About 100 agricultural communications documents
Are being added each month to the Documentation Center database. However, we are facing some delay in getting those citations incorporated into the web database for online searching. Thanks for bearing with us as we work to overcome this bottleneck. If your search doesn’t reveal the documents that you want, please let us know by e-note and we will help you look.
A study of uses and potentials for the internet
In rural Australia is among our recent additions, thanks to the generosity of Warwick Easdown of the Gatton College, University of Queensland. He compiled it during the latter half of 1996. It is published as “The role of the internet in rural communities,” Occasional Paper Volume 4, Number 2, 1997, Department of Natural and Rural Systems Management. 60 pages. (Documentation Center Number C08717)
The conclusion notes that, in Australia, rural communities have been minor players in internet use so far. “It is…important that rural communities be supported to develop local uses for the internet and that rural service organizations and educational institutions take the initiative to supplement existing services or develop new services using the internet. Participation in this medium by rural communities will then help to shape its evolution in Australia” at a stage when the internet still offers a wide range of futures.
Is the NPAC literature being lost?
Robert Jarnagin, a veteran agricultural communicator, raised that concern recently. He was referring to materials produced through the National Project in Agricultural Communications, a widely-respected professional education program in the U.S. during the 1950s.
Jarnagin noted that “..while I greatly appreciate the effectiveness of our new technologies, I am so afraid that our present workforce become so enamored of machines that they forget the people involved in communication. Interpersonal communication is a human behavior, and its effects must be measured in terms of behavioral change.”
We are pleased to report that NPAC educational materials are an important part of the Documentation Center collection. They include, for example, a full set of Agricom Newsletters (1953-57); AgriSearch reports about group process, learning, psychological barriers to communication, subliminal communication, legibility, use of color and other topics; teaching guides; and a benchmark review of professional training for agricultural journalism. Some of this material arrived recently and is being processed; you can locate some of it online by searching for “National Project in Agricultural Communications” under “title” or “author.”
Here’s a web site
For those interested in the study of the diffusion and adoption of innovations. It’s the site for a diffusion course taught by Everett M. Rogers at the University of New Mexico.
Call for proposals.
Cooperative Communications Association (CCA) is inviting proposals for research to be carried out early next year concerning the impact of cooperative communications on business success. You can see details of the RFP in the CCA web site. Look in the “Cooperative InterNetwork Press Releases” page.
Holiday greetings – and good searching.