Getting wise to the Web
Access to the World Wide Web is growing for the ACP agricultural professional, albeit sometimes at a creeping pace. The problem is not lack of interest, but lack of access. Where there is access, it is becoming increasingly important also for the agricultural professional to ensure that as much as useful information as possible is available. The key word in Web circles is content . It is a standard rule that while a highly attractive presentation of your organisation may win you peer prestige in the short-term, in the long run it is content that counts. No, or low, content means fewer users, and so a sharp-minded agricultural information institution should be making its reports, studies, manuals and other publications available online in various forms, including databases. Another key notion in Web usage is, by knowing who is using your information, you can ask for theirs, and your own network power increases. Hence the importance of the recent advanced course on Web design and the use of databases organised by CTA in collaboration with the Tanzanian Commission on Science and Technology in September 2000 in Dar es Salaam. The course was attended by seventeen information professionals from agricultural research institutes and universities in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, Seychelles, Tanzania and Uganda. As further courses are held and their results permeate the organisations involved, the door will be open to richer and greater exchanges of information. However, the information first has to be made available. There is much hard work involved in sharing information, rather than simple institutional preening and surfing the Web for other people s. Getting it ready to share, and getting it online: that was the hard lesson of the seminar.
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| Format: | News Item biblioteca |
| Language: | English |
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Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
2000
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/46982 https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99592 |
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