The AIMS invitative tries to facilitate collaboration, partnership and networking among partners by promoting information exchange and knowledge sharing; and to harmonize the decentralized efforts currently taking place in the development of methodologies, standards and applications for management of agricultural information systems; consequently, providing a 'one-stop' access to system designers and implementers.

Making learning resources available online on a global scale, could be an enabler for the development and welfare of agricultural and rural populations. One mean to achieve this aim, is the development and promotion of a global infrastructure that will facilitate sharing and reusing of learning resources on topics related to agricultural and rural development. To this end, the experience of stakeholders that are involved in the development and operation of agricultural learning repositories would be of extreme value.

A "Special Session of the Agricultural Ontology Service Initiative: semantic problems and semantic solutions in agricultural knowledge and information products" will take place as part of the IAALD-AFITA-WCCA Conference. The aim of this session is to showcase practical applications of semantic tools. The contributions will be of specific relation and relevance to agriculture and related subject areas and are not expected to be generic papers about semantic tools.

The aim of the AgroLT 2008 Workshop is to bring together researchers and implementers that are working on the design and development of technology-enhanced learning systems and services to support the needs of the agricultural and rural communities. It aims to serve as a discussion forum where interested experts will present the results of their work, exchange experience, and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects. Overall, it aims to outline the rich potential of the agricultural domain as an application field for learning technologies.

The aim of the Special Session on Agricultural Metadata and Semantics of MTSR'07 is to bring together researchers and practitioners that are working on agricultural knowledge production, organization, and exchange from a Semantic Web perspective. It aims to serve as a discussion forum where interested experts will present the results of their work, and establish liaisons with other groups that are working on related subjects.

The DSpace Community with the collaboration of FAO of the United Nations, CASPUR and CILEA are pleased to announce that DSpace Meeting is going to take place on October 17-19, 2007 at FAO (Rome, Italy). The aim of the DSpace Users Group Meeting 2007 is to bring together the various initiatives and key players that are working on innovative applications and mature installations of DSpace in order to share their experience and to advance in the development of the repository software.

Information and knowledge management experts in agriculture to review ongoing collaboration and agree on future priorities and actions.

The purpose of this two-day Agricultural Ontology Service workshop is to bring together Information and Knowledge Managers from Agricultural Institutions, who are working on development of semantic standards and their application. This workshop will focus on assessing the work done since the first workshop of 2000 in Rome to date. The achievements of the past seven years and the lessons learnt will be used to pave the road for the next steps.