AGROVOC country report - Republic of Moldova

16/12/2021
 AGROVOC country report - Republic of Moldova

FAO/Buletin Dorin Goian

The role of the Republican Scientific Agricultural Library

The library is open to users from all over the country: students; didactic staff; researchers and PhD students of the State Agrarian University of Moldova and other specialized higher and secondary education institutions; officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, Regional Development and Environment and other public authorities; researchers of scientific institutions; and farmers. It has an integrated structure consisting of the library service center to borrow materials, the FAO information center, two reading rooms with free access to book collections and special collections, and a room for group study.

Collection and services

The library supports the study and the research process, developing and highlighting the most varied and complete collection of documents in the field of agricultural sciences in the country, with over half a million publications. It also manages several special collections – old and rare books, dissertations, journals, collections of university publications – which have special significance for the local community. It develops its collection according to the study and research programmes of the university and the national agricultural economy in the following basic fields: agricultural sciences, medical-veterinary sciences, technical sciences, animal husbandry and animal products, materials engineering and industrial technologies, economic sciences and legal sciences.

The services include loan services, bibliographic services, reference services, bibliometric services, electronic document provision, and interlibrary loan. The library offers access to international databases such as: Research4Life with five integrated programmes (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture; Research for Health; Online Access to Research in the Environment; Access to Research for Development and Innovation; and Research for Global Justice); the Taylor & Francis Online journal library; SAGE Research Methods; the Cambridge University Press; and eLIBRARY.RU. The library organizes and carries out public educational, cultural and information activities; training activities; and programmes to form information literacy skills of students, teachers and researchers. The services provided to researchers are designed to support them throughout the research life cycle starting from the discovery, use and efficient management of information up to the publication and dissemination of research.

Library online catalogue and digital repository

Thanks to the Tempus project “Modern Information Services for Improvement Study Quality,” the library organizes and provides access to the electronic catalogue, which operates on the ExLibris PRIMO platform as part of the collective catalogue shared by seven university libraries from the Republic of Moldova (ExLibris, 2021). It integrates over 1 006 000 bibliographic records: books, series, theses, papers, electronic resources and other types of documents reflecting the collections of the participating libraries. In order to valorize, preserve and facilitate access to the research output of members of the State Agrarian University of Moldova and to support the international initiatives on open access to scientific information, the library manages the Institutional Repository in the field of Agricultural Sciences (IRAS), which stores over 4 000 full-text documents.

Collaboration with FAO

Aiming to develop its institutional capacities to qualitatively increase its collection and to modernize its services and promote them, the library participates in various projects and maintains collaborative relationships with various information and documentation organizations and institutions. The library’s integration into the global information space is strongly related to the development of international cooperation with FAO, which contributes to the efficient management of agricultural information and the application of new information tools and technologies in the library's activity.

The partnership with FAO has expanded the library’s area of work. New international responsibilities were assigned to the library such as the FAO Information and Documentation Center in Moldova, the role of AGRIS Hub in Moldova, the membership to the International Network of Agricultural Libraries (AGLINET) and the role of official editor of the Romanian version of the AGROVOC thesaurus. Since 2000, due to its status as FAO Depository Library in Moldova, the library has promoted FAO information resources in the country. In 2001, the library became a member of AGLINET with the aim of sharing the information resources of the members jointly and rationally, as the latter provide upon request interlibrary loan services in the interest and for the benefit of users.

Fulfilling the functions of AGRIS Center in Moldova since 2004, the library integrates the metadata regarding the documents on agriculture published on the territory of the Republic of Moldova in the AGRIS database. In 2007, the library joined the international community of editors of AGROVOC, and the library now translates and adapts the multilingual agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC in Romanian. Through its activities, the main mission of the library is to provide informational and documentary support for the process of education, research and production in the field of agriculture, and to be an active intermediary between users and information.

Link to part two

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