AGORA

As part of the outreach and capacity development activities in Africa, the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research on Victoria Island, in Lagos, Nigeria hosted a TEEAL/AGORA Training-of-Trainers Workshop was held from the 18th to the 20th of August 2015. The training covered The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) and Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA).

The training workshop was organized by the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA). ITOCA has trained over 5,000 academic and research professionals (information specialists, faculty, researchers, policy-makers and practitioners) in information literacy courses focusing mainly on the use of e-resources under the Research4Life (HINARI, AGORA, OARE, ARDI) and TEEAL programmes.

Ms. Olanyika Fatoki from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan and Mr. Sunday Ogunleye from Obafemi Awolowo University facilitated the workshop with support from Mr. Justin Chisenga and Ms. Kristin Kolshus from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The AGORA programme, set up by FAO together with major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding online digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science and related social sciences. AGORA is one of the four programmes that make up Research4Life: AGORA, HINARI (Access to Research in Health Programme), OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) and ARDI (Research for Innovation).

 TEEAL is a full-text and searchable database of articles from more than 325 high-quality research journals in agriculture and the related sciences. It is a searchable, offline, digital library which contains mainly agriculturally focused reference journals updated annually and delivered by the TEEAL Project Office at Cornell University’s Mann Library.

The event was attended by 35 fisheries researchers, librarians and information technology officers from Nigeria who were introduced to electronic information resources access schemes. The training covered the eligibility to the TEEAL and AGORA programmes, password handling, accessing and using the platforms, searching and downloading journal articles from the publishers’ web sites, and reference management using Mendeley. Tips on how to effectively improve TEEAL and AGORA usage in the institutions were also on the programme. The participants appreciated the training.

The major challenges on training on accessing electronic resources in Africa includes, (i) finding  a suitable venue with requisite ICT facilities, (ii) accommodating more than 30 participants in a training room, and (iii) and unstable internet connectivity. Justin Chisenga, a long timer trainer within the African context, in his blog post commented about how the challenge related to ICT facilities and internet connectivity were addressed at the NIOMR workshop.  “Most of the participants brought their personal laptops and broadband modems to the workshops….and four participants who did not have laptops, used their smartphones to access AGORA...”, wrote Mr. Chisenga. If this development were to be the trend in Africa, this could lessen the cost of training and also challenge information providers and librarians to tailor make their services for mobile based users.

For online AGORA training materials:  http://www.fao.org/agora/training/en/

The Research4Life Training Portal: http://www.fao.org/agora/training/r4ltraining/en/

The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL): http://www.teeal.org/