The Farmer's Bookshelf Today

The Farmer’s Bookshelf (FB) is an agricultural information delivery system of crops grown in Hawaii. Started in 1987, this floppy diskette-based system used the hypermedia program HyperCard on a Macintosh computer. Later, a Spinnaker PLUS version was developed followed by a web-based system. Beginning with only a few fruit crops, the FB today provides information on a range of diversified crops. Information on kava problems, cacao, and coffee were later added. Over the years, our college's Publication and Information Central office has made the latest extension publications and older scanned versions available on the web as PDF files. As such, the FB now features the most up-to-date news about agriculture, science, and technology. It includes sections on current news and local agriculture and health related events. The FB has categories on "Health; Food", "Innovative Agriculture", "Sustainability; Biotechnology", "Robotics", "Hydroponics", and "Apple iPhone Applications". Google Reader is used to read the latest articles from selected web sites (subscriptions). Approximately fifty subscriptions result in about 200-300 articles found each day. Links to relevant articles are posted on the FB's main webpage. Agriculture subscriptions include Agriculture News, Agriculture Observatory, Agriculture Online, ASHS, City Farmer News, Farm Industry News, Greenhouse Grower News, Growing Edge, ISHS, ScienceDaily, USDA News, and USDA Agricultural Research Service. Science subscriptions consist of AAAS News, ABC News, BBC News, Biology News Net, Discover Magazine, Discovery Files, Discovery News, e! Science News, Eureka! Science News, Fox News, msnbc, NASA Breaking News, New Scientist, News from The Scientist, Popular Science, SciDev.Net, Science, Scientific American, U.S. News, USA.gov, and Yahoo! News. Technology subscriptions include eWeek and Popular Mechanics. Apple iPhone applications (apps) are evaluated using subscriptions to AppCraver and iPhone App Reviews. Subscriptions supplying the latest University of Hawaii news include UH Manoa Events and UH News. Local newspapers include Star-Advertiser, Big Island Weekly, Garden Island.com, Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Maui News, MidWeek, and West Hawaii Today. iPhone apps are also used to find news items. These include ABC News, AP Mobile, BBC News, CBS Sunday, CNN, Fox News, msnbc, PBS News Hour, and USA Today. Science and technology related apps consist of CNET News, Discovery News, Engadget, Popular Science, Science (AAAS), and Technology Review (MIT). In addition, local television news station apps, KHON, KITV, and HawaiiNow, serve as sources of information. The FB continues to evolve to meet the needs of stakeholders for vitally needed information.