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AGRIMetaMaker

Introduction

The AGRIMetamaker is a web form developed using the Drupal CMS, that allows you to generate metadata as easily as possible. You can create new references and enter the information manually in a few minutes. You just need to fill in as many fields as you think are necessary to describe your document, save the reference, add as many you wish, review and edit the data, if necessary, and lastly export them to your computer. The same data, once delivered to FAO/AGRIS, is published in the AGRIS database. If your Institution or publishing company does not use a document management system and your articles have never been cataloged before, if you want to publish your data in AGRIS, you need to create blbliographic references from scratch. The AGRIS team simply receive your data and publish it in the internet in the AGRIS Database. Your data will surely acquire higher visibility, both given the international importance of the AGRIS portal as a hub of world-wide agricultural research information and to the fact that all the whole collection of 2.7 millions references is indexed by Google Scholar. AGRIS harvests and publishes data encoded in a specific XML format. The AGRIS Application Profile describes in detail the specifications of this metadata format including a data model for bibliographic description of resources in the domain of agriculture. One of the great advantages of the AGRIMetaMaker is that it can give you the opportunity to create AGRIS data on the fly, without even knowing what XML and metadata is.

How to access the AGRIMetaMaker

In order to access the web form, please send a request to agris@fao.org, entering the name, address details of your Institution/Company, and the reason of your request. After a brief evaluation of your request, you will receive an email with instructions on how to proceed with the registration.

Using the AGRIMetaMaker

The following steps will guide you through the creation of one record using the AGRIMetaMaker. Login with your UserID and password, and, on the top right frame, you will now see a group of links called AGRIMetaMaker. This menu will only be visible to those who are authorized to access the AGRIMetaMaker form. Start using the form clicking on the Data Entry form link and fill in as many fields are required (see the next section for a more detailed description of the fields).

  1. Since the form, among the other things, stores information on authors and journals, thus creating authority files for both, you will need to create new entries and save them for future re-use. To do this, click the “plus” button (Create and reference..) and add the details in the separate window that will be displayed. Hint: you can modify these details at a later stage, in the Edit Data option of the main menu.
  2. A particular and essential part when cataloging the reference in the form (but not only in the form) is the “indexing”. There are two main groups that you can use to describe the resource: one is a more general and broad classification system (AGRIS Subject Categories) and uses a list of codes that can be certainly useful for a more generic retrieval of the data. The other is “Agrovoc keywords” and will give you the Browse AGROVOC list
  3. If you want to view and eventually edit the reference that you entered, from the AGRIMetaMaker menu, click the option Edit Data and select the item that you want to change; in the following screen, select the Edit tab to update your data.
  4. Once done, save your reference, clicking the “Save” button.

How to create and store references from the AGRIMetaMaker

This section will explain how to manually enter data in your references and explain how special fields work. In the form you will see that the fields marked with a red asterisk (*) are mandatory. This means that you will not be able to save your record without filling them. All the fields have some text explaining briefly what to enter in that particular field. In the AGRIMetaMaker, there are 5 mandatory fields: title, language of the text, auhor(s), date of publication, keywords. Other fields, such as the availability of the resource or the identifier (ARN), will be automatically generated by the AGRIMetaMaker. Additional important information that, although not mandatory, enrich the metadata for the citations, are the abstract and the link to the full text, if available. AGRIS is a repository of bibliographic references and does not store PDF files, but “simply” harvest and index records in its search engine. Therefore, http links to the full text (even if not mandatory tag) are essential to the AGRIS audience, and we warmly welcome any content provider to provide this information. The language of the titles and of the abstracts should be the original. No transliteration is necessary and AGRIS does not recommend its use. If translations of titles and abstracts are available, add them in the relevant fields.

Exporting and submitting data to the AGRIS Secretariat

Once you have finalized the Data Entry for the records, you need to export this data and send it to the AGRIS Secretariat for their publication in the AGRIS database. To do so, follow these steps: Return to the AGRIMetaMaker main menu and click the Export Data option In the Export all your Agris records, after saving your subset of records in one XML file, compress the same file using any compression tool available, such as WinZip or WinRar and send the file to agris-input@fao.org.