Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
Summer 4-30-2022
Abstract
One of the objectives of PARC is to generate, acquire and disseminate agricultural information for expeditious utilization of research results. The basic aim of project is to develop digital repository (full-text database) of PARC and PARC scientist’s publications and making this archive public domain by giving its access on internet encouraging its use by the scientific community and farmers. The repository would be developed using common standards and best practices to ensure its wide accessibility and retrieval/navigation in simple form to facilitate the users. The repository is not only including current research publications of PARC and its scientists but all publications both conventional and non conventional are included in the archive. International metadata standards, data exchange protocol and agricultural vocabularies and thesauri especially AGROVOC and AGRIS standards are used for cataloguing, classification and indexing, etc. The Repository will not only help in improving the accessibility, availability and use of PARC research outputs by researchers, research managers and farmers but also facilitate its preservation for future generation. As no significant work has been done in Pakistan on digital archive and only few institutions recently have started building digital repository so it would be a model for other institutions in Pakistan. The improved access to PARC research outputs will lead to better research which will help in the development of better production technology packages for the benefit of farming community as well as the overall prosperity of the nation.
Dspace an internationally community based developed software is used for management of publications in digital format. The software was selected after testing different software’s used for archiving (i.e Dspace, Greenstone, Eprints). Java applet was developed for conversion of Data from DB-Text format to XML format. Data is initially entered in DB-Text and then this data is converted to XML and imported in the main archive. Two servers are configured for Dspace the Main server is Linux based and the backup up server is Windows based as Dspace support multi flat forms. XAMP is used as used web-server on both servers. For securing the data of Digital Archive Backup of data in different formats is obtained and stored on external hard drives and computer system in library. For collection of research publications from PARC scientists and centres/institutions librarians of the respective centres are nominated as focal person they collect publications from the scientists of their centre and send it to DSI for inclusion in Digital Archive. Scientists are also contacted directly through emails for sending their publication for Digital Archive. To-date the Archive contains about 7850 different types of research publications which will be updated regularly. The archive is linked with PARC website and accessible online at http://175.107.15.226:8080/jspui/