Saturday, May 29, 2010

NAIS a vital information tool for agriculture development

The PNG National Agricultural Information System (NAIS) is a vital agricultural information source that can support and enhance agricultural development and growth.

NAIS was initiated in 1991 as a partnership between the National Agricultural Research Institute and the PNG Coffee Research Institute (now part of the Coffee Industry Corporation).

The NAIS database project has gone a step further to include other major partners in the agriculture sector.

The current seven active partners working in collaboration to develop NAIS are NARI, CIC, Department of Agriculture and Livestock, Ramu Agri-Industries, New Britain Palm Oil Ltd, PNG Oil Palm Research Association, PNG Cocoa Coconut Institute.

The PNG University of Technology and PNG Forestry Research Institute will soon join the NAIS team.

NAIS comprises a library catalogue of over 36,000 records of books, journal articles, conference papers, trial reports and other information resources held by the NAIS partners in their libraries and information centres throughout PNG.

The NAIS database can be accessed at the DAL information branch located at the Monian Tower in downtown Port Moresby.

Chief information officer Nicks Maniha or senior library officer Gabriel Yange can be contacted for further information on (675) 3402108.

Meanwhile, DAL information branch with technical assistance from the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) has gone one step further to acquire and operate a vital source for information known as “The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL).

Produced by the Albert R Mann Library at Cornell University in the United States, TEEAL is the offline database of full-text articles on PDF files from over 130 journals in the agricultural sciences from 1993 to 2008.

The TEEAL database hosted by DAL is the first such information product available in the country and the region.

It includes most of the journals usually requested by professors, students, researchers and extension workers from different fields.

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