Over many years, the National Agricultural Library has maintained formal and informal relationships with libraries and information centers throughout the world. Cooperative and exchange programs are at the heart of these relationships. Political and economic changes affect these programs in multifarious ways.
After the intense political and economic evolution of recent years in the nations of central and eastern Europe and other parts of the world, the administrative staff of the National Agricultural Library (NAL) realized that a great variety of changes were occurring or should occur in the Library’s relationships with related institutions in those countries. Since all of these relationships had a number of common characteristics, and since problems, needs, and priorities were likely to have common characteristics, the roundtable approach to developing the future of these relationships was adopted.
Planning began in 1990 for the first roundtable session at NAL. A grant was received from the United States Department of Agriculture’s Office of International Cooperation and Development in order to fund per diem for foreign participants. Lack of funds necessitated their paying their own transporation costs to and from the United States. A prototype was developed, and several nations from Central Europe were invited to participate.
Central European Participants: Invited participants from the Central European countries of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, includ- ing: 1) the director of the national agricultural library (or equivalent institution), and 2) the level above the director.
U.S. Participants: National Agricultural Library senior staff; representatives of the U.S. agricultural library and information network.
Purpose: The roundtable was intended as a first step in the process to begin creatively to address how best to forge and strengthen organizational linkages and to enhance international cooperation, communication, and coordination between the U.S. agricultural library and information network and the agricultural library and information infrastructures within Central Europe to ensure fluid and cost-effective access to information.
Rationale: The roundtable brought together representatives of the national agricultural libraries (or equivalent) in Central Europe, their U.S. counter-parts, and representatives of other U.S. agricultural information organizations to begin to explore better mutual ways to provide agricultural information to researchers, policy makers, educators, students, farmers, and other specialists by: a) strengthening existing avenues; and b) expanding the use of technologies.
Access to information is vital to the continuing advancement of the food and fiber system. Recent world events have further emphasized the need for strengthening the global dimensions of library and information systems and resources. The development of new strategies and approaches to help keep abreast of the continuing internationalization of scientific and technical information are needed.
International contacts and collaboration are essential to ensuring the continued flow of scientific and technical information. Each year thousands of scientific and technical articles, reports, books, patents, proceedings, software, databases and other materials are published and/or produced in agriculture and its related disciplines. These materials are useful only if a) their existence is known to potentials users of the information, and b) if the material can be obtained in a reasonable amount of time and at a reasonable cost.
In recent years, electronic technologies offered revolutionary new opportunities for networking information. Although remarkable strides had been made in the use of these technologies to improve the collection, processing, and dissemination of information, their ultimate potential remained largely untapped.
Objectives: During the course of the roundtable, participants initiated discussions to:
1) Learn what information systems, programs, and other resources are available within each country, who has access to them, and how they might be implemented globally.
2) Review, renew, and/or augment existing relationships and agreements between NAL and Central European libraries especially in the area of publications exchange and document delivery.
3) Promote the sharing of promising new ideas in networking, through the use of new technologies, that could accelerate the delivery of scientific and technical information to scientists and other users.
4) Explore possibilities for collaborative relationships in information gathering and the development of information products that provide libraries and information centers with a greater capacity to deliver value-added services to end users.
Long-Term Objectives: The long-term objectives of the roundtable were to >
1) Explore existing and developing information programs and other resources within each country that could be shared and/or adapted.
2) Encourage the transfer of effective and appropriate programs, strategies, and resources, especially as they related to the use of advanced information technologies to develop information access, retrieval, and delivery systems that facilitated learning and problem solving in agriculture and the natural resources.
3) Develop cooperative programs to identify, organize, and provide access to information resources nationally and internationally so that resources are available regardless of the location of either the user or the information product.
4) Seek methods of information gathering that systematically identify centers of excellence, scientific expertise, and current research within each respective country.
5) Pursue joint funding of new collaborative information research and development programs in priority program areas of mutual interest and concern.
Benefits to U.S. Agriculture and/or Forestry: The benefits to U.S. agriculture in convening a roundtable on information transfer in a global economy included:
1) Gaining a working knowledge of the institutional infrastructure which drove the information system within each country and how best to access it to speed the acquisition and delivery of critical information to the U.S. agricultural community.
2) Establishing, expanding, and strengthening organizational networks that would facilitate future information transfer activities.
3) Beginning to identify unique bibliographic and non-bibliographic databases as well as other valuable information collections necessary to the work of agriculturalists in the U.S. and that are presently unavailable.
4) Assisting, through increased cooperation with the international library and information sector, the U.S. agricultural research, education, and business communities in regaining and sustaining international competitiveness by assuring an effective information base.
Benefits to Cooperating Countries: The roundtable benefits the Central European libraries and ultimately the users of agricultural information within these countries in several ways including:
1) Providing opportunities for librarians and information specialists to interact with U.S. colleagues and resident information experts.
2) Gaining a working knowledge of the national agricultural library and information infrastructure of the United States.
3) Observing interrelationships of a networked system of delivering information among NAL, field libraries, land grant libraries, special libraries, and Extension through site visits to representative locations in the U.S.
4) Observing libraries and information management systems in the United States and how they could be adapted to meet local needs.
5) Defining the critical information needs of each country and beginning to address how the U.S. can be of assistance.
Based mainly on the work of Joseph N. Swab and Maria Pisa as published in the March/April 1992 (v. 18, no. 3/4) issue of Agricultural Libraries Information Notes by the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, USA.