BACKGROUND:
In July 1995, the Southern Association of Agricultural Experiment Station Directors agreed to cease paper publication of its Southern Cooperative Series Bulletins and operational documents and publish them electronically on the World Wide Web. Consistent with this intent to move toward a paperless management system, these guidelines are presented to serve for establishment of home pages for multistate research projects, SCC’s, and SERA’s in the Southern region.
 
GOAL:
To have an easily accessible system and common repository for information such as membership lists, abbreviated history, project objectives, minutes, annual reports, and publications associated with multistate research projects, SCC’s and SERA’s.
 

GUIDELINES:

  1. Each administrative advisor should encourage development of a home page by the multistate research project, SCC, and SERA with which he or she serves.
  2. The page should be based at the location of the person who maintains the home page or the administrative advisor, linked to the agInnovation South page, and should be kept current.
  3. Pages should be concise and contain the following information:
    1. Title and number of multistate research project, SCC, or SERA.
    2. Project/group objectives.
    3. Abbreviated history, background, and justification. (1-3 paragraphs).
    4. Membership list including telephone, fax, and e-mail addresses, and identification of officers and experiment station, extension, and CSREES advisors.
    5. Announcements of meeting dates and sites.
    6. Significant changes and accomplishments listed in bullet format.
    7. Minutes of meetings. (In initial page construction, 5 years of minutes should be included if available.)
    8. Publications related to the multistate research project, SCC, or SERA should be listed and linked to the page.
    9. The agInnovation South header should be included at the top of the page to identify the effort as a southern region activity.
    10. A link back to the agInnovation South homepage should be provided to create a “loop” between agInnovation South and project homepages.
    11. Indication of last update and who is responsible for the page should be included.

OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:

  1. The administrative advisor should encourage all page-related activity to be developed by the secretary, other officer, or appointed member of the multistate research project, SCC, or SERA and to be transmitted electronically to the base location for posting on the web.
  2. Several URL sites for exchange groups and multistate projects are already posted on the agInnovation South page (see link to complete list below).
  3. Development of a list serve which provides the opportunity for a discussion group is encouraged.

NOTEWORTHY:

  • For an unspecified time, project homepages will be optional but in the future will become mandatory.
  • CSREES/Partnerships will accept notification of posting of annual meeting minutes and annual reports on project homepage to satisfy the required “transmittal” of such to CSREES.