permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

AFSIC – Organic Roots On-Line Database

The Organic Roots Project is an ongoing effort of the Alternative
Farming Systems Information Center (AFSIC) at the National Agricultural
Library.  There are two critical parts to this project:

o     Searching for historic but extremely pertinent information on
organic farming.

o     Making this information available to growers and researchers
on-line in full text.

A recent addition to the Organic Roots Project is the _Organic
Agriculture Information Access_ database --
http://www.hti.umich.edu/n/nal/.  This is an electronic collection of
historic United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publications
related to organic agriculture.  There are now 186 full text and
searchable documents in the database which were published before 1942
(before synthetic chemicals became widely used).  Each publication
contains state-of-the-art information and data on organic farming that
is as relevant for today's agriculture as it was when first published.

Access to this data is open to all and is intended to provide growers
with new ideas on crop production without chemicals, as well as help
researchers conserve scarce resources by avoiding unintended
duplication.  The items in this collection were selected by AFSIC
Librarians, who also developed metadata on each publication to aid in
discovery and searching.  The online database is a collaborative effort
between AFSIC and the University of Michigan.  Funding for this project
has been provided by the USDA National Organic Program and the USDA
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program.

Bill Thomas, Coordinator

Alternative Farming Systems Information Center

USDA National Agricultural Library

10301 Baltimore Avenue, room 122

Beltsville, MD 20705

v: 301-504-5724

f: 301-504-6927

e: wthomas at nal.usda.gov

w: http://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/