01/05/2007
To assist information managers in developing an information strategy for their organizations and in establishing new structures and procedures for effective information management, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with AARINENA and Egypt National Agricultural Research Information Centre (NARIC) organized a regional training workshop on Information Systems for ARD. The workshop was held during the period 27-30 May 2007 with the participation of information specialists from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Morocco, Sudan and Yemen, along with FAO and Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD).
The event was designed for capacity building and development of information specialists and library information and knowledge management specialists in the application of Information and Communication Management Systems (ICMS) for strengthening knowledge resources linkages in Near East member States in regional levels, and to improve the information infrastructure in the Near East and North Africa region through introducing a "Near East Regional Agricultural Knowledge and Information Network, NERAKIN" developed by FAO and providing the appropriate training for participants.

During the workshop two important projects have been introduced to the participants: The first project was NERAKIN which was developed by the FAO/RNE. NERAKIN has several modules with Front end and Content Management System which allows the regional countries to build their information systems. The second project was the National Agricultural Research Information Management System (NARIMS) which was developed by the Central Lab for Agricultural Expert Systems (CLAES). A review was made on the Egyptian case study on NARIMS, including system demonstration.
A training session relevant to the Arabic AGRIS Application Profile (AP) for indexing and cataloguing and inserting the appropriate metadata was held.

AARINENA