Parker-Gibson Elected to Board Advising the National Agricultural Library

Russell Cothren

Necia Parker-Gibson works closely with faculty and students in the Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences as the Plant Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and Human Environmental Sciences Librarian.

Necia Parker-Gibson, professor and librarian for plant sciences, environmental sciences, and human environmental sciences at the University of Arkansas Libraries, was recently elected as a director to the Executive Board of the United States Agricultural Information Network.

The United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), and particularly its board members, advises the National Agricultural Library on resources, databases, and information policy related to agriculture.

The National Agricultural Library is one of four national libraries of the United States and houses one of the world's largest collections devoted to agriculture and its related sciences. Database examples in the field include Agricola and PubAg, and other resources include the NAL Thesaurus and the Ag Data Center.

USAIN also supports programs such as the Project Ceres awards with the Center for Research Libraries. The University of Arkansas has benefited from two Project Ceres grants, supporting the University Libraries in preserving more than 1200 of U of A Division of Agriculture's Cooperative Extension Service circulars and bulletins dating back to 1899 and making them freely available through digitization.

Parker-Gibson, who works closely with faculty and students in the Dale Bumpers College of Agriculture, Food, and Life Sciences, moderated a panel at the organization's most recent conference.

The work of the organization is diverse within the field of agriculture. "The panel I moderated included Ricky Telg, the director for the Center for Public Issues Education, Connie West, an agricultural historian, who studies narrative histories of migrant workers, an activist, Sean Sellers, from the Fair Food Standards Council, who is trying to make sure that workers have certain standard protections and wages, such as from sexual harassment and wage theft, and Francisco Arroyo, who, with his family, is operating an organic vegetable farm," Parker-Gibson said.

Each panel member spoke and then answered questions, "and each speaker painted a part of the picture of agriculture in Florida over time, to give a better view of the complexities involved."

Parker-Gibson works with several national and regional academic organizations including serving as the secretary for the Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Division of Special Libraries Association through 2015-2016 and as a member-at-large of the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative executive board.