Linking to External Resources: FARN

By Popi Kleinman, Fundacion Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN)
May 2001

When linking to external resources, FARN uses the following guideline:

• For links to organization's Web sites, write the complete name of the owner organization. If the organization has initial letters, then write them first, and following the complete name (e.g., SPDA - Sociedad Peruana de Derecho Ambiental)
• For links to specific sections of some Web site, write the name/title of the Web site followed by the name of the section (e.g., Stockholm Environmental Institute: GIS for Participation)
• For links to online publications, write the publication title and bring some extra info (like author, date of publication, etc.) without linking it (e.g., Role of Local Governments and Public Participation in Environmental Management / Final Report of the Inter-American Seminar Barquisimeto, Venezuela, June 11-13, 1996)
• If the text for the link is too large, think if some part of the text could be left without putting a link. For example, linking to "Argentina. Secretaría de Desarrollo Sustentable y Política Ambiental de la Nación: Sección Marco Legal" is a little confusing. So you can put a link only in the text "Sección Marco Legal", which would look like "Argentina. Secretaría de Desarrollo Sustentable y Política Ambiental de la Nación: Sección Marco Legal"

Explaning texts

The FARN's Public Participation Online Module provides a conceptual framework about public participation and provides access to resources such as case studies, bibliography, related sites, regulations, research documents, etc. The first idea was to present the resources as lists of links divided into "Legislation," "Documents/Research papers," and "Related organization's Web sites." As more than one person was collecting and cataloguing the external resources, it was decided to add a few explaining lines to each link, to facilitate the joint work. During the collecting task, the obvious question came to all people involved: "why don't provide such an explanation to the whole user community? If it is useful for us, it surely will be useful for everybody using the module". So now all the links in the resource section of the Module have a very short paragraph explaining what the linked resource is about.

Small collections vs. long lists:

The first "Relevant Links" section FARN's Web site has had was a simple and unordered list of links. As the list grew, it was necessary to have some structure to present them in a less confusing way. So the section was first divided into "National Organizations," "International Organizations," and "Foreign Organizations." This structure quickly became obsolete because, for example, where should an environmental magazine or a gateway be placed? and what should be done with specific resources such as databases or publications, which were not organizations? At the same time, some other sections in the Web site were built, which were able to have their own specific relevant links collections. FARN then divided its links collection again: now FARN's database section has its own links collection to environmental law databases; the Public Participation Module has another one to specific public participation resources; the Trade and Environmental Initiative page has a collection of links related to the Mercosur and the CAN (Comunidad Andina de Naciones); and of course the general "Relevant Links" section still exists, but now divided into "NGOs/Associations/Centres," "International Organizations," "Governmental Organizations," "Portals," "Networks" and "Magazines/Journals."