Using CIARD RING to publish ILRI information services and tools

Inter-connecting agricultural research information systems and tools is one activity of the ‘Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development’ (CIARD) movement.

It has set up an online ‘RING‘ as a registry of information services provided by various organizations working in this area. The RING draws on information submitted by organizations like the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) to facilitate greater use and visibility of the various services.

As the number of ILRI-affiliated web services and platforms has grown, we entered basic information on each service in the RING. This information is being used by CIARD partners and other organizations to discover ILRI’s work.

Earlier this year, the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) – which manages the RING – linked up with ILRI to explore how this information could be re-published on ILRI’s web site. After some experimentation, ILRI content from the RING is now accessible directly on the ILRI web site.

This activity was part of a wider collaboration aiming to develop cross-publishing technical pathways between CIARD tools and ILRI (and documenting these for others to replicate). The other main activity looked at integration of metadata from our dspace and wordpress platforms with drupal – the system we use to manage the ILRI web site.

With Valeria Pesce of GFAR, we will document all of this in more technical detail.