Information Products and Services Department  

Increasing the availability of information  
and the awareness of information sources

The Information Products and Services Department implements a programme designed to address the key problems in ACP countries in providing information products and services. These problems include:  

  • poor access to publications and information  supporting decision-making in agricultural and rural development;
  • lack of published information  in this field because of weak local publishing infrastructures;
  • limited awareness of sources of national and external information  and of the types of products and services available.

To tackle these problems, the Department has set two objectives:  

  1. to increase the availability of information ;
  2. to improve awareness of sources of information .

The strategies to achieve these objectives focus mainly on:  

  • greater use of information  and communication technologies (ICTs) in publishing and disseminating information  by developing Internet products, CD-ROMs, e-publishing and e-distribution;
  • greater involvement of ACP authors and publishers;
  • more focus of publications on policies and decision-making relating to priority information  themes in agricultural and rural development;
  • integrating the Publications Distribution Service (PDS) and the Dissemination of Reference Books on Agriculture;
  • continued decentralisation of the Question-and-Answer Service (QAS) and the Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) service.

These strategies are implemented through the following activities:  

  • Electronic publishing and ICT-based information  services. The CTA Website gives an overall view of the Centre and its activities in e-format, and provides electronic versions of CTA publications, including the Annual Report and Spore/Esporo. CTA is conducting studies on ICT-based information  services in order to promote the optimal use of these services in ACP countries. It also produces and distributes information packs for radio broadcasts as part of its Rural Radio Programme.  
  • Distribution of publications.  The Publications Distribution Service (PDS) is in charge of distributing publications on CTA's list, Spore/Esporo and agricultural reference books. The PDS also carries out promotional activities to keep its subscribers (+/-30,000) well informed of the availability of the publications on CTA's list.

Contact: vuga@cta.nl  

Other contacts appear at the end of the texts describing the various programmes.  

CTA institutional publications

Spore / Esporo  

CTA publishes a 16-page agricultural and rural development magazine, Spore, in English and French, and a Portuguese edition, Esporo. Spore/Esporo is produced six times a year in print and electronic format. The electronic version can be downloaded from the Website. The magazine's aims are:  

  • to inform readers about developments in the ACP agriculture and rural sectors in all ACP regions;
  • to provide balanced coverage in terms of CTA's priority information  themes;
  • to promote awareness of information  sources and new  training opportunities;
  • to provide a platform for exchanging scientific and technical information;
  • to act as a link between CTA and its partner organisations;
  • to provide information on CTA's activities and outputs, including publications. 

In each issue there are three feature articles, brief news items, reports on CTA activities, reviews of books and other information products, readers' letters, information sources, announcements of courses and conferences, and an invited contribution ('Viewpoint'). Most of the material is obtained from anglophone and francophone sources. The content of Esporo is drawn mainly from Spore. Sometimes, material generated in Portuguese for Esporo is published in Spore. People in ACP countries are encouraged to use Spore/Esporo articles in their local publications, so long as they acknowledge the source.  

Spore/Esporo is produced by a consortium of English, French and Portuguese consultants, working with ACP journalists. The consortium was chosen through a process of competitive bidding, and meets with CTA staff every 2 months to determine the content of each issue.  

Through the Publications Distribution Service (PDS), subscriptions to Spore/Esporo are available free-of-charge to individuals and organisations in ACP and EU countries working in ACP agricultural and rural development. Those not eligible can purchase a subscription to Spore/Esporo through the Centre's commercial distributor.  

Spore is now broadcast daily via satellite, as part of a strategy to make it more widely and more quickly available. It is transmitted through the WorldSpace radio network (see Spore No.100).  

Contact: sherwood@cta.nl  

Other institutional publications  

The aim of CTA's institutional publications is to make information needed by ACP partners more readily available. For these publications, CTA bears the full production costs. They are available in print format and can also be downloaded from the CTA Website.  

Apart from Spore/Esporo, the main institutional publications are the Annual Report, seminar proceedings and syntheses, study visit reports and a Publications Catalogue. Sometimes the Centre also publishes titles stemming from an area or activity of major interest to ACP countries; an example of this is Information Revolutions, published in 2001 in English and French.  

Contact: sherwood@cta.nl  

Co-publications  

CTA produces many information products in partnership with other organisations and individuals; it is particularly keen to work with ACP authors and publishers. Through the co-publication programme, many titles on agricultural development in ACP countries are published that might otherwise be rejected for commercial reasons.  

Co-published materials, in print and electronic format, include series, technical publications, co-seminar proceedings and reports, CD-ROMs/multimedia, databases, videos and sound files. Emphasis is placed on publications relating to CTA's priority information themes, new ICTs and information and communication management (ICM).  

An internal Information Products Committee meets monthly to look at the proposals for support sent to CTA. The main selection criteria are:  

  • relevance to agricultural and rural development in ACP countries;
  • conformity to CTA's priority information themes;
  • cost-effectiveness and value for money;
  • geographical coverage;
  • technical level and style;
  • reliability of the technical and scientific content;
  • extent to which the content is innovative, practical and likely to remain valid after publication;
  • avoidance of duplication of existing publications;
  • timeliness and format (print versus electronic)

To consider proposals, CTA needs the following information:  

  • the proposed structure or table of contents (if no manuscript or sample text is available);
  • if available, the complete manuscript or sample chapters (for book proposal), script or scenario (for film or video proposal), sample or prototype (for CDs, database);
  • information  on the author(s);
  • the target audience;
  • distribution/access considerations;
  • an itemised estimate of production costs (and information on other potential partners)

The support that CTA gives may involve financing translation (into English or French) and production costs, and/or distributing copies free-of-charge to Publications Distribution Service subscribers.  

series

You will find details on the series co-published by CTA in the Publications Catalogue. Here is a brief description of these series:  

§        'Opportunities in food processing'. Aimed at people involved in small-scale food processing enterprises and compiled by practitioners in ACP countries working with CTA staff, this series was launched in 2001 with the publication of Setting Up and Running a Small Food Business. This book covered product selection, supplier/retailer contracts, buildings, equipment and legal, financial and management issues. Other books in the series will deal with specific food products, such as bakery products, meat, fish, milk, fruit and vegetables. 

§        'Agrodok'. These simple, low-priced manuals on agricultural practices are aimed at farmers and field workers. They are published with Agromisa (www.agromisa.org), an association of students and graduates of the Wageningen University and Research Centre. There are now 35 titles in English, 32 in French and 12 in Portuguese.

 

§        'The Tropical Agriculturalist'. There are now 40 titles in this series of practical guides on plant and animal production, launched in 1987 with Macmillan (www.macmillaneducation.com). The books are aimed at extension agents and development workers. They are also used in training and secondary education. The concise texts and small format make them ideal for use in the field.

 

§        'Land and Life'. With Terres et Vie (www.terresetvie.com), CTA published five titles in this series. Aimed at people in extension and training, these well-illustrated books discuss simple, inexpensive technologies suitable for use in developing countries, particularly in Africa. 

 

§        'Practical Agricultural Booklets'. With CTA support, five manuals were translated from Kiswahili and published by Friends-of-the-Book Foundation and Acacia Stantex Publishers in Kenya. These simple manuals deal with using fertiliser, making compost and growing soya beans, sweet potatoes and onions, garlic and leeks. New titles in the pipeline focus on farm accounting, compost manure, growing bananas and raising ostriches.  

Contact: guiot@cta.nl  

Ordering publications from CTA: the Publications Distribution Service  

CTA's Publications Distribution Service (PDS) operates on a subscription basis. The subscriptions are currently free-of-charge. All books on CTA's publications list have a nominal value in credit points.

subscribers

If you wish to order publications on CTA's list, please use your credit points and send a publications order form to CTA or, if you live in Burkina Faso or Zambia, to CTA's local distributor (NB. Each order form has a unique identification number and may not be reproduced. Currently, you cannot order by email or letter.) More information about publications on CTA's list is in the Publications Catalogue and Spore.  

If you wish to obtain publications exceeding your credit point allocation, you can buy them from our commercial distributor or, in the case of co-publications or books not published by CTA, from the main publisher, an international distributor or a retail outlet.  

non-subscribers

The conditions and procedures for obtaining publications on CTA's list depend on where you live.  

  • If you live in an ACP Member State and are involved in agriculture and rural development, you may apply for a free subscription on behalf of your organisation or for yourself. Kindly complete an application form and send it to CTA or, if you live in Burkina Faso or in Zambia, to CTA's local distributor. If your request is accepted, you will get a free subscription to Spore/Esporo  and a limited number of credit points for you to use to order CTA publications. 
  • If you live in a European Union Member State and are involved in agricultural and rural development, you may apply for a free subscription to Spore/Esporo on behalf of your organisation or for yourself. Kindly complete an application form and send it to CTA. If your request is accepted, you will get a free subscription. You can buy publications on our list from our commercial distributor or, in the case of co-publications or books not published by CTA, from the main publisher, an international distributor or a retail outlet.
  • If you do not live in an ACP Member State or a European Union Member State you can buy Spore/Esporo and any publications from CTA's list from our commercial distributor or, in the case of co-publications or books not published by CTA, from the main publisher, an international distributor or a retail outlet.

Our commercial distributor is Triops (Tropical Scientific Books distributor). Our local distributors are DIST/CNRST (Burkina Faso) and Insaka Press (Zambia); these local distributors also have sales points.  

Contact:  Publications Distribution Service vandreck@cta.nl  and to order publications broekhuizen@cta.nl  

Commercial distributor  

Triops                                                                                                  
Hindenburgstrasse 33
D - 64295 Darmstadt
Germany
Fax +49 61 51 31 40 48
Email info@net-library.de
Website http://www.net-library.de  

Local distributors  

DIST/CNRST
03 BP 7047
Ouagadougou 03
Burkina Faso
E-mail: Zougmore@liptinfor.bf
Contact person: Emmanuel Zougmoré
 

Insaka Press Co Ltd
P.O. Box 50708
Lusaka
Zambia
E-mail: Insaka@zamtel.zm

 Rural radio  

Aimed at strengthening the links between extension workers and farmers, promoting knowledge-sharing between farmers, and addressing the problem of illiteracy, CTA's Rural Radio Resource Pack (RRRP) project is designed to encourage the use of rural radio to disseminate scientific and technical information. The people benefiting from the project include rural radio programme producers and managers, extension workers and farmers.  

Five RRRPs are produced every year. Each one contains:  

  • a list of the contents of the pack and an explanatory letter;
  • a 30-minute cassette and a copy of this text on a CD-ROM;
  • a transcript of the interviews on the cassette;
  • an introduction page to each interview, for the presenter;
  • printed documents such as Spore /Esporo articles or CTA brochures on the topic of the RRRP;
  • a questionnaire and an envelope addressed to CTA, to encourage feedback from the users. 

The selection of RRRP topics is based on suggestions from project beneficiaries and on issues given high priority by CTA partners. By the end of 2001 some 40 topics had been covered. A further five were prepared in 2002. These are shown in the box below.  

Contact: vuga@cta.nl  

Rural Radio Resource Packs available from CTA  

Agroforestry

Backyard rabbit 
 rearing

Beekeeping

Cassava

Coffee

Crop storage and 
 marketing

Diversified and 
 integrated

 farming

Eco-tourism

Environment

Farmer and village

 organisations

Farmers 
 organisations

Food processing 
 (village level)

Food safety

Food insecurity

Fruit and vegetable 
 production

 for export

Gender

Integrated pest 
 management

Land and 
 agricultural reform 
 and credit

Link between 
 decentralisation

 and land tenure

Market diversification

Livestock feeding

Livestock health

Niche markets

Peri-urban agriculture

Pisciculture

Poultry

Processing of oil seeds

Professionnalisation de

 l'agriculture

Rural credit and 
 financial management

Rural producers as 
 agents of innovation

Small ruminants

Small-scale arboriculture

Small-scale irrigation  
 and water management

Small-scale processing 
 of dairy products

Small-scale vegetable 
 growing

Soil conservation

Soil fertility

Storage of food grains 
 and pulses

Sustainable soil fertility

Water rights

Weeds

Wood lots

Topics for 2002

 

Young people in
 agriculture

 

Marketing 
 strategies for 
 small-scale 
 farmers

 

Sustainable forest 
 management

 

Organic agriculture 
 and biological 
 control of pests

 

Peasant farming in 
 a liberalised 
 economy

 CD-ROM / Internet databases  

The institutions supported by CTA's CD-ROM programme include research centres, government agricultural departments, universities, NGOs, farmers' organisations and private sector organisations. As the information needs of these bodies differ - some require information on markets, prices or export regulations, for example, while others might need educational material - the eligibility criteria differ:  

  • research centres (including universities): the centre must be involved in research and have a minimum of 100 users, CD-ROM hardware, a budget for maintaining and upgrading equipment, and trained staff;
  • NGOs, farmer organisations, private sector: these must be non-profit bodies, their beneficiaries must be farmers or farmer organisations, and they must have a basic structure (library, information  service) for disseminating information.

Click here for a list of centres supported by CTA under the CD-ROM programme: CD-ROM subscribers and Internet database subscribers.  

Contact: mukhebi@cta.nl  

Electronic Reference Library (ERL)

Just as CTA played a key role in pioneering the use of CD-ROM technology to disseminate agricultural information, it is now involved in helping ACP agricultural research and development institutions to use the Internet to access and share information. One way is through access agricultural databases. A recent pilot exercise in Botswana on the possibility of replacing CTA's CD-ROM and Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) services with an Internet subscription showed that ERL and similar gateway services are a suitable replacement where institutions have good Internet access and the resources to run such a service.  

Following the success of the Botswana exercise, the service has been expanded to other centres in ACP countries (see the Internet database subscribers). The current package that CTA supports has four core agricultural databases: AGRICOLA, AGRIS, CAB Abstracts and Tropag & Rural.   

Centres supported by CTA under its CD-ROM programme can apply to be upgraded to receive the Internet subscription if they have the resources to support the service.  

Question-and-Answer Service  

CTA set up a Question-and-Answer Service (QAS) in 1985 to provide information and documentation to ACP partners. An evaluation of the service in 1997 recommended devolving it to ACP institutions, and so a strategy was devised to develop regional QAS centres.  

After a study of key information sources and services in South Africa, a pilot project was implemented involving the University of the Orange Free State (leading institution), the Agricultural Research Council and Sabinet. Following the success of the project, CTA set up QAS centres in other ACP regions: Uganda (to cover Eastern Africa), Mauritius (Indian Ocean countries), the Caribbean and the Pacific. In Central and West Africa, QAS centres have been set up in Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire Ghana and Nigeria. There are plans for a centre in Papua New Guinea (to cover the Pacific region).  

The main objectives of the QAS are to:  

  • build the capacity of the centres to sustain the service through various means, including training;
  • improve access to agricultural information in a timely and cost-efficient way;
  • promote the use of information to improve food security;
  • institutionalise and publicise the service so that in will eventually be used by at least 80% of the target audience;
  • identify the information needs of users on market prices and on research and development activities;
  • identify sources of agricultural and rural development information, particularly publications;
  • improve networking capacity.

The main activities of the national or regional centres are to:  

  • identify users' information needs;
  • source and collect information;
  • conduct searches of the major databases;
  • respond to users' requests (by searching, collecting, analysing, interpreting and validating, and providing verbal or written replies, bibliographic references and/or full-text documents);
  • consult subject-matter specialists when necessary to respond to specific questions;
  • refer users to appropriate information sources;
  • provide advice on sources of finance and training opportunities;
  • disseminate information to users;
  • promote the service through brochures, advertisements, Internet and word of mouth.

Institutions eligible to use the QAS centres include:  

§        government organisations: research institutions, extension units, tertiary education institutions;

§        NGOs in the agricultural and rural development sector;

§        agricultural production bodies: farmers' groups and organisations, co-operatives, farm input and machinery suppliers, local authorities;

§        trade and commerce bodies: local entrepreneurs, agro-industries, packaging and storage enterprises, transport agencies, chambers of commerce and trade.

Click here for the list of CTA-supported QAS centres.  

Contact: mukhebi@cta.nl  

Selective Dissemination of Information  

The Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) service aims to help improve research capability by providing researchers with up-to-date information on their research topic. Specific goals include:  

  • improved access, use and adoption of agricultural technologies;
  • improved priority setting and programme formulation;
  • enhanced knowledge of funding sources and mechanisms;
  • strengthened national and regional research networking;
  • greater integration of scientists into the global agricultural research community;
  • enhanced capacity of NARS to manage research programmes and improve the performance of research organisations;
  • reduced duplication of research activities through the sharing of experiences and knowledge.   

Every 2 months, SDI beneficiaries are sent bibliographic records, including abstracts. The profiles are run on multiple databases (AGRIS, AGRICOLA, CAB-ABSTRACTS) to ensure optimum recall in terms of timeliness and subject, geographic and linguistic coverage. Priority is given to the beneficiary's language preference, within the following range: Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian.  

In addition, each user has an annual quota of 12 units. A unit may be an article from a journal, report or book, or from a grey literature item. Records retrieved are processed to ensure that only one record is supplied for any given bibliographic item. All outgoing communications are sent by airmail or e-mail. The service focuses more on research priority programmes than on individuals.  

The SDI is managed at four levels:  

  1. national and regional research institutions identify the priority information themes and promote the use of the service in their institutions to reach as may beneficiaries as possible;
  2. service providers (CABI and C IRA D ) are selected on the basis of their experience in tropical agriculture. CTA assesses their information resources (database, subject coverage, volume, quality, annual update, publications, and library services, including networks) the information technology infrastructure, staff qualifications and experience, especially relating to service delivery in developing counties;
  3. users and the partner organisations;
  4. the role of CTA is to define policies and strategies, to coordinate service delivery and to coordinate monitoring, evaluation and impact assessment activities.