a few more steps together :-)

[John C. Matylonek]

     From the Global Agricultural Databases for Decision Support:
     
     http://www.reeusda.gov/agsys/adds/library.htm
     
     Broader concept concieved at:
     
     http://www.forages.css.orst.edu/Projects/National/GISDS/inde
     x.html
     
     "A librarian working for HortBase at one of several 
     participating land-grant libraries would have detailed 
     knowledge of the publication protocol developed by the 
     Hortbase Coordinators. Understanding and intrepreting this 
     protocol is important in orienting horticulture faculty to 
     the process and becoming peer-collaborators. The librarian 
     would help define the knowledge structure within the 
     specialities of Hortbase so that descriptive representation 
     of subject objects - images, text, sounds, and essential 
     related links - are correctly associated. Some of this 
     association-building would be performed by Hortbase itself 
     and may, in time, be totally taken over by natural language 
     processing. However, currently, this task would
     be a natural and comfortable place for the information 
     science library faculty to learn more about and evolve the 
     system. The orientation aspect roughly correlates with what 
     reference librarians currently do. Assistance with the 
     descriptive representation is more closely aligned to what 
     the cataloger currently does. Both of these functions could 
     be performed by one or several people depending on time and 
     commitment available. A typical encounter with ones author 
     colleagues may be the notice of intention by the subject 
     matter specialist to create a file on particular treatment
     for tomato blight. This work could be done so that the 
     information file is collaboratively developed through 
     network interaction among the SUBJECT AUTHOR, 
     COMMUNICATION/GRAPHICS SPECIALIST and the LIBRARIAN. At any 
     convenient time, the collaborators can work on the 
     developing knowledge file and add links, pigeonhole 
     categories (the librarian) and provide presentation ideas 
     and graphics (the communication specialist). The finished 
     product would be added to or linked to the central Hortbase 
     server. The finished product would be ready for the 
     information searcher prior to, not after, being
     made available on the WWW."