The United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) provides a forum for issues in agricultural information, guides U.S. national information policy for agriculture, and advises the National Agricultural Library.
History
The original network was based on a recommendation from the 1982 Interagency Panel of the National Agricultural Library (NAL). It was officially launched in 1988. It consisted of a network of public and private agricultural libraries and information centers coordinated by the NAL. Originally, the Executive Council was composed of representatives from land grant and other institutions, and the director of NAL, in an ex-officio capacity. By 1995, the Executive Committee moved from an organization-based network to an individual-based organization, transferring the responsibility for the operations to individuals. At the 1995 USAIN Conference held in Lexington, Kentucky, a slate of grassroots-working agricultural information professionals emerged as the new Executive Council.
Activities
Conferences
USAIN holds biennial conferences on current themes in agricultural information. This includes collection management and preservation, data management and scholarly communication, curriculum and instruction, outreach and marketing, and national information policy. 1990 – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Inaugural meeting 1991 – University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Electronic Information in the Agricultural Sciences 1993 – Auburn University, Auburn Alabama; Rural Information at the Crossroads: Issues and Opportunities 1995 – University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky; Cultivating New Ground in Electronic Information: Use of the Information Highway to Support Agriculture. 1997 – University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, joint conference with the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists(IAALD); The Information Frontier: Linking People and Resources in a Changing World 1999 – Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, From Production to Consumption: Agricultural Information for All 2001 – North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina; Extending Our Reach: Redefining and Promoting Agricultural Information Through Partnerships 2003 – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois; Agricultural Information for the New Millennium: New Crops, Biotechnology, and Saving the Past 2005 – University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, joint conference with the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) World Congress; The Globalization of Information: Agriculture at the Crossroads 2006 – Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Delivering Information for the New Sciences 2008 – Ohio State University, Wooster, Ohio; Tradition in Transition: Information Fueling the Future of Agbiosciences 2010 – Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana; Agriculture Without Borders: Creating Knowledge and Partnerships Across Disciplines and Across the World 2012 – University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Soil, Water, Food and Energy: Agriculture in an Era of Global Climate Change 2014 – University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont; Sustainable Agriculture: Stewardship of our Information Ecosystem 2016 – University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida; Interdisciplinary Agriculture: Meeting Tomorrow's Global Challenges 2018 - Washington State University, Pullman, Washington; Consuming Information: Agriculture at the Crossroads of Sustainability 2020 - Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas; Smart Agriculture in the Era of Climate Change
National Preservation Program
USAIN’s preservation plan for agricultural literature, one of the first discipline-based plans, obtained several rounds of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and resulted in 29 state projects,
USAIN recently partnered with Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC) and the Center for Research Libraries on Project Ceres, which awards funding for “small projects that preserve print materials essential to the study of the history and economics of agriculture and make those materials accessible through digitization.”