The GFAR Secretariat is pleased to inform you that new features are available on the EGFAR website at egfar.org.

Each one of these features goes a little further in implementing EGFAR’s original objectives: 1) to provide an interactive communication system among the stakeholders of ARD; 2) to provide information resources relevant to ARD and enhance access to them, thus providing “gateway (portal) functions”; 3) to build and allow access to “knowledge pools” built through collaborative efforts among stakeholders in a few high priority areas identified by them.

Some of the new features, particularly the Open Site and the forums, are part of a communication plaftorm that we are now launching and in which we strongly invite everyone to participate. These tools allow everyone to add new contents to a collaborative website and to discuss issues of their choice in either a public or a private forum, and we feel they are essential to a platform like EGFAR: we created them for you and their objective will be fulfilled only with your participation.

Here is a list of what you can now do on the EGFAR website.

1) Publish your own pages on the EGFAR Open Site
Login to My EGFAR (either directly on the Open Site page or under My EGFAR). Once logged in, when navigating the Open Site buttons and links will allow you to edit existing contents or add new contents in the category of your choice.
To start with, we have launched a section called “Building and enhancing ARD websites” in order to build a collaborative “knowledge pool” on how to best design and enhance websites and web information systems in the field of agriculture. 

2) Have your news / events published on the EGFAR “What's new” section
There are two ways to do this:
a) Send us the url of your RSS feed: external feeds are read in real time on EGFAR and shown on the “News from other ARD websites” page in the “What's new” section.
b) Add your news item / event on the Open Site in the News and Events section. All contents published under this section and its sub-sections (News, Events, Job opportunities) are automatically shown on the EGFAR “What's new” page. 

3) Participate in an existing forum or ask for a new public or private forum
Login to My EGFAR and then go to the Community page: a link gives you access to all EGFAR existing forums.
We want to host forums that are needed and used by the ARD community, so please use the link on the Community page to ask for new forums, either public or restricted to selected participants. 

4) Search for GFAR documents
Main menu: Knowledge --> Document Repository.
Advanced Search: this engine allows you to search by title, year, type of document and subject (based on a specially developed classification, also mapped to Agrovoc for compliance with existing and widely accepted standards).
Shortcuts to documents: this page lists ready-made searches for relevant types of documents (Annual Reports, Conferences proceedings etc.)
Our repository is managed through an EIMS module provided by Waicent (FAO) and supports export to Agris AP (we are an Agris Center).
Soon, our repository will join the Open Archive Initiative and the new Agris Open Access project. 

5) Search for Organizations
Main menu: Web Ring --> Web Ring Databases.
This engine allows you to search by name, region, country and “domain” (based mostly on the stakeholder group according to a terminology widely accepted among the GFAR community).
At the moment this engine searches for organizations in the GFAR database and in the EARD/Infosys+ database of european organizations. As soon as interoperability protocols are implemented with our partner information systems, a “Web Ring” of relevant databases will be searched and other domains (projects, project outputs and experts) will be covered.
Important collaborations with partner organizations (FAO, Wageningen International, Infosys, CTA and the main Regional Agricultural Information Systems) are going on in order to set up a coherent platform for sharing reliable and updated information. 

6) Search the "Web Ring" websites 
Main menu: Web Ring --> ARD Advanced Searches.
ARD Web Search Engine: This engine searches for web pages containing your search terms.
ARD Doc Search Engine: This engine searches for documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel).
Type the word(s) to search for (use the same syntax as for Google searches).
Both engines search only selected websites (our “web ring”) and when the results appear you can still narrow your search by clicking on the corresponding tab (each tab narrows the search to a certain category of websites).
This engine is based on a new service powered by Google (Google Custom Search Engine). 

7) Exploit our RSS feeds
Main menu: What's new --> Keep informed.
On this page you will find the urls of our News and Events RSS feeds: you can read them through your favourite news aggregator (see here for a comprehensive list) or you can publish them on your website.
Technical support for this and other technology issues will be soon available on the website. 

EGFAR is and will always be a work in progress, ready to adapt itself to changes in technology and changes in the needs of the ARD community: many services are already under development and we are open to suggestions for new ones. Please send your feedback to .