The GFAR document repository has been established with the key objective to bring information available on EGFAR and at GFAR Secretariat closer to the people who really need it. In line with the main goals of the re-design of EGFAR and with specific regard to documents, the document repository will allow all the stakeholders to easily access and disseminate information on the new EGFAR website, which will be the gateway to the repository. The system will also enable experts to share and exchange their documents with their peer groups.

The GFAR Document Repository is a cooperative product of the GFAR Secretariat in collaboration with the Library and Documentation Systems Division of FAO and WAICENT .

The repository has been developed using a customized module of EIMS (Electronic Information Management System) of FAO: the metadata is stored in an Oracle relational database, while the documents are saved in a file server. This architecture ensures stability, scalability and robustness. Metadata records are stored and will be exported using XML in compliance with existing information exchange standard already widely promoted by FAO.

The system supports the integration of a fresh GFAR taxonomy, which aims at representing the technical knowledge of GFAR Secretariat, and its mapping to AGROVOC thesaurus.

Guidelines for the selection of documents have been established to create consistency in the enhancement and development of GFAR document collection. The idea was to have authors or producers of documents deliver the descriptive metadata and assign keywords to their documents in accordance with the Open Access practice.



The documents available at the GFAR Secretariat are being processed by an information specialist who creates the metadata records using FAO standards for management of agricultural information, and assigning categories according to the GFAR taxonomy.

The GFAR Document Repository will soon be populated with bibliographic material that has not been previously organized in a database which prevented its easy access by GFAR stakeholders and EGFAR users.