USAIN Initiatives

Since its inception, USAIN has testified before a U.S. House Subcommittee, played an advisory role in the National Agricultural Text Digitizing Project, and written a national agricultural preservation plan.

Today, USAIN members are active in a number of initiatives aimed at being leaders on issues related to agricultural information, being advocates for the National Agricultural Library and providing opportunities for collaboration and communication.

USAIN Committees and Interest Groups undertake a number of initiatives that support the goals and objectives outlined in the Action Plan.

• USAIN is a sponsor of the Ithaka S+R Agriculture Research Support Services project and has a representative on the project advisory board.

• Project Ceres, a collaboration among USAIN, AgNIC, and the Center for Research Libraries, provides support for small digitization projects.  This project is coordinated by the Preservation and Digital Library Committee.

• The Social Issues and Rural Information Interest Group sponsored a webinar that provided valuable information to Extension educators about library resources and services to support their work.  Future webinars are planned.

• The Professional Development Special Project Committee is looking at ways to provide programs to enhance the knowledge and skills of the USAIN membership.

• The Membership Committee is growing the USAIN membership by reaching out to new pools of potential members.  At the same time, they stay in touch with current members through an annual member survey.

• The Communications Committee is promoting USAIN through creating a presence on social media.  They created an entry on Wikipedia about USAIN.

• The Legislative and Government Relations Committee is helping members stay informed about issues relating to information policy. They spearheaded a USAIN response to the proposed open access policy on scholarly publications and digital data of the White House Office of Science and Technology in 2011 and 2012, and a Statement of Support for Public Access to Scientific Information and Data in 2017.