GFAR document repository

The GFAR document repository is a database of GFAR publications with access to the full-text digital document.
The repository is the result of collaboration between the Global Forum’s Secretariat and FAO’s Library and Documentation Systems Division (WAICENT), who kindly provided a customized version of their Electronic Information Management System (EIMS). It is database driven and it interfaces with the web through XML.

The main functionalities of the system are:

  • Documents can be published and made visible on the web world wide
  • Documents are managed in the system following information management standards (i.e. AGRIS AP metadata model) and terminology standards (i.e. AGROVOC)
  • Access to the document is allowed by producing the necessary metadata record
  • Electronic documents are saved and preserved in a file server
  • The search can be customized according to different needs and can be performed using a RESTful web service.
http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/webring/publica...
Started in: 
2006
Owner: 
Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
Contact email: 
gfar-secretariat@fao.org
Geographic coverage: 
Global
Thematic coverage
Domain(s): 
Type of service: 
Type of service: 
Type of information managed: 
Access / licensing / pricing: 
Services that re-use information from this service: 
AGRIS search engine
Standards & technologies
This section provides information on the technologies used and the standards with which the service is compliant, with indication of the metadata sets, formats and protocols adopted for input in the system and those adopted for output.

KOS adopted: 
AGROVOC Multilingual agricultural thesaurus (AGROVOC)
KOS adopted: 
GFAR Categories
Output metadata set(s): 
AgMes metadata element set
Output metadata set(s): 
AGRIS Application Profile
Output metadata set(s): 
RSS core metadata set
Output format / notation: 
Output protocols / architectures: 
Instructions
This section provides detailed instructions on how the service can be interoperated, e.g. the URLs, the parameters, the output format etc.

Instructions for getting information from this service: 

The search can be performed using our search engine interface at http://www.egfar.org/egfar/website/webring/publications/search or using a RESTful web service (special URLs accepting parameters and returning filtered RSS feeds: see below).

Besides, the GFAR repository supports XML exports compliant to both Dublin Core - the default metadata set for the FAO Electronic Information Management System (EIMS) - and the AGRIS AP format. Thanks to the AGRIS AP export, GFAR is now an AGRIS Center and contributes its records to the AGRIS search engine. 
Records in the AGRIS AP format are exported on request. 

The subject vocabulary adopted is the GFAR taxonomy, which has been mapped to Agrovoc for better interoperability.

Feeds from the repository: info for webmasters

Pre-defined feeds
Some pre-defined feeds of specific document sets are available here as cached RSS feeds (updated every 3 hours) for fast harvesting.

Dynamic feeds  

Please use this feature with caution. Harvesting dynamic feeds at short intervals could overload our server which would force us to withdraw this service.
The base URL is http://www.egfar.org/egfar/inc/docRepRSS (this loads a default feed of the latest 50 records - feeds containing a larger number of records should be called only at long intervals, as they require time and high CPU usage).

A good way to filter the feed is to use the following parameters:
- QueryString (searches the title, abstract and author fields: for the moment, only a one-word search is accepted)
- Title (for the moment, only a one-word search is accepted)
- Pub_year (publication year)
- recordsperpage (the number of records you want to retrieve: 50 maximum)
- Pub_id (only if you know the ID in the repository: it is useful if you want to retrieve a single record)

The sort order is by publishing year/submission date, descending.

The RSS format used is RSS 2.0 + Dublin Core namespace (particularly, dc:creator and dc:subject).

Instructions for inputting information in this service: 

The repository only collects documents from GFAR. The workflow and the metadata element set adopted to describe the digital documents are managed through the FAO Electronic Information Management System (EIMS) tool for managing. This custom EIMS module also has support for both the AGROVOC Thesaurus and the GFAR taxonomy used to describe the content of the publications.

No import from other sources is foreseen.

Example(s): 

A good example of a useful feed for "recent publications from GFAR" would be:
http://www.egfar.org/egfar/inc/docRepRSS?recordsperpage=20

http://www.egfar.org/egfar/inc/docRepRSS?QueryString=information%20management&recordsperpage=20 will return an RSS feed of all GFAR documents having "information management" in the title, abstract or subject field.