ACDC Newsletter

ACDC News – Issue 99-04

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

Special thanks go this month to Jianhua Dong

Who has provided valuable service in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center as graduate research assistant during the past 3½ years.

Jianhua is completing his doctorate in Library and Information Science this semester and already has taken a new Internet-related position in California. The position fits nicely with his dissertation research, which centers on the capabilities of search engines. And this Documentation Center has benefited greatly from his expertise, interest and dedication. The collection has grown 25 percent during his period of service and has become available to many more users, through the searchable web site that he helped develop. We are most grateful to Jianhua, wish him the best and will miss him.

A new Agricultural Communication Case Study web site is now online.

Professor Ricky Telg of the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, University of Florida, has developed it to serve as a resource for students, teachers, researchers and practitioners. You can view it at: www.ifas.ufl.edu/~agcommcase/.

First two case studies deposited here.

This month Professor Telg deposited hard copies of the first two case studies in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, which is serving as repository. These two include:

  • “Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner” Case Study. April 1995, 59 p. Summarizes efforts by the U.S. Beef Industry and Leo Burnett Company to plan and carry out a campaign of “improving target consumer attitudes about beef and halting declines in their beef usage.” A national beef media plan for 1992-1995 involved a media budget of more than $75 million. Study includes strategic research, objectives and marketing solutions through advertising, direct marketing, retail marketing and foodservice.
  • “Building an Environmental Writing Resource.” This writing case study is posted on the Case Study web site. A final report is available in printed form here at the Documentation Center: Nancy Riggs and Peggy Britt (eds.), Exploring Science Writing: An Environmental Focus. Illinois-Indiana and Michigan Sea Grant College Programs, December 1998. 75 p.

Another new document about commodity promotion.

Thanks to Noel Blisard of the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, for providing a copy of Evaluation of Fluid Milk and Cheese Advertising, 1984-96. Researchers estimated that gross returns to dairy farmers increased by $5.33 for each dollar spent on generic advertising.

Get a full view of the NAFB Archives.

A new web site permits you to see an index of all materials in the National Association of Farm Broadcasters Archives, which are maintained at the University of Illinois. Here is the URL of this new site: www.library.uiuc.edu/ahx/. Scroll to the NAFB collection.

In addition, you can identify more than 700 articles and reports from the NAFB Archives by searching the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center web site. Use “NAFB” or other broadcast-related subject terms.

We suspect that, through these services, NAFB offers one of the most accessible, user-friendly organizational collections in existence. As one broadcaster put it this week after reviewing the results of a “broadcasters” subject search, “WOW! I am impressed.”

Professional meetings approaching.

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

April 7-9
Agri-Marketing Conference and Trade Show involving National Agri-Marketing Association and Agricultural Relations Council. Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia.
Contact: www.nama.org

April 25-27
Washington Watch, sponsored by National Association of Farm Broadcasters, Washington, D.C.
Contact: Kelly Lenz at 785-272-3456.

May 3-4
“Communicating Creatively.” Workshop sponsored by the D.C. Region, Agricultural Communicators in Education. White House Conference Center, Washington, D.C.
Contact: www.aceweb.org

May 14-16
West Region Meeting, National Association of Farm Broadcasters, Rochester, Minnesota.
Contact: Donna Schmidt at 507-477-2577.

Notes from grade school English class. Ah, the memories.

“Here is some English to be known. Whom instead of who. Never ain’t. Diagramming also.” (Response from a youngster in English class, cited in: Harold Dunn, The World According to Kids. Spectacle Lane Press, Georgetown, CT, 1992, p. 59)

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.

ACDC News – Issue 99-03

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

Prof. Claron Burnett contributes documents.

Special thanks go this month to Claron Burnett, professor emeritus of agricultural journalism, University of Wisconsin USA. Professor Burnett is co-author of several widely used references, including Agricultural News Writing and Writing for Agriculture: A New Approach Using Tested Ideas.  He recently contributed 10 of his documents (published 1957-1990) that were missing from our collection.  Examples of his recent contributions:

  • “Differential knowledge gain among Wisconsin dairymen”
  • “Highlights of agricultural writing,” a paper tracing the development of agricultural writing in the United States.
  • Leader guides and member manuals for a popular four-unit 4-H photography series.
  • Instructional Improvement Handbook for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

 New reference on science writing.

An attractive new 75-page teaching reference, Exploring Science Writing: An Environmental Focus,” came off the press in December. It is published by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and Michigan Sea Grant programs and co-edited by Nancy Riggs of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Peggy Britt of the University of Michigan.

The purpose of the reference is to “introduce students to writing for the lay public about a few of the many public issues that affect the ecosystems in which we live.” Chapter 1 introduces readers to science writing techniques. Four following chapters offer writing samples and assignments about environmental topics such as water quality, exotic species, fishery problems and coastal economic development. Contact: Nancy Riggs at nriggs@uiuc.edu

Familiar advice from media.

Not much has changed in 28 years.  Science information still isn’t getting the coverage some feel it deserves.  Arthur J. Snider, science editor of the Chicago News, addressed this issue in 1971 at the National Seminar on Agricultural Science Communications.  His topic: “How the media make decisions regarding science information.”

The same intrinsic qualities that made news in 1971 make news today.  As Snider stated, science information is no exception.  His reasons for lack of media acceptance also sound familiar.  Here are a few examples:

  1. Space is limited and science news gets no special privileges from media gatekeepers who demand some element of applied
    science.
  2. Scientific jargon deadens reader interest, however sacred it may seem to scientists.
  3. Citizens “will not subject themselves to an effort to understand science simply as a bugle cry to duty.”

For more information about media use of science information, contact us at the Center or search the database.  Use subject terms such as “scientific communication” or “writing skills.”   (by Laura Cheline)

 Sample requests for assistance.

  •  During recent weeks a university faculty member invited help from the Center in getting access to documents about courses and curricula in agricultural journalism and agricultural communications.  Documents of interest also involved trends in agricultural communications and education, internationally.  We were able to make photocopies and forward them.
  • A student working on a history project asked for information about the impact of farm broadcasting during the early years of radio.

 Public attitudes about ethanol for fuel. 

Here’s a new survey report in the Center that sketches attitudes of U.S. citizens toward the use of alternative fuels such as ethanol.  Findings are based on 1,003 telephone interviews conducted during September 1998.

“America speaks out on energy: foreign oil dependency.”  Published by the Sustainable Energy Coalition, Takoma Park, Maryland.  October 1998.  101pp

Tracking farmer adoption of information technologies.

A recent national survey among more than 2,300 U.S. corn growers helps track their growing use of new technologies.  The survey, conducted by Novartis Seeds, Inc., reveals the extent to which growers were using GPS mapping systems, yield monitors on combines, personal computers and the internet for agricultural information during 1998.   Results of a similar survey conducted during 1997 show trends in adoption.  If you are interested in the results, inquire about:

“Summary of Novartis Seeds Farm Technology Survey Findings”

 Professional meetings approaching.

Here are the approaching meetings of some agricultural communicator organizations:

March 4-5
“Marketing to agriculture: building the essential foundation.” Conference sponsored by National Agri-Marketing Association at Westin O’Hare,  Chicago, Illinois.
Details: www.nama.org

April 7-9
“Brave new world.” Agricultural Relations Council annual meeting at  Atlanta Marriott Marquis, Atlanta, Georgia.
Contact: Donna French  Dunn, ARC president, at donna@aaea.org

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.

ACDC News – Issue 99-02

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

You will find a new link

On our page of web sites related to agricultural communications and agricultural communicators.  It’s the site of American Horse Publications, a non-profit association dedicated to promoting better understanding and communications within the equine industry.

 Here are some topics featured in recent communicator newsletters:

  • “Risk Communication 101” by John Phipps.  American Agricultural Editors’ Association
    ByLine, November/December 1998.
  • “Consumer demands driving ag journalism” by Antonina Ni Dhuinn.  International
    Federation of Agricultural Journalists News, December 1998.
  • “Improve your graphic design skills” by Glennon M. Scheid.  Cooperative Communicators
    Association News, January 1999.
  • “Top 10 rules for better photography” by Jeff Joiner.  Cooperative Communicators
    Association News, January 1999.
  • “Useful websites for communicators” by Brenda Fellhoelter.  Cooperative Communicators
    Association News, January 1999.

We join others in noting with sadness the passing of Joe Marks

A widely respected educational communicator in the U.S.  A professor and science writer at the University of Missouri, he died January 4 from internal injuries sustained in a fall in his home.  He served as president of the International Association of Agricultural Communicators in Education and earned respect through his leadership, professional skills, generous service and good spirit.

 An online “clearinghouse” of case studies

In agricultural and natural resource communication is taking shape.  Prof. Ricky Telg, University of Florida USA, is developing this collection as an aid to students and professionals.

“It would be a place where university students can access the real-life situations you have faced,” he explains.  He invites case studies for this collection.  You can learn more about it on the web site www.ifas.ufl.edu/~telg/openletter.html or check with him by e-mail at rtelg@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu.

 A tip on searching by subject matter.

As you search the Documentation Center online, remember that every document in the collection involves communications related to agriculture.  So the collection lends itself to cross-subject searches.

For example, if you want to identify documents about public attitudes toward pesticides, you might enter two terms under Subject in the search form, as follows:

  • attitudes AND pesticides

Here are a few other examples of strategies for cross-searching, by subject:

  • advertising AND dairy
  • adoption AND computers
  •  listenership AND farmers AND india
  •  “traditional media” AND africa

Further details and examples are available through Helps.  Simply click the “Subject” button on the left side of the search box.  And call on us if we can help you search.

Here are some new documents about diffusion, adoption and decision making.

We have added them to the Center during recent weeks.  You can get the full citations of those that interest you by searching under “Title” on the search page.

  • “Using ecolabeling to encourage adoption of innovative environmental technologies in agriculture”
  • “Environmental policy and technology adoption in animal agriculture”
  • “Compensating for information externalities in technology diffusion models”
  • “Technology use increasing in agriculture, still shopping locally”

 A closing tribute – to old fence posts.

We close this issue with a poem by John Robertson of New South Wales, Australia.    He was recognized for it in the 1998 Rural Poetry Competition in celebration of National Poetry Day, an initiative of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.  Our thanks to Mr. Robertson and ABC Rural Online.

AN OLD POST ODYSSEY

Was young and strong, have aged since milled.
Been barked and treated, stapled, drilled.
The heat, the freeze, the rain, the dust,
Do blunt the barb, the wire rust.
Last strainer snapped, still upright, free,
But oh to be a Christmas tree.

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.

ACDC News – Issue 99-01

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

Happy new year from all of us in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. May you have a fine year ahead.

 New study on attitudes about biotechnology in Japan.

We recently received the following report of a study designed and analyzed by a researcher at North Carolina State University:

“Japanese consumers’ awareness and attitudes about biotechnology”
June 1998.  20pp.

The project, sponsored by Monsanto, involved telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 Japanese consumers.  It paralleled a similar study conducted three years earlier.  Among the results:

  •  Support for agricultural biotechnology tends to have risen between 1995 and 1998.
  • Awareness of biotechnology among Japanese consumers remains low.
  • Overall, consumers continue to trust independent, scientific experts.  Trust of government agencies has dropped since 1995.
  • Japanese consumers who were better educated were more positive about biotechnology.

Contact us if you would like more information about the study.

“Connecting the Country” conference in Australia.

Several Australian organizations sponsored a rural communications conference on September 28-29, 1998.  It explored the uses and potentials of new communications technologies and services in rural and regional Australia.

Organizers included the National Farmers Federation, the Communications Law Centre and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation.  Here are some of the topics addressed:

  • “Rural and regional communications: the debate”
  • “Agriculture and the Internet”
  • “The future: key questions for rural and regional communications”
  • “Launch of the National Landcare Information Service”

You can view some of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation coverage of this conference at the following web site: www.abc.net.au/rural/connect

 U.S. farm broadcasters really gathered. 

More than 1,000 people attended the National Association of Farm Broadcasters convention on November 11-15 in Kansas City, Missouri.

The December issue of NAFB Chats newsletter reports that highlights included “a full house at Trade Talk, professional improvement sessions, marketing and promotion activities, and lively voting member business sessions.”

 More survey reports available on food safety.

We reported in Issue 98-15 having received a copy of the “1998 CMF&Z Food Safety Survey.”  The survey is conducted each year in conjunction with the Industry Council on Food Safety, a restaurant and food service industry coalition.

Now, through help from CMF&Z Public Relations, the Documentation Center also has copies of the national food safety surveys conducted during 1995, 1996 and 1997.

Special thanks to Carol Bodensteiner

President of CMF&Z Public Relations, for this contribution to our growing collection of literature about food safety communications.  And congratulations to Carol.  The Business and Professional Women of Des Moines, Iowa, recently honored her as “Business Woman of the Year.”

Congratulations to Frank Byrnes

Senior associate of Winrock International and widely recognized leader in international agricultural communications.  The College of Agriculture at Iowa State University honored him during October with the Henry A. Wallace Award for outstanding service to agriculture at the national and international levels.

You can find some of his professional literature in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, using an “author” search.  He recently contributed materials to the Center, as a way in which to make them more widely available.

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

Contact:  Jim Evans at evansj@uiuc.edu

Unforgettable letters to Santa.

The U.S. Postal Service features on its web site what it describes as “unforgettable Dear Santa” letters that come to its attention.  We close this issue of “News and Announcements” with a letter written to Santa by a six-year-old:

“I want a racecar.
I want a electronic motorcycle racecar.
I want a lot of love.”

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-16

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

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/

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”

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.”

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

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

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

Contact: Jim Evans at evansj@uiuc.edu

 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)

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-15

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

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.”

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?”

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-14

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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

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)

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-13

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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.

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.”

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-12

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

“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.

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”

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.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

ACDC News – Issue 98-11

Posted on by Elizabeth Ray

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.