P. Jones, J. Nelson, H. Pirozzoli
American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE)
To
promote the national exchange of health and safety program materials,
NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health)
has supported development of the National Ag Safety Disc (NASD),
a PC-based CDROM, which contains an extensive compendium of
educational and information resources targeted to support delivery
of programs in county Cooperative Extension Service (CES) offices.
The current NASD database, a prototype released in October 1994,
contains over 1,000 health and safety publications from 23 states
and 3 federal agencies. The publications provide extensive coverage
of specific health and safety topics ranging from ATVs to Zoonoses,
and a significant number of the documents are available in Spanish
as well as English. The collection also covers Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Standards pertinent
to agricultural producers and information on the EPA Worker
Protection Standard. In addition to CES style documents, the
NASD database prototype includes a database of abstracts and
ordering information covering over 500 videos and a NIOSH bibliographic
database of over 500 scientific publications concerned with
agricultural health and safety, posters, newspaper articles,
and radio scripts. Information in the database generally can
be accessed on-screen and/or printed on demand. Materials are
categorized into topical, organizational, and state menus. In
addition to the menus, users can find specific information by
full-text search. After beta testing, the database will be refined
and a first edition, '95 NASD, will be released in June 1995.
Keywords.
Database, Safety, Educational materials.
In
his 1982 book, Megatrends, John Naisbett said, "we are
currently drowning in information, but we are starved for knowledge".
Certainly, as Naisbett's statement implies, one highly visible
characteristic of human activity in the late 20th century is
the sheer volume and extraordinary range of information persistently
present in people's daily lives. It is equally apparent that
people seem to need ever-increasing access to specific, accurate
information. The dilemma is how to efficiently sift through
all of the unwanted information to access precisely what we
need.
Naisbett's
observation certainly rings true in the safety and health
area. As just one example, in 1983 (the year following publication
of Megatrends) the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) promulgated the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS)
(29 CFR 1910.1200) and applied it to the manufacturing industry.
As the Standard was implemented over the next decade, most
employers were overwhelmed to some degree by the scope of
their information management task, especially with respect
to material safety data sheets (MSDSs) (Lindsay, 1994). In
spite of their efforts to comply with the HCS, most employers
(and employees) did not feel a commensurate increase in their
access to the specific, accurate information that they actually
needed (Hansen, 1994).
In agricultural
safety and health, the same trend toward increasing volumes
of information with a corresponding increase in the difficulty
of finding relevant, accurate and specific information is
occurring. For example, in 1987 OSHA's HCS was extended to
cover agricultural workers, and beginning in 1995 the full
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Worker Protection
Standard (WPS) will also cover agricultural workers; and
the information is not simple. Since many of the regulations
in these two Standards overlap, the need to explain the rules
and their combined implementation will almost certainly create
a new area of regulatory knowledge essential for agricultural
safety specialists to master, so they can incorporate the
information into their programming activities. Aside from
regulatory topics, awareness of an increasing array of agricultural
safety and health risks (NIOSH, 1993a, b, c; 1994) requires
agricultural safety specialists to respond to a steadily widening
area of responsibility.
As a
corollary to the increasing scope of expertise required of
agricultural safety specialists, an increasing flow of agricultural
safety and health information (and programming materials)
covering many of these topics is currently coming from state
Cooperative Extension Services (CES). Specifically, the current
flow of materials being produced by state CES programs is
higher than normal as a result of five years of National Institute
of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) funding targeted
at agriculture (Myers, 1994). In particular, NIOSH's Agricultural
Health Promotion System (AHPS) grant program provided approximately
$10 million over the last five years to 18 state CES programs
specifically to develop and implement intervention programs.
The result is the current accelerated flow of extension-style
documents, videos, slide programs, computer-assisted modules,
and public service announcement radio scripts into state programs.
The
CES is a key organization in the distribution of health and
safety information to the agricultural community. Each state's
CES is basically autonomous, producing publications and developing
educational programs to meet the specific needs of its citizens
(ECOP/NASULGC, 1990). Within the national CES system, information
exchange between individual states is encouraged and publications
from one state are occasionally reviewed and adapted for use
in other states, sometimes with no changes at a l. In theory,
this seems like a sensible means of minimizing redundancy
while insuring that materials are pertinent to each state's
unique, local conditions. In practice however, state specialists
seldom have convenient access to most materials available
from other states (Andre, 1990; Hypes and Miller, 1993), so
they rely on familiar materials. The net result is an array
of more or less isolated programs with a minimum of nationally
coherent elements. This lack of coordination among state programs
can become a significant problem under circumstances such
as the flooding of the Midwest during 1993 (Reynolds et al.,
1993). The isolation of state programs is especially apparent
in relatively small programmatic areas like agricultural safety
and health.
Unfortunately,
the combination of an increasing volume of agricultural health
and safety information and semi-permeable barriers between
state CES programs is not a configuration likely to maximize
the useful impact of the AHPS program (Myers, 1994). The purpose
of this article is to describe a project that addresses this
problem and attempts to increase the national impact of individually
developed state CES health and safety programs.
About
12 years ago the Florida CES initiated development of a centralized
electronic information delivery system. The original system,
called the Florida Agricultural Information Retrieval System
(FAIRS), was a videotext-style database delivered to county
CES offices around Florida via modem links to a mainframe computer
located on the University of Florida campus in Gainesville,
Florida (Johnson and Beck, 1986). Early on, FAIRS seemed to
offer a means to expedite the transfer of information from extension
specialists to extension agents by avoiding many of the delays,
costs, and inventory issues associated with traditional print
publications. In terms of effective information delivery, this
early effort was not successful, but it did serve as a vehicle
for exposing a new class of issues and problems associated with
electronic delivery of information.
In the
early to mid-1980s, extension specialists were willing to
put their materials into the videotext FAIRS system, but they
soon discovered that putting the information into the electronic
database did not mean that they could abandon their print
documents. In effect, they had to develop two versions of
the same material-a text only version for the videotext database
(graphs, images, and equations were not supported) and a traditional
print version. This became known as the "too many versions"
problem (Jones, 1992). Furthermore, once their materials were
included in the videotext database, they had to be independently
maintained along with their traditional print versions. So,
each time a revision was made in one information product it
was supposed to be made in the other. Because revision cycles
were not coordinated, a "version control" problem developed
(Jones, 1992).
Like
the specialists, extension agents were initially willing to
give the system a try, but they soon discovered that the mainframe
computer interface was difficult to learn and use, and that
the system was slow. The problem grew worse as computer use
on campus increased. County office access was restricted to
once a day with a 15-min time limit and automatic log-off.
Not surprisingly, this policy discouraged extension agents
from accessing the system and utilizing the FAIRS databases
(Larry Halsey, personal communication, 1986). For these reasons,
Florida's centralized electronic information delivery system
fell into a static state of performance by the mid-1980s and
had relatively few users.
In 1987,
a group of extension specialists began working on a PC-based
electronic information delivery system using CD-ROM as the
delivery media. Initial efforts were aimed at delivering digitized
images and text files, and using menus, hyperlinks, and full-text
searches for retrieval. By the spring of 1989, the group had
produced its second CD-ROM (Disc2) and presented it in a day-long
workshop to a group of 40 extension agents and specialists
for their evaluation of its potential usefulness.
Both
the agents and specialists in the workshop were excited about
the product. Based on the response to the Disc2 workshop,
the extension dean formalized an ad hoc CD-ROM implementation
group, giving it responsibility for the FAIRS project (along
with the FAIRS budget) in 1990 and requested that another
CD-ROM disc be produced (Disc3) for distribution to county
CES offices. During the next two years at least one PC equipped
with a CD-ROM drive and a laser printer was installed in each
of Florida's 67 county CES offices. By the end of 1993 there
were over 400 CD-ROM systems installed throughout Florida's
CES system, FAIRS had released its eighth disc and a stable,
engaged base of users was established (Beck et al., 1994).
To avoid
the problems of "too many versions" and "version control"
described above, software and document format standards were
developed for preparing large numbers of tagged, electronic
extension document files in WordPerfect# (Jones, 1990; Cilley
et al., 1992). The document files could then be used both
to generate a printed document and as input (through automatic
software conversion) into the electronic database. This meant
that specialists only had to produce and maintain a single
version of a publication, but that it could be delivered both
as a traditional print publication and electronically on a
PC.
Extension
agents soon realized another version control advantage, since
the system encourages printing publications on demand-the
need to store out-of-date printed publications while waiting
for updated versions was eliminated. Certain groups of agents
came to another realization-some topical areas were well supported,
and others were not. Not surprisingly, the agents that found
more extensive collections of materials on the FAIRS discs
that supported their program became regular users. This led to the concept of "critical mass", which became the central
strategic principle guiding development of FAIRS databases.
Simply stated, databases must be sufficiently robust that
users feel likely to find what they need every time they go
to the database. For an electronic information system to succeed,
users must have a clear idea of what to reasonably expect
from the database (Ruppert, 1992).
Another
requirement of an effective electronic information system
is that it provide reasonably easy-to-use tools for searching
the database. The FAIRS system supports a point-and-click
interface used with topical menus, hyperlinks, and full-text
search to help users navigate through the system. A final
requirement for success is that once information is found
it needs to be in a useful form. It is for this reason that
all of the materials on the FAIRS CDROMs are available both
on-screen and point-on-demand. In addition, the source files
of the materials are also provided (as WordPerfect files).
Extension agents often need specific pieces of documents for
use in newspaper articles or newsletters and having the source
files makes access very convenient.
Disc8
(a two volume set) was distributed in October 1993 and contained
about 2,500 extension publications archived and formatted
for print-on-demand delivery as well as on-screen display.
There were five areas that were sufficiently complete and
targeted at specific programs that agents with responsibilities
in those program areas began to rely on the FAIRS system as
a primary programming tool. Because of support provided by
a NIOSH AHPS grant, Florida's Ag Safety database became one
that reached critical mass. On Disc8, the FAIRS CD-ROM released
in October 1993, there were over 300 safety publications from
9 states, all reviewed and approved for distribution to Florida's
county CES offices by the state extension safety specialist.
While
demonstrating this database of materials at several meetings
of AHPS grantees, the idea of a national collection of extension
safety programming materials began to develop. Beginning in
October 1993, funding was provided to initiate development
of a prototype. To promote the national exchange of health
and safety program materials within CES and allied organizations,
NIOSH, under the auspices of the AHPS program, is supporting
development of the National Ag Safety Disc (NASD), which will
contain an extensive compendium of educational and information
resources primarily targeted to support delivery of programs
in county CES offices. Although the grant supporting this
work specifically identifies CES as the primary target audience,
other organizations concerned with agricultural safety and
health will also have full access to the NASD database.
The
NASD database is intended to be a central repository of instructional
and reference resources related to agricultural health and safety
programming. The database includes extension-style print publications,
verbatim portions of federal regulatory standards, abstracts
of scientific publications, a video database, a national resource
directory, and several other types of products. All of the NASD
print materials are available print-on-demand documents and
most can be accessed directly on-screen.
Extension
publications form the foundation of the database. The prototype
NASD database (released in October 1994) contains over 1,000
health and safety publications from 23 state CES programs.
In addition to CES publications, the database includes collections
of publications from several other organizations, most notably
from California's Occupational Health Nurse in Agricultural
Communities project, NIOSH, OSHA, and EPA. A significant number
of the documents are available in Spanish as well s English.
In particular Arizona, California, and New Jersey contributed
over 100 documents available in both languages. The publications
collection covers specific health and safety topics pertinent
to agriculture and rural America ranging from all terrain
vehicles (ATVs) to Zoonoses.
Federal
Regulatory Standards pertinent to agriculture are included
verbatim. On the NASD prototype the verbatim standards are
not generally available on-screen but only as print-on-demand
documents. However, the verbatim standards are provided in
conjunction with extension-style publications accessible on-screen
that explain and abstract the pertinent OSHA and EPA Standards.
The verbatim standards are provided print-on-demand in case
a user wants more detail than is provided in the on-screen
abstract. In particular, the collection includes 60 selected
OSHA 1910 and 1928 standards and the proposed amendments to
the EPA Worker Protection Standard current as of summer 1994.
Scientific
abstracts are included from the NIOSH Epidemiology of Farm
Related Injuries: Bibliography with Abstracts database that
includes entries from 535 scientific publications. Each bibliographic
citation can be searched using title, author, or abstract
words. Safety video abstracts are included in a NASD database
that currently covers nearly 600 videos pertinent to agriculture
and rural America including Penn State's Agricultural Accidents
and Rescue series (12), Florida's Working Safe in Agriculture
series (12), and the John Deere Consolidated Video covering
11 safety topics, as well as 5 other videos from John Deere,
Inc. Ordering information is included with each abstract.
As with the scientific abstracts, the database can be searched
using tit e, author, distributor, and abstract words.
Public
Service Announcement (PSA) scripts from California and Iowa
cover topics from child safety seats to ROPS and many are
available in Spanish as well as English. There are about 30
total scripts that range in length from 30 s to 5 min. The
scripts are available on-screen and print-on-demand. As with
most other products on the disc, WordPerfect files are available
to facilitate editing the scripts as needed to meet local
requirements.
Newspaper
articles covering generic topics such as drive shaft accidents
and heat stress are included in a database. There are articles
from Tennessee, Iowa, and California. The articles range in
length from 100 to about 600 words and are available on-screen
and print-on-demand. As with the PSAs, WordPerfect files are
available to facilitate editing the articles as needed to
reflect local conditions and events.
National
resource directory materials are organized into a NASD database
that includes people and organizations pertinent to agricultural
health and safety issues. For example, the database includes
listings of extension safety specialists, Farm Bureau safety
personnel, and pesticide agencies for each state and it includes
regional and national EPA, OSHA, and NIOSH offices and personnel.
The database includes names, addresses, phone numbers, fax
numbers, and e-mail addresses where available.
To find
materials of interest, users will be able to search the database
quickly and easily using the retrieval software's hierarchical
menus, full-text search tools, and hyperlinks. Users can access
materials through three different menu structures: an "organizational"
menu that groups documents by state or federal agency, a topical
menu, and a menu organized by media type. Once information
of interest is found, users will be able to access the material
either on-screen or print-on-demand in most cases or they can
retrieve the WordPerfect file and modify it to meet their
needs. Some collections of materials (such as the AgSafe project
from California and Tommy's Troubles from Kentucky) include
graphic images that can be printed as traditional print publications,
printed on transparencies for overhead presentation, or presented
as "slide shows" directly from the computer with a projection
panel.
By
putting the NASD database in the hands of agricultural safety
and health specialists, NIOSH expects to promote greater national
exchange of materials and consequently, to enhance agricultural
safety and health programming within CES and allied organizations.
As with any new product, it is important to familiarize the
intended audience with the product. For this product, state
CES safety specialists make up the primary target audience.
To introduce the NASD database to the target audience, i will
be demonstrated at several national conferences and evaluations
will be conducted.
Preview
Presentations The prototype
NASD database was previewed first by a national audience of
agricultural safety specialists in August 1994 at a NIOSH-sponsored
conference in Columbus, Ohio: "Agricultural Safety and Health:
Detection, Prevention, and Interaction". Two more preview presentations
were made during October 1994, in Charleston, South Carolina,
at the Southern Agromedicine Consortium meeting and in San Diego,
California, at the National Institute for Farm Safety fall meeting.
At each of these meetings general and one-on-one presentations
were used with questionnaires to continue identifying resource
materials suitable for inclusion in the database and to prioritize
the types of materials and media most useful in safety programming.
Limited
Prototype Release Another
purpose of the preview presentations and evaluations will be
to identify safety specialists with sufficient enthusiasm and
interest to serve as an initial test group (beta-testers) for
the NASD prototype. Following the last preview presentation
in October, there will be a limited prototype release to the
identified beta-testers. They will provide a procedural review
of the system with respect to installation, documentation, and
support issues, then an initial "field" evaluation of the database
both in terms of the materials included in the database and
type of media supported.
Evaluation
and Review Workshop In March
1995, a two-day evaluation and review workshop will be held
in Florida to allow the beta-testers an opportunity to shape
the final structure and content of the first edition of the
database, '95 NASD, intended for wide distribution. A second
purpose of the workshop will be to develop review guidelines
and undertake an initial substantive national review of the
materials included in the database. Presumably, the review will
address issues such as timeliness of the materials (especially
with respect to regulatory information), lack of commercial
endorsement, and general quality of the information in the database.
A national review will be important to facilitate distribution
of the disc from NIOSH to various state Cooperative Extension
Services.
General
Release of '95 NASD The database
will be refined according to the recommendations developed at
the evaluation and review workshop. General release of the '95
NASD database is tentatively scheduled for June 1995 at the
National Institute for Farm Safety summer meeting in Saratoga,
New York.
Release
of the '95 NASD will complete Florida's current obligations
to the NIOSH AHPS program. At one extreme it may represent an
interesting demonstration project that ends up on the shelf,
and at the other it may be the first of many "editions" of a
national electronic compendium of agricultural health and safety
educational and instructional materials. If this system is to
go beyond '95 NASD, strategic planning will be required in many
areas. One important consideration is technology-how will rapid
technological advances affect the database? More to the point,
will it quickly become obsolete? Another even more important
consideration is the quality of the database itself. What qualities
will allow it to develop and become an essential tool for agricultural
safety specialists?
Electronic
Media Issues The materials
in the '95 NASD database are, for the most part, prepared in
a standard electronic file format. During the preparation procedure,
a document's structure is marked with "tags" that specify titles,
authors, section headings, tables, figures, and so forth. It
is the existence of these tags that allow for the automated
processing of a document file into a version for printing and
a version for on-screen display on a PC. The tagging scheme
used to prepare documents included in the database is based
on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) (Bryan, 1988).
These SGML "tags" are of strategic importance because they can
be used to port the database to other delivery systems.
In early
1993, NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
introduced Mosaic, an Internet-based, global, hypermedia system
that supports graphics and allows users to retrieve, display,
and print documents and data from anywhere on the Internet.
Mosaic has an easy point-and-click hypermedia interface and
supports the transfer of new media such as sound and video
over the Internet. Because Mosaic supports graphics, the FAIRS
group has developed and tested software for converting "tagged" documents into HTML (HyperText Markup Language), an SGML
DTD (Document Type Definition) used by Mosaic (Hughes, 1994).
While
Mosaic is a significant improvement over other interfaces
on the Internet, it shares one limitation currently common
to all network information delivery systems, slow data throughput
(i.e., how long it takes to transfer the information from
the central database to the PC). For most PC users who have
some sort of network connection, throughput is adequate for
character-based information (i.e., text), but inadequate for
graphics (as well as sound and certainly video). Although
this problem will be resolved in the future, it is presently
limiting. So, for the near term, CD-ROM is likely to remain
the most flexible, effective, and cost efficient way to distribute
the types of information and software capabilities included
on the '95 NASD. In the future, however, the means of distribution
will need to be re-evaluated in consultation with the users
of the database.
Database
Integrity In the short
run, distribution of '95 NASD will meet the goals of NIOSH's
AHPS program to enhance agricultural health and safety programming
within CES. However, in the long run a database will deteriorate
if it is not maintained: the collection needs to be regularly
reviewed, materials that are out of date need to be revised
or deleted, and newly developed materials need to be formatted,
cataloged, and added to the collection.
To maintain
its value to agricultural safety specialists, the database
will need to meet several criteria. First, the database will
quickly need to achieve "critical mass"; it must become sufficiently
robust that specialists can regularly find the information
that they need. Second, a review process needs to be implemented
to insure a high standard of substantive quality control.
Third, the database must be updated and distributed on a regular
basis to encourage older versions of the database to be taken
out of circulation. Finally, the extent of the database needs
to be evaluated with respect to proprietary materials (such
as ASAE Standards). All of the materials currently included
in the '95 NASD database are public domain information products.
If proprietary materials need to be included in the database
in order to achieve critical mass, then mechanisms may need
to be developed to merge public and private information to
complete the product.
In general,
long-term commitment to a database requires that two groups
of people agree on the importance and value of the product:
the contributors of materials and the users of the database.
For the '95 NASD database, state CES safety specialists make
up both groups. They are the primary target audience of users
and they are the primary contributors to the database. It
is this community that will decide whether the '95 NASD database
is sufficiently valuable to earn their support.
The
authors want to thank Drs. Rick Niemeier and David Hard and
their staff associates from the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health for their enthusiastic and effective support
of the National Ag Safety Disc project.
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Disclaimer
and Reproduction Information: Information in NASD does not
represent NIOSH policy. Information included in NASD appears
by permission of the author and/or copyright holder. More
NASD Review: 04/2002
This
document was extracted from the Journal of Ag Safety and Health
(Volume 1, Number 1, February 1995) and was submitted for
publication in July 1994; reviewed and approved for publication
in October 1994. Contribution by the Institute of Food and
Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Journal Series
No.
R-04308
.
Mention of a commercial product does not imply endorsement
by the University of Florida, references are provided only
for informational purposes.
Pierce
Jones, ASAE Member Engineer, Associate Professor, Jeff Nelson,
Senior Database Coordinator, and Heather Pirozzoli, ASAE Student
Member, Graduate Assistant in Agricultural Operations Management,
Agricultural Engineering Dept., University of Florida, Gainesville.
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