Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI)

CTA recently signed a one year contract with CAB International (CABI) to continue supplying SDI services to ACP researchers. Although CABI is the lead contractor, the service is operated jointly with the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD) on an equal basis. Under the contract CABI/CIRAD will provide an SDI service to ACP research scientists by sending bibliographical records every two months. The bibliographies are on subjects that the beneficiaries have requested and are a result of searches made on multiple databases including AGRIS, AGRITROP and CAB Abstracts. Other databases scanned for additional information include AGRICOLA, Chemical Abstracts, BIOSIS, PASCAL and FSTA. As part of the same service, users are supplied with vouchers which they can use to order articles cited in the bibliographies. In the past, users were supplied with 15 vouchers each. The number has been reduced to five vouchers under the current contract due to the increase in demand without a commensurate increase in the budget. In 1996, the following Research and Development activities were initiated and will continue during the current year to improve the quality of the service: User identification: This involves follow up of target users in the countries that are not currently actively participating in the service. The countries to focus on in 1997 are Angola, Belize, Eritrea, Fiji, Gabon, Guyana, Lesotho, Namibia, Papua New Guinea, Sudan and Swaziland. A pilot study on delivery of references by Email: and diskette to selected centres will be undertaken. This follows an investigation in 1996 of user needs and their preferences to receive profiles in electronic format. A pilot electronic document delivery study will also be introduced.. A WWW server was set up and is accessible at CTA for internal use. Activities in 1997 will include enhancing and maintaining the server to improve on statistical reporting and the searching features. Due to the nature of the SDI project, some initial work was undertaken on copyright, licensing and other legal and contractual issues with particular reference to duplication and electronic distribution. Initial negotiations with database hosts and electronic rights holders concerning the SDI services concluded that it is possible to reformat, duplicate and redistribute records downloaded subject to payment of standard charges. Negotiations will continue between CTA/CABI/CIRAD and database hosts and rights holders on the extent of duplication permissible. In order to optimize on the current agreement that enables limited photocopying of bibliographies, popular subjects requests have been broadened as profile titles to ensure a large number of users can benefit from each single profile. This is part of the strategy to increase the number of users of the SDI services without significant increase in costs. Based on previous requests, the following are the core subjects: agricultural extension, agricultural research management, agro-industrial by-products as feeds, draught animals, farming systems, groundnuts, integrated pest management, maize breeding, oil-palms, on-farm trials, post harvest, poultry, small ruminants, soil fertility, soil and water conservation.

Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI)CTA recently signed a one year contract with CAB International (CABI) to continue supplying SDI services to ACP researchers. Although CABI is the lead contractor, the service is operated jointly with the...