology; publications, videos and special projects; measurement and accountability; and media relations.  December 7 is
   the deadline for abstracts, to be sent by e-mail.  For details contact: Ned Browning, Mississippi State University, at
   nedb@ext.msstate.edu
2. 14th Annual Red River Valley Student Communication Conference, “Communication, Culture and Change,” April 18-20,
   1999, at Fargo, North Dakota USA.  Keynote speaker is Everett M. Rogers, noted communication scholar who will
   respond to a panel presentation about his research in health communication.  Undergraduate and graduate students are
   encouraged to submit essays and proposals for papers.  Information: Dr. Deanna Sellnow, Department of Communication,
   North Dakota State University, at: dsellnow@badlands.nodak.edu

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Let us know if we can help you announce a meeting related to agricultural communications.

Contact: Jim Evans at evansj@uiuc.edu

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 Spelling? 

It’s quite easy.  “Most words are easy for me to spell once I get the letters right.”  (Response from an elementary student in English class, cited in: Harold Dunn, The World According to Kids.  Spectacle Lane Press, Georgetown, CT, 1992, p. 59)

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

What are the ethical duties of those who communicate with consumers about agriculture?

A new audiotape in the Documentation Center addresses this question, through a presentation made during September at the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) Issues Forum, “Ethics in Agriculture,” in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The speaker, Dr. Kris Bunton of the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota, emphasized these three ethical duties of professionals in agricultural relations:

1. Minimize harm to people (those reached and those represented).  Avoid “using” people to convey a story and respect the dignity and diversity of people featured in messages.
2. Tell the truth.  Maximize the truth of what you tell and minimize efforts to manipulate audiences.
3. Minimize conflict of interest.  Tell who you are and whom you represent.

Dr. Bunton, of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications, also offered several tests to evaluate the ethics of one’s persuasive communications.

Let us know if you would like to learn more about this presentation.  Ask about the audiotape entitled, “The Ethics of Ag Relations.”

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Three other ethics-related presentations from Issues Forum. 

Here are the titles of three other communications-related presentations that have been added to the Documentation Center from that conference, in the form of audiotapes from NAMA:

• “Precision farming: who owns the information?”
• “Consumers: how much do they know and how much should they know about food production?”
• “Meat processing and handling: how much should be told?”

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A copy of the “1998 CMF&Z Food Safety Survey” has just arrived, through the generosity of CMF&Z Public Relations, Des Moines, Iowa.

The Food Safety Survey was conducted in conjunction with the Industry Council on Food Safety, a restaurant and food service industry coalition.  CMF&Z has helped monitor food safety issues in the U.S. since 1993.

This 39-page report summarizes results of a survey among newspaper editors and a random sample of American consumers about a range of food safety issues.
Examples:

• Perceived importance of food safety.
• Beliefs of editors about how informed the American public is about food safety.
• Food safety issues of greatest concern and most open to consumer action.
• Consumer perceptions of media credibility on food safety issues.
• Attitudes of consumers and editors toward the role and credibility of interest groups.
• Perceptions about how effectively various groups communicate with the media.

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A word of thanks from Turkey. 

“I would like to thank you for your kind help,” wrote an online agribusiness user located in Turkey.  “It became very useful for us.”
In this case, the Documentation Center staff had provided service in the form of a referral to another information source.

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New scanner in the Center.

A new scanner in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center will help us provide more materials and images to you, in electronic form.  Let us know if you would like to explore this possibility as you gather information for your projects.

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Where are we finding agricultural communications literature these days? 

Well, from many sources.  But interlibrary loan is one of the most interesting (and labor intensive).

For example, during early November we reviewed documents loaned to us from libraries at the following institutions: University of New Mexico, Virginia Polytechnic University, Chicago Public Library, North Carolina State University, Michigan State University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Illinois Benedictine College, University of Iowa and Purdue University.

We appreciate efforts of the University of Illinois Library in helping us carry out this time-consuming process.  Interlibrary loan helps us identify materials that might not otherwise be available to users of the Center.

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 Would you like our help in announcing a meeting related to agricultural communications?

If so, let us know.  We will be glad to call such meetings to the attention of online readers of the “News and Announcements” page.

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

Hundreds of added documents have come into the farm broadcasting collection since mid-September at the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center (ACDC).

Our staff members are identifying these materials from the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) archives, which are located here at the University of Illinois.  The documents include newsletter features, trade journal articles, reports, media use surveys, audio tapes, CDs and materials in other formats.  They trace from today back to the early days of radio.  And they contain a wealth of information about farm broadcasting methods, trends, listenership, issues and impact.

You can see citations for these new documents by searching under subject terms such as “rural broadcasts,” “broadcasters,” “radio programs,” “listenership,” “television methods” and “television viewing.”

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Here’s a useful way to narrow your search for documents in ACDC. 

Try using more than one subject term in a search.  For example, if you want to identify documents about the role of farm broadcasting, you simply enter two terms under “subject” in the search form, as follows: role rural broadcasts

You need to use no quotation marks or punctuation.  Instead, you type in the first term (role), move one space, then type in the second term (rural broadcasts).  If you are uncertain about what subject terms to use, you can check the thesaurus by clicking on the “thesaurus” hot link above the search form.

Let us know if you have questions or would like help in conducting your searches.

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A new online magazine contains some literature about communications aspects of agricultural biotechnology.

AgBioForum http://agbioforum.missouri.edu/AgBioForum , a quarterly online magazine devoted to the economics and management of agricultural biotechnology, is published by the Illinois Missouri Biotechnology Alliance.  The Alliance is supported by a congressional special grant to “provide funding for university biotechnology research directed at placing new products in the marketplace.”

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Resources from the 1998 Cooperative Communicators Association Institute.

We are in the process of adding some interesting documents from the CCA Institute, which took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, during June. Among these presentations and resource materials:

• “30 low cost, practical ways to show communication’s impact on your cooperative’s success”
• “Professional development needs for cooperative communicators”
• “How well are you adapting to these shifts in cooperative communication?
• “Examples of strategic communication research tools”
• “Meeting and convention planning packet”

Look for these new documents under subject terms such as “cooperative information,” “cooperatives ” and “professional development.”

Thanks to CCA Executive Director Susie Bullock and her associates for assembling these resources from the Institute and making them available.

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Professional meetings approaching.

Here are the approaching meetings of several agricultural communicator organizations.

Nov 1-3
Annual Meeting and Communications Clinic of American Agricultural Editors’ Association at Hyatt Regency Union Station, St. Louis, Missouri.
Information: www.ageditors.com

Nov 11-15
Annual Convention of National Association of Farm Broadcasters a t Westin Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri.
Information: nafboffice@aol.com

Dec 11
1998 Telstra Rural Media Awards program of Rural Media Association of South Australia.
Information: rbmitch@ozemail.com.au

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The perils of rural-urban migration.

Early in the 1940s a resident of a large U.S. city was said to have claimed that he preferred to live in a rural area, but wouldn’t make the move because he heard that the country was at war.  (Adapted from NAFB Chats Newsletter, April 1982)

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

New documents from ACE conference.  

Nearly a dozen research papers from the 1998 Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE) conference in California are being processed into the Center.  Here are some of the titles:

• “Research magazine readership interests: Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station Research Highlights” by Ned Browning, Mississippi State University.
• “Beyond blue sky predictions: what the emerging facts really say about new information technologies and rural development” by Eric A. Abbott and Allan Schmidt, Iowa State University.
• “Using the Internet to conduct college credit courses developed from extension materials” by James M. Nehiley, University of Florida.
• “Farmer participation in agroforestry research and extension: some lessons from Thailand and the Philippines” by Lulu Rodriguez, Iowa State University.
• “At the push of a button: using electronic technology for professional development” by James C. Segers, Lawrence A. Lippke and William Watson, Texas A&M University.

Thanks to Professors Kristina Boone of Kansas State University, Sherrie Whaley of Ohio State University and others who helped provide these papers to the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center.

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Can you find much here at the Center about communications in agricultural development?

You bet.  For example, in parentheses you can see the number of citations that come onto your monitor when you search under various subject terms.
Examples:

• “development” (1,870 documents)
• “development communication” (715 documents)
• “development issues” (267 documents)
• “development programs” (405 documents)
• “international” (493 documents)

These documents involve communications in countries throughout the world.  Please let us know when you see documents of interest that are not available to you locally.  We will help you gain access to them.

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Recent inquiry about graduate study programs.

“I am looking for an agricultural journalism or agricultural communications graduate college,” said an online searcher from the U.S.   She asked where such study programs are offered in the U.S. or elsewhere.

Can you help provide an answer to this question? If so, please get in touch with Jim Evans at the Documentation Center (Email: evansj@uiuc.edu).

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Agricultural Relations Council now in Kansas City area.  

The affiliation between ARC and the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) is now complete.  Eldon White and Kathleen Montgomery are the primary staff contacts for ARC.  Here is how you can reach the organization now:

Agricultural Relations Council
11020 King Street, Suite 205
Overland Park, KS 66210 USA

Phone:  913/491-6500
Fax:  913/491-6502
E-mail:  arc@nama.org

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Professional meetings approaching. 

Here are the approaching meetings of two U.S. agricultural communicator organizations:

Nov 1-3
Annual Meeting and Communications Clinic of American Agricultural Editors’ Association at Hyatt Union Station, St. Louis, Missouri.
Information: www.ageditors.com

Nov 11-15
Annual Convention of National Association of Farm Broadcasters at Westin Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri.
Information: nafboffice@aol.com

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Do you have a communications-related meeting to announce?

You are invited to contact us about meetings that deal with the communications aspects of agriculture, food, natural resources and related topics.  We will be glad to help announce them.

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Those ornery hedges, trees and pedestrians.

The following explanations come from insurance forms filled out by people who were asked to summarize their traffic accidents:

“I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home.  At the intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision.  I did not see the other car.”
“Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I didn’t have.”
“A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.”

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

“I was really astonished to see your collection on the web.  I never dreamed I could find such a database.”

That response came recently from a graduate student who is searching for literature in connection with a research project about commodity promotion.  We always are gratified to learn how the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center is helping users.

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New additions about farm broadcasting. 

Dix Harper, long-time farm broadcaster, has contributed useful documents during recent weeks.  Here are some of them, under his authorship:

• “Farm broadcasting in transition”
• “Farm broadcasting changes since 1963”
• “25 years of broadcast: catering to the farmers’ needs”

Also new to the collection, through his help:

• “What farmers want from farm broadcasting: professional improvement survey 1997”
• “Every farmer and rancher in America recognizes one voice”

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More farm broadcasting material is on the way

Thanks to financial support from members of the Eastern Region, National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB).  This project, getting under way now, will tap into the NAFB Archives (located here at the University of Illinois) to make more farm broadcasting literature available for online searching, through the Documentation Center web site.

The NAFB Archives offer a wealth of information not only about this U.S. farm broadcaster organization, but also about topics related more generally to farm broadcasting: role, trends, impact, listening/viewing, issues, programming methods and others.  We look forward to helping make these hundreds of documents available to online searchers.

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Here are some new documents about agricultural media use and effectiveness. 

We have added them to the Center during recent weeks:

• “Communication behaviour of cotton growing farmers in Haryana” (India)
• “Information and communication in the 1990s: a survey of South Australian farmers”
• “Use of communication media in the transfer of technologies to farmers: a farm level study” (Bangladesh)
• “Agricultural communication networks: a village level analysis of Punjab” (India)
• “Generic milk advertising: optional allocation among types of media” (U.S.)

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New option: payment by credit card.

Users of the Documentation Center can now bill charges to their credit cards (Visa or MasterCard).  This convenient option can speed and simplify payment for literature searches, photocopying, mailing and other services.

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Professional meetings approaching. 

Here are the approaching meetings of two U.S. agricultural communicator organizations:

Nov 1-3
Annual Meeting and Communications Clinic of American Agricultural Editors’ Association at Hyatt Union Station, St. Louis, Missouri.
Information: www.ageditors.com

Nov 11-15
Annual Convention of National Association of Farm Broadcasters at Westin Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri.
Contact: NAFB Executive Director Steve
Pearson at spear70352@aol.com

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In closing, a bad pun from the web:

Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina.  One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor.  The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much.  The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

Busy summer at the Center.

University campuses can be rather quiet during summer months, but the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center has been perking along at a lively pace this summer.  Thanks go to a dedicated staff – and to a growing interest, worldwide, among those concerned with the communications aspects of agriculture, food, rural development and related topics.

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More people searching this web site.

We are pleased to see increasing use of this unique literature collection.  Usage of the Center web site more than tripled between April-May-June 1998 and the same period a year ago.  The upward trend encourages us in our efforts to collect literature and help make it available to researchers, practitioners, teachers, students and others.

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How we work to save time for others. 

It looks so easy when one searches the collection for literature about a given subject and, in a few seconds, assembles a list of citations.   What a searcher can’t see is the work required to locate and gather the widely scattered literature about agricultural communications.    Two recent activities help illustrate how we go about it, in an effort to save the time of searchers.

1. Searches by interlibrary loan.  During the past two months we have used interlibrary loan services to locate dozens of documents new to the collection.  In what libraries did we find these documents?  Here’s a brief and incomplete list: National Agricultural Library, British Library Document Supply Centre and the libraries of Northwestern University, Kansas State University, University of Chicago, South Dakota State University and Cornell University.
2. Scouting within larger databases.  This summer we also identified more than 150 recently published documents through online searches of three major online databases: Agricola, Biosis and CAB.  We use a search protocol that we have developed during the past decade to locate literature related to agricultural communications.

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So you have assembled a list of citations, online. Then what?   

Users of the collection tell us that, as a first step, they usually check locally to find the documents on their list.  Depending on their location, they may be able to find all the materials they need.  If they have gaps to fill, we encourage them to contact us by e-mail at the Center.  All of the documents logged into our citation database are available in the Center or elsewhere on the University of Illinois campus at Urbana-Champaign.  So we can sometimes provide photocopies or otherwise help the searcher gain access to needed documents.

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Recent visitors to the Documentation Center. 

During early August we enjoyed hosting two special visitors:

Dix Harper, former president and current historian of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (U.S.), visited the Center on August 5 to plan for a joint project that we will report in a future issue of  “News and Announcements.”

George Jackson, former Agriculture Director of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, visited the Center on August 10. He was gathering information for a journal article about effects of the 1996 Farm Act.

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Two new “farmer image” reports. 

Recent additions to the Center include two research studies about the image of U.S. farmers and ranchers.  These studies, conducted nationwide by telephone interviews during late 1997 and early 1998, include:

• “Farmer Image Poll” (assesses farmers’ opinions about their public image)
• “Farmer Image Consumer Poll” (assesses the image of farmers/ranchers within the general public)

Thanks to Morgan & Myers Inc., a communications firm located in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and the American Farm Bureau Federation for contributing these reports to the Center.

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Advice for the agricultural press.  

“Ag press needs to encourage more debate,” says a recent headline of the syndicated Farm and Food File, which appears weekly in newspapers throughout the Midwest and Canada.  Columnist Alan Guebert chides agricultural journalists for failing to report fully on testimony presented to U.S. legislators during July about the state of the U.S. agricultural economy as farm prices and incomes drop.

He says that most farmers have heard little, through the agricultural press, about the pages and hours of facts, ideas and economic data that presenters offered about an important subject that deserves serious discussion and debate.

You can see the citation for this item by searching for the title cited above.

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Time for the period. 

“A period is to let the writer know he has finished his thought and should stop thinking if he would only take a hint.”  (Response from an elementary student in English class, cited in: Harold Dunn, The World According to Kids.  Spectacle Lane Press, Georgetown, CT, 1992, p. 58.)

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

New web site for agricultural communications researchers. 

The Research Special Interest Group of Agricultural Communicators in Education (ACE) has introduced a new web site.  It will serve ACE members and others who are interested in conducting communications research and disseminating research findings. Pages within the site will feature lists of ACE communications researchers, current research projects, events, awards, related sites and other items. The URL is www.ext.wvu.edu/rsig and you can reach it easily through the “Other web sites” page of the Documentation Center site you are viewing now.

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Here are some new documents about technologies for agricultural information.

We have added them to the Center during recent weeks:

• Proceedings of two national conferences:
  “Communicating agricultural information in remote places”
  “New information technologies in agriculture”
• Agricultural information via the Cleveland Free-Net
• Use of private consultants and other sources of information by large Cornbelt farmers
• Farm computer uptake and practices in New Zealand
• How to achieve value from information technology investments (paper industry)
• The role of agricultural research networks in small countries
• Library networking and resource sharing in the National Agricultural Research System (NARS) and possible role of International Agricultural Research Centers (IARCs).

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View the depression years in rural America.

You can view some powerful documentary photography through a collection offered on the American Memory site of the U.S. Library of Congress.  Thousands of historical rural photographs from the Farm Security Administration project of the 1930s are now available at the following URL:http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html. You can search the collection by subject, photographer or geography.

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Innovative formats for teaching rural communications. 

Faculty members at the Muresk Institute of Agriculture, Western Australia, are offering rural media courses in innovative formats and venues.

They offered an Intensive Rural Media Course on April 1-4 as a “block” unit, plus two one-day follow-up workshops. This schedule accommodated full-time students during a week free of other classes, as well as other persons unable to attend normal weekly class sessions.

The faculty also offered a rural radio course for two weeks in early July. Next comes a rural television and video production course.  It will extend over three weekends during August to September, plus one full week during late September to early October.

These offerings serve Muresk students, plus others (such as promotion officers for rural organizations and community groups) who wish to learn about rural media. Details are available the from news page of the Muresk web site:  www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/muresk.

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Professional meetings approaching.

Here are the approaching meetings of some professional agricultural communicator organizations:

August 18
Agri-marketing seminar on “Segmentation: taking aim on the customer” at Renaissance Hotel, St. Louis Airport, St. Louis, Missouri.  Offered by National Agri-Marketing Association.
Contact: agrimktg@nama.org

Oct 31-Nov 3
Communications Clinic of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association at Hyatt Regency St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri.
Contact: aaea@flash.net

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A reminder: change your bookmark.  

for this web site.  The new URL for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center is:

<web.aces.uiuc.edu/agcomdb/docctr.html>

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

“Making technology work for rural communities”  

Was the theme of Rural TeleCon97, first national (U.S.) conference on the use of electronic communications and information systems for rural community development.  The conference took place during October 1997 at Aspen, Colorado.

Summaries of the various sessions are archived. You can review them at the following site:  <http://ruraltelecon.org>.  Here are samples of topic panels:

•  Public/private partnerships
•  Use and impact of telecommunications technology in education
•  How indigenous communities are using instructional technology
•  Making technologies work for communities – avoiding pitfalls

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New documents about direct marketing of farm products.  

Here are some of the documents that we have added recently to the collection of literature about direct marketing of farm products:

• “Community supported agriculture: an annotated bibliography and resource guide”
• “Selling honey to roadside markets”
• “Cultivating customers”
• “Alaskan direct-market consumers: perceptions of organic produce”
• “Direct marketing of fresh produce and the concept of small farmers”
• “The farmers’ market coupon program for low-income elders”
• “Tastings’ open doors to new markets for small growers”
• “Where farm and city meet”

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Professional meetings during July and August. 

Here are the approaching meetings of several professional agricultural communicator organizations:

July 12-14
Summer seminar, Agricultural Relations Council at Winston-Salem,
North Carolina.
Contact: Paul Weller at ARConline@aol.com

July 14-17
Annual conference, Agricultural Communicators in Education, at
Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California.
Contact: rmseid@ucdavis.edu

July 22-25
Joint meetings of Livestock Publications Council and American Association of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow at Hyatt Regency Lexington, Lexington, Kentucky.
See details of the conference at www.hfw.com/LPCconvention.htm

August 18
Agri-marketing seminar on “Segmentation: taking aim on the customer” at Renaissance Hotel, St. Louis Airport, St. Louis, Missouri.  Offered
by National Agri-Marketing Association.
Contact: agrimktg@nama.org

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A reminder: change your bookmark.  

For this web site.  The new URL for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center is:

  <web.aces.uiuc.edu/agcomdb/docctr.html>

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Subtle hint from dad.

The Saturday night date was well along as the teenagers relaxed on the front porch of her farm home during a warm summer evening.
“Sometimes my dad takes things apart to see why they don’t go,” the daughter mentioned as they heard the clock strike midnight.
“So what?” her date replied.
“So you’d better go.”

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

More information about farm broadcasting.

A new partnership with the National Association of Farm Broadcasters (U.S.) will permit the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center to provide more information about farm broadcasting.

This recently authorized project will permit searching the NAFB archives to identify news articles, publications, audiotapes and other materials of broad interest.  These NAFB materials are housed within the University of Illinois Archives.  Selected items will be processed into the Center collection for easier identification by rural broadcasters, agricultural communications students, teachers, researchers and other online searchers.

NAFB Historian Dix Harper and Assistant Historian Marla Behrens will coordinate the joint project with members of the Documentation Center staff.  Work in the archives is expected to begin this fall.

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Providing documents quickly. 

“Can you help me get copies of these documents?” a searcher from several hundred miles away asked us, by e-mail, during a recent Wednesday.  They weren’t available to her locally.  And she needed them by Friday.

Photocopies of the materials reached her Friday, with help from prompt staff follow-up and overnight delivery.  We are pleased to provide this kind of service on a reasonable, cost-recovery basis.

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New information about Extension technology. 

You can gain easy access to texts or abstracts of more than 70 papers presented June 15-17 at the National Extension Technology Conference in St. Louis, Missouri.  When you enter the conference web site (http://outreach.missouri.edu/netc98/netc98_schedule.html) you can see the titles of more than 100 sessions. Of those titles, more than 70 are linked to session manuscripts submitted by presenters.

Topics of the conference involved a wide range of information technologies for distance education, in-service teaching and Extension program delivery.  A few examples:

“Using a flatbed scanner to digitize insects, plants and other stuff”
“How agents and researchers are using computers and the Internet”
“Retrofitting Extension programming for the WWW: a look at Ag Decision
Maker”

Paul Hixson, administrative coordinator of the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, was one of the presenters.  He and a University of Illinois associate, John Tubbs, presented a paper on “Interactive broadcasting on the web.”

Also, Floyd Davenport (who has been instrumental in making our collection available online and who is presently on short term assignment in Zambia) co-authored a paper on “Managing large document databases” that was delivered by a colleague, Milind Basole.  Our Agricultural Communications Documentation Center was one of the case study examples used in this presentation.

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Professional meetings scheduled.  

Here are the approaching meetings of several professional agricultural communicator organizations:

June 25-27
West Region Meeting, National Association of Farm Broadcasters at Choteau, Montana.
Contact:  Brent Stanghelle at 406-761-7600

July 3-8
International Federation of Agricultural Journalists at Bogensee, Germany.
Contact:  hamburg@cpo-hanser.de

July 12-14
Summer seminar, Agricultural Relations Council at Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Contact: Paul Weller at ARConline@aol.com

July 14-19
Annual conference, Agricultural Communicators in Education, at Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California.
Contact: rmseid@ucdavis.edu

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A reminder: change your bookmark. 

For this web site.  The new URL for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center is:

<web.aces.uiuc.edu/agcomdb/docctr.html>

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In appreciation. 

Inscription in the main reading room of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.:

“We taste the spices of Arabia,
yet never feel the scorching sun
which brings them forth.”

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.

New AAEA web site.

The American Agricultural Editors’ Association is now online with a new web site:  www.ageditors.com.  It features news, job opportunities, calendars of events and other information for members and nonmembers.

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“Contacts for agricultural journalists in the world”

Is the title of a new mini-directory published by the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists.  The booklet  identifies agricultural journalism organizations and  contacts in each of 27 member countries.  Requests to Steve Cain at cain@ecn.purdue.edu.

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IFAJ Congress meets in Germany. 

The 1998 Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists is scheduled for July 3-8 in Bogensee, Germany.  For information, e-mail: hamburg@cpo-hanser.de

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Two professional organizations affiliate.

Members of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC), an organization of public relations professionals in the U.S., voted recently to affiliate with the National Agri-Marketing Association.  ARC will remain as a separate council.  It will continue to operate with a board of directors, decide where and when to hold meetings, publish a newsletter, maintain an ARC Foundation and sponsor an annual internship program.  NAMA will serve as administrative center for ARC and provide other resources.  Information: Paul Weller at arconline@aol.com

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Here are samples of documents contributed recently 

To the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center by Professor Harold Guither, agricultural policy specialist at the University of Illinois:

• The Food Lobbyists: Behind the Scenes of Food and Agri-Politics
• Factors Influencing Farm Operators’ Decisions to Leave Farming
• The Evolution, Ethics and Politics of Animal Protection
• How Illinois Farmers View Government and the Dairy Business
• U.S. Farmers’ Views on Agricultural and Food Policy
• U.S. Farmers’ Preferences for Agricultural and Food Policy in the 1990s.

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The measure of an enduring magazine? 

In a recent column for the ByLine Newsletter of American Agricultural Editors’ Association, agricultural writer Fred Myers describes several measures of enduring magazines:

“Magazines endure because they never lose sight of why they exist.  That’s why they become worthy institutions in the minds of their readers.
Magazines endure because they change with their readers’ interests as both they and their readers pursue the American dream.
“Finally, magazines endure because their staff members have vision and talent and care deeply about the mark they are leaving on the world.”

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Farm writing’s Top 10 generic leads. 

Thanks to Owen Roberts, past president of the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation for this interesting list.  He offered it during a professional development presentation to Farm Focus journalists in Atlantic Canada, May 1998.

1.  The new X program announced by the province last week is being touted as a win-win by the farm community.
2. One of the public’s biggest concerns these days is the way farmers X.
3. The discovery of X is considered one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of X production.
4. Xs were a mystery to farmers…until now.
5. When X was a young boy, he always dreamed of being a farmer.
6. With last week’s opening of the new X, the X sector will become more globally competitive.
7. In a presentation to the X farm group last week, the Minister of X announced plans for a new state-of-the-art X.
8. X, president of the X farm group, today announced the appointment of X as X.
9. The province’s new farm program, X, promises to put farmers in X on a level playing field with other farmers.
10. The province of X is putting $X into a new farm program designed to X.

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A reminder:

Change your bookmark for this web site.  The new URL for the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center is:

<web.aces.uiuc.edu/agcomdb/docctr.html>

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Best regards and good searching. 

Please let us know if we can help you find information and/or if you can suggest documents that we might add to this collection.