104 · Representative Documents: AgEcon Search
AgECON SEARCH
About AgEcon Search
http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/about.jsp
AgEcon Search does not hold the copyright to articles, working
papers, conference papers, or other materials available in the
database. Copyrights may be held by any of the following: individual
authors, multiple authors, organizations, institutions, or publishers.
HISTORY
AgEcon Search began in 1995 as an experiment to see if it were
possible to use the internet to archive, index and deliver on demand,
full text working papers produced by university agricultural
economics departments. The first papers were from agricultural
economics departments at Minnesota and Wisconsin. These early
papers predated the World Wide Web and were mounted on a
GOPHER server in WordPerfect format. The project was (and still is) a
cooperative project of the University of Minnesota Libraries, the
Department of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota and
the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA). The Farm
Foundation and the Economic Research Service of the U.S.
Department of Agriculture provided financial support in the beginning
of the project. Patricia Rodkewich and Louise Letnes managed
AgEcon Search until Patricia's retirement in 2001, when Julie Kelly
joined the AgEcon Search team. Erik Biever also served on the
original AgEcon Search team, providing valued technical services and
guidance. The members of the Agricultural Economics Reference
Organization endorsed the efforts of AgEcon Search early on and
have been instrumental in expanding the use of AgEcon Search in
their respective institutions.
Since its inception AgEcon Search has operated as a distributed
network, with each institution designating a member of their
organization to submit papers on their behalf. With this model, costs
for maintaining the system were kept low and institutions do not
have to pay membership fees for participation. In the cases where an
institution had no central person to act as the network member, a fee
has been charged for AgEcon Search staff to submit papers. The first
organization to choose this option was the Agricultural and Applied
Economics Association, which since 1997 has been contracting with
AgEcon Search to post its annual conference papers.
ADVISORY GROUP
The AgEcon Search Advisory Board was initiated in 2006, to provide
guidance to the project on priorities and future directions. Members
include:
Rob King, chair
Professor and Department Head
University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics
Phil Pardey
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