Session guide: Information as an input to research
Reading note: Information as an input to research
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DATE |
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TIME |
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FORMAT |
Plenary participatory lecture |
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TRAINER |
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OBJECTIVES
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At the end of this session, participants should have become familiar with: 1. The importance of information as an input to research. |
INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
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Exhibit 1 |
Library collections and organization |
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Exhibit 2 |
AGRIS and CARIS |
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Exhibit 3 |
Services for scientists |
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Exhibit 4 |
Sources of material |
REQUIRED READING
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Reading note: Information as an input to research. |
BACKGROUND READING
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None. |
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT AND AIDS
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Overhead projector and chalkboard |
Library collections and organization
AGRIS and CARIS
Services for scientists
Sources of material
Initiate discussion by emphasizing that information is power, and an important input to research. It shapes research programmes and keeps scientists up to date. Apart from using written reference material in different forms, information staff benefit by interacting with fellow scientists.
Show EXHIBIT 1 on library collections and organization. Ask participants whether the collection in their library is relevant, recent and useful. Emphasize the need for centralization of information so that the institution's information resources are not dispersed. Simultaneously, scientists must have access to the required information. Otherwise they will waste their time in building their own collection of references, particularly reprints.
A library needs to have knowledgeable staff and provided with an adequate budget for purchases. Libraries have to be properly organized and managed. There has to be a rational policy for acquisitions and discards. Quick cataloguing is equally essential. EXHIBIT 1 describes three ways in which libraries acquire literature. First, by request: to authors for reprints; to regional and international agencies for publications; and to donors. Second, by exchange with other institutions for journals. Third, by purchasing reference books, handbooks and textbooks, and the most relevant journals. Libraries cooperate among themselves for costly journals. An appropriate mix of these methods should provide an effective cost minimizing mode of acquisition.
Discuss the Cuban model as an example of how limited finances can be efficiently utilized. A centralized organization manages agricultural information for all the national institutions. Duplicate purchases are avoided. Tables of contents of journals are distributed and the most important articles are photocopied.
A library renders technical as well as public services (EXHIBIT 1). The ratio between public services and technical services has to be maximized for greater efficiency. Cataloguing and indexing is a time consuming, skilled-staff-intensive process. The burden of this can be significantly reduced by using externally prepared indexes and databases, especially for journal articles. Commercial systems are expensive, but participation in international networking such as AGRIS is highly desirable.
Now discuss some of the recent developments, such as micro CDS/ISIS mounted on a PC for cataloguing and displaying books and technical reports.
Discuss AGRIS and CARIS (EXHIBIT 2). These are international cooperative systems, managed by FAO and linked through national centres. CARIS is unique in identifying research projects and individual scientists, thereby facilitating contacts, cooperation and exchange.
Show EXHIBIT 3 and discuss services for scientists. The service has to be:
· responsive - answering enquiries,
· alerting - indicating information available if scientists are interested, and
· unsolicited - delivering information believed to be of interest.
The support facilities in a library must include a photocopying machine.
Show EXHIBIT 4 and discuss important sources of material. In the case of donors, observe that an information component should be negotiated as part of the overall negotiation.
Database searching for research projects has to be retroactive initially, but there should also be provision of current awareness periodicals.
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QUALITY OF THE COLLECTION It should be: · Relevant |
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ACQUISITION MODALITIES Material acquired through: · Requests The Cuban model: A central library circulates photocopies of tables of contents, and supplies copies of requested articles. |
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LIBRARY SERVICES Technical and Public: Cataloguing: |
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FEATURES · International |
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CONTENTS · Databases constructed from national inputs |
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ORGANIZATION · Managed by FAO, Rome, through |
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OUTPUTS Printed form (hard copy): · Agrindex (monthly) Computer-readable form (soft copy): · CD-ROMs with entire database |
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Responsive |
Answers enquiries |
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Alerting |
Indicates information available if scientists interested |
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Unsolicited |
Delivers services believed to be of interest |
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Equipment support |
Photocopiers; microform readers and reader-printers |
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· Major libraries |
Library organization
AGRIS and CARIS
Services for scientific staff
Role of donors
In developing countries, many agricultural research stations have libraries that are almost never used by researchers. Such a library may be in the care of a very junior person who has had little or no training in either librarianship or agricultural science and, indeed, there may be almost nothing of real value on the shelves. If there is no hard currency budget for purchases, the library is likely to contain only what has been donated, and donations are often made more in the interest of the donor than that of the recipient. So the shelves may contain some trade publications and newsletters, surplus materials from other libraries, and documents sent free of charge by international and regional organizations. There are probably few reference books and only odd issues of major agricultural science journals.
In such institutions, scientists are forced to fend for themselves and to build their own personal collections - any one of which may be more valuable and relevant than all the material in the library. Scientists acquire their own material by setting up arrangements with their friends and colleagues, and they pick up publications when they travel. These personal collections are often largely in the form of reprints of journal articles, and many scientists mail printed postcards to request reprints from the authors. Some scientists go to great trouble to acquire documents in this way, and they may have quite elaborate indexes, nowadays often on a personal computer (PC).
'Information is power,' and it is an unfortunate fact that there are some scientists who, having invested time in building a collection, are unwilling to share it with their colleagues. The institution loses because:
· scientists consume time that might otherwise be devoted to their research, especially when several scientists are independently chasing the same information;· information resources are dispersed among different offices, overlap in content and are not easily accessible (there is no comprehensive catalogue of what is held); and
· its reputation suffers when authors receive multiple, and obviously uncoordinated, requests from the institute's staff.
Clearly, scientists would not be as inclined to spend their time collecting and organizing reprints if the publications most needed were available in the library. Even an institution that is limited in its resources for purchasing can improve the situation by requiring scientists to channel their reprint requests through the library. In writing to an author, the librarian should name the scientist who first made the request and add a line or two to indicate the purpose for which the reprint is needed. Proceeding in this way ensures that requests are not duplicated and that, once the library has obtained a reprint, it is probably catalogued, listed, and made accessible to all of the scientists who might wish to see it now or later.
To be effective, scientists must have access to information relating to their work, and, if it is not provided by the institution, they will use other methods, even very inefficient methods, to acquire it. If the institution is to avoid such a situation, it must develop the means to serve the information needs of its researchers, and that requires having a budget for the purpose. Generally, one must pay for the things that are most useful, namely reference books, handbooks and textbooks, and subscribe to the most relevant journals. Directors need to weigh these needs against competing needs, and make appropriate allocations in budgets.
When some funds are available, how should they be spent? The most renowned reference books and the most prestigious journals may not be the most relevant and useful items. What is needed depends markedly on research mandates and geographical situations. Persons in the institution who are providing an information service - either formally through the library or informally as information gatekeepers - can usually identify material that they have been advised to consult. If there is a major library in the Ministry of Agriculture or in the agricultural faculty of a national university, its librarians should be able to list the material that are commonly sought by national researchers. The institution's own scientists can identify the journals from which they most often request reprints.
If the institution publishes its own reports, it can offer these in exchange for some of the publications that it is seeking. It can ask the government for an allocation of UNESCO coupons which, if available, permit foreign purchases for payment in local currency. It should husband foreign exchange allocations for those items that are most needed and that cannot be obtained by other means.
Reference works, such as flora, catalogues of agricultural chemicals, national statistical series and dictionaries are always useful. Basic textbooks may be particularly valuable for the junior staff, and are essential if the institution is receiving trainees. Scientific journals represent a continuing expense, and only the most needed should be purchased.
Valuable material can often be obtained free of charge by writing to the technical staff in various divisions of FAO and in organizations like CTA, IDRC and GTZ. The institution should also establish relations with those CGIAR centres with which it shares common interests. However, in writing to any of these bodies, the institution is far more likely to obtain relevant and useful material if it takes the trouble to explain its work and interests (i.e., why it seeks particular material) than if it makes bald requests.
Newsletters put out by international and regional organizations give not only interesting accounts of currently important topics but often also contain information about new publications and how they may be obtained. CTA's newsletter Spore is an outstanding example.
At the same time, librarians should not be expected to keep everything that becomes available or everything that is offered free of charge. Many libraries are sadly cluttered with material on subjects that are outside the scope of the institutions. Many librarians believe that they will be admonished if they discard such material on their own initiative. Yet the irrelevant material impedes the work of librarians and have a negative effect on clients. It is useful, therefore, to develop a library acquisition and collection policy.
To a major degree, the problem of access to agricultural journals can be alleviated by cooperation among institutions in the same country (or in a group of neighbouring countries). In North America and other market economies, such cooperation is usually on a voluntary basis. One institution cancels its subscription to an expensive journal once it is confident that another institution will continue to keep the journal and supply photocopies of individual articles on request. In some centrally planned economies, this cooperation has been driven by national policy. Cuba, for example, has been subject to trade embargoes and to an acute shortage of foreign exchange. In response it set up the Centro de Informacion y Divulgacion Agropecuria (CIDA) to manage agricultural information for all the national institutions. CIDA has identified the journals that are most needed in the country; it tries to ensure that they are all obtained and that money is not wasted on buying duplicates. Each journal is placed in the institution where it is most appropriate, but the table of contents is reproduced and circulated to other institutions that may be interested in it. These institutions, in turn, can call for loans or photocopies of the articles that they particularly need.
If efficiently managed, such cooperation can greatly enhance the cost: benefit ratio for hard currency expenditures on journals, and each institution has access to many more journals than it could otherwise afford. As will be discussed in Session 4 of this module, the essential management tool is a consolidated list (a 'union list') of the journal collections in all the cooperating libraries. Obviously, however, the formula cannot be applied to reference books and guides to which scientists need immediate access.
Useful technical advice is given in a book that was specially written for agricultural librarians in developing countries: Primer for Agricultural Libraries, by Olga LENDVAY (2nd edition, 1980) published by PUDOC, Wageningen, the Netherlands. It is available in English, French, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish editions.
A very much more complete and detailed guide is by Claire GUINCHAT and Michel MENOU: General Introduction to the Techniques of Information and Documentation Work, published in English and French versions by UNESCO, Paris, in 1983.
Library operations inevitably involve two components:
· the work that librarians do to organize their collections through processes such as cataloguing and indexing (technical services); and· the work that librarians do to satisfy the needs of their clients (public services).
Clearly, without the first the second would be virtually impossible. Nevertheless, the ratio technical services: public services is one measure of a library's efficiency.
In a totally self-reliant library, every document would have to be properly catalogued so that it could be found when needed. This, however, involves a heavy commitment of time to technical services. Thus, for example, at a typical rate of 10 items per working day, it would require two person-years to construct a full catalogue of a collection of 5 000 reprints. However, if the library can use externally prepared indexes to the agricultural literature, the librarian need not catalogue the reprints; she or he need only file them in a way that permits easy retrieval once a reference is known (the reprints could be filed under the titles of the journals in which they are published).
Can a developing country library obtain indexes to the world's agricultural literature? In the past it was more difficult than it is today, and the remaining difficulties may be minimized or overcome in the next few years. In large measure, the improvement is due to the setting up of AGRIS [International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology], an information system that is managed by FAO and that involves the participation of almost all countries, developed and developing. AGRIS, which will be described more fully later in this session, has been in operation since 1975. Before it began, a review indicated that there were more than 500 regular bibliographic products in the field of agriculture. However, they overlapped with each other and, since they were almost entirely produced in the developed world, they emphasized temperate rather than tropical conditions. The most serious impediment - then as now - is that the best products are expensive and require hard currency. The abstract journals of CAB International (formerly the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux) and Biological Abstracts are remarkable for their coverage of the world literature and for the scientific judgment that is given to the selection of articles and the writing of abstracts, but, typically, their prices put them beyond the reach of a developing country institution.
Major bibliographic services are also available as databases for on-line searching from remote locations, but, again, this is costly and it depends on international telecommunication connections. A really important new development is the use of CD-ROM technology, which makes whole databases available for local searching on a microcomputer. Efforts are underway to bring CD-ROM technology to developing countries at reasonable cost.
With these developments near or at hand, a small library should probably not invest in building a comprehensive local index of relevant journal articles and reprints. Nevertheless, such a library still needs to catalogue its collection of books and technical reports and to put them in an ordered display on the shelves. The medium can be traditional 8 × 13 cm cards, or it could now be a PC running the freely available software known as Micro CDS/ISIS. In either case, staff need to be trained, but such training is now obtainable in almost every country.
Micro CDS/ISIS was developed at UNESCO and is periodically updated. It operates on IBM-compatible PCs, and there are at least 3 000 installations in developing countries. It is adapted to a wide range of information processing and library management operations. Once installed for one of these purposes, it can provide the means for experimenting with others.
AGRIS and CARIS [Current Agricultural Research Information System] are international information systems based on cooperation among national governments, and managed by FAO. For AGRIS, each country is invited to participate and report the publications and other documents that have been issued on its own territory. FAO merges the bibliographic and indexing data that it receives from the participants (describing about 10 000 new documents each month) and creates a global database that is copied and made available to all the contributors. Thus, in exchange for its national input, each country receives organized data from most of the world. AGRIS seeks to be comprehensive and is well on the road to being so; however, there are a few countries that do not participate, and there are others that report only part of their national production.
Each participating country designates a national AGRIS centre, where the national input is prepared and the AGRIS products are received. In order to tap into the system and benefit from the services available, each agricultural research institution should establish proper relations with its national AGRIS centre. The AGRIS centre receives Agrindex in one of three language versions: English, French or Spanish. This monthly printed bulletin lists the new records added to the global database and contains indexes by author, subject and country. Items of relevance to the institution can be identified, either by manual searching in Agrindex or by preparing a topic profile and matching it against records in the computer file at regular intervals. FAO at first carried out a limited number of such operations free of charge for developing countries, but now AGRIS centres receive the database on CD-ROM and thus there should be a local capacity to produce outputs for national clients.
Each national centre decides for itself what it will report to AGRIS. The system is hospitable to records describing informal technical reports as well as more formal publications, such as those in scientific journals. Because developing countries participate directly, their production of information is often better represented in AGRIS than in the commercial systems, and this makes it particularly valuable to developing country research institutions.
In many areas, it is not necessary to address the total file in order to find the information that responds to a particular need. AGRIS is being exploited to provide a number of specialized products, such as national agricultural bibliographies and bulletins on particular crops. Often these bulletins are available free of charge and can be obtained for use in the institution's own library. Specialized sub-sets of the AGRIS database can be copied on to disks in a form ready for application on a local PC loaded with Micro CDS/ISIS. Indeed, FAO has now developed special enhancements to Micro CDS/ISIS so that it can be used for managing AGRIS and CARIS files, as well as local data recorded in a compatible format.
Of course, as with other bibliographic services, AGRIS provides only the reference to potentially relevant documents, and follow-up action is needed to acquire those documents that appear to be of interest. However, in many cases, a national AGRIS centre can ask for the help of its partner centres in other countries and obtain copies of the documents that they have reported to the system.
A parallel system, CARIS, covers ongoing research projects and is compiled in much the same way as AGRIS, i.e., national CARIS centres report the projects to FAO, which then incorporates this input into a database. The CARIS files are particularly useful for identifying institutions (and even individual researchers) that have projects related to one's own interests and with whom one might wish to establish cooperation in research or exchange information.
In a similar manner to the distribution of AGRIS data, FAO is currently (1996) developing software for dissemination of CARIS data on CD-ROM.
One of the functions of an information unit is to provide a service to the institution's director. For researchers, the information unit should provide:
· a response service, seeking out information in answer to an enquiry;· an alerting service, providing indications of information that is available or that could be obtained; and
· an unsolicited service, where the information unit takes the initiative to find and forward information that it believes is relevant for the researcher or the team.
Clearly, if the information unit is working in close partnership with the researchers, it can raise the level of its service and contribute more effectively.
A vital, almost essential, item of equipment is the photocopier. Such a device should be purchased from a reputable national agent who is capable of providing maintenance, spare parts and the consumable supplies of paper and chemicals. The long-term operation of a photocopier is best assured by placing it in a room that can also be used for other sensitive equipment, such as computers.
Without a photocopier, the information unit must either call scientists to come and read material in the library or lend out the publication. Assertive scientists will insist on borrowing, and the library will then be left without the documents, possibly also urgently needed by other scientists. In extreme cases - which, unfortunately, are not uncommon -the library is left with only the material that no one wants to see. With or without a photocopier, the director who wishes to have an effective library must support the information staff in enforcing limits on the duration of loans and ensure that the offices of individual scientists are not stocked at the expense of the institution's common facilities.
With a photocopier, the information staff can keep original papers where they will remain available to all users and still provide copies for the scientists to read away from the library. In an alerting service, for example, the information unit can provide:
· photocopies of the tables of contents of journals coming to the library or available from other sources; and· outputs of searches obtained from AGRIS or other databases.
In a response or unsolicited service, the unit can photocopy pages from reference works or articles from journals.
Inevitably, scientists and information staff will identify the existence of apparently interesting documents that are not available locally. There are services, such as those of the British Library, the French CRNS, and the US National Agricultural Library, which can provide photocopies of almost anything very promptly, but for a fee. However, these services are expensive, and developing country institutions must usually find other means of obtaining the publications needed. As a result, acquisition of documents requires a significant investment of the time of the information staff but, with experience, they discover which sources are the most productive. These may include:
· the country's national agricultural library or the libraries of other agricultural institutions and faculties;· the national AGRIS centre, which may be able to request documents from AGRIS centres in other countries;
· depending on the subject, the libraries of CGIAR and other international and regional centres (e.g., if the needed document deals with potato, it is likely to be available from CIP);
· libraries of donor organizations, especially when the institution receives donor support for its research; or
· authors of individual papers (who may send reprints on request).
The institution is likely to find that some of the documents it needs are more readily or more cheaply available in microform (microfilm, microfiche, comfiche, etc.) than as hard copy. Modern microform readers are reliable optical instruments that cost a few hundred dollars. Microfiche reader-printers, which provide enlargements on paper, are considerably more expensive and, because of the problems of maintenance and supplies, are usually appropriate only for larger institutions.
Not every research institution benefits from the support of international donors, but those that do have remarkable opportunities to strengthen their information services. What is most important is to raise the issue in the initial negotiations for a research project. If requested, donors are often willing to include a budget for information equivalent to 5 to 10% of the total, although, of course, they will want that money to be used for project-related material.
Such grants may be used for the purchase of relevant books and journals, for equipment, and perhaps also for the short-term training of an information specialist.
Some donors are also willing to provide an information service tailored to the subject of the research project. One can ask that databases be searched, first retroactively and then at regular intervals, to obtain citations of relevant documents and, once these listings have been reviewed, to go back to the donor for the full texts. Depending on which donor is involved, the service may be provided by the donor's staff or by another institution in the donor's country.
