DORA opens the door to a better agricultural information service

Since 1991 CTA has been implementing a programme to supply agricultural reference books to documentation centres within agricultural educational institutions in ACP countries. Technical and educational reference publications are supplied in accordance with the needs expressed by the users. The programme is intended to improve the performance of the documentation centres in particular and, more generally, the institution itself. In practice, each benefiting centre chooses for itself the books which it judges will be of greatest value to its users. Between 1991 and 1994, 71 national centres of agricultural documentation and information were able to take advantage of the service and increase their stock of publications. (See also Spore 40, p9) Following an evaluation of the DORA programme and a meeting of representatives from the benefiting centres, DORA has, since 1995, focused on agricultural educational institutions and now targets students, teachers, scientists and senior technicians in the agricultural sector. In the francophone ACP countries, 22 institutions have benefited from the service during 1995-96 (see box) and 44 centres in anglophone ACP countries will benefit from the programme between 1996 and 1998. Each site receives on average 300 reference books. Single copies will be provided of 70% of the titles requested and up to a maximum of four copies each can be provided for the remaining 30%. Postage, customs duty or transit costs are the responsibility of the beneficiary. The books can be of any type provided that they relate to agriculture, the only exclusions being encyclopaedias and subscriptions to, or photocopied extracts of, periodicals. Documentation officers in charge of the DORA sites receive a short training course and/or self-teaching materials and they have the opportunity to participate in meetings at which they can share their experiences with others in the programme. They also receive a number of supporting documents, in particular a handbook, details of how to make requests, a questionnaire for evaluating the service and promotional material (posters and brochures) for bringing the DORA service to the attention of users.