AGRIS
[Link]
HISTORY
AGRIS is the International bibliographic Information System for the Agricultural
Sciences and technology. It was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO) in 1974, to facilitate information exchange and to bring
together world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture. It become operational
in 1975 as an international initiative aiming to build a common information system for
science and technology in agriculture and related subjects, based on a collaborative
network of institutions. AGRIS uses computer configuration and software packages
located at the Vienna, the INIS centre.
SCOPE AND PURPOSE
AGRIS covers the wide range of subjects related to agriculture science and
technology, including forestry, animal husbandry, aquatic sciences and fisheries,
human nutrition, and extension. Its content includes unique grey literature such as
unpublished scientific and technical reports, theses, conference papers, government
publications, and more. A growing number (around 20%) of bibliographical records
have a corresponding full text document on the web which can easily be retrieved by
Google.
The major objectives of AGRIS will include among others:
“Development of Decision Support Systems (DSS) on Production Practices
and Systems”. It facilitates farmers in adopting appropriate agricultural
production practices;
“Creation of Metadata” to become the Country’s initiative of “National Spatial
Data Infrastructure (NSDI) on Agriculture”
Preparation of Guidelines on standardized methodology/best practices to be
used for building Agricultural Resource Information System in similar districts
of the Country.
ii) Services: The Indian Centre of AGRIS provides the following services:
Training on AGRIS methodology, indexing, abstracting and AGRIS
Classification Scheme.
Provides training for the use of AEROVAC.
Provides training to information and documentation personnel from
developing countries.
SDI services.
Retrospective services.
USING AGRIS
AGRIS search engine, is designed to help users locate the agricultural scientific and
technological information and data they need. Since AGRIS is made up of
bibliographic resources, searching through these leads the user to agriculture,
science and technology information available worldwide. More than 1.8 million
AGRIS records lead the user to the full-text access of the record on the web.
In this way, AGRIS facilitates access to information and data from journal articles,
monographs, book chapters, books, and grey literature - including unpublished
science and technical reports, theses, dissertations and conference papers.
There are two search approaches that are available for users, (i) Simple search and
(ii) Advanced search
The simple search is available via the AGRIS Search interface and is very easy to
use. Simple types in your keyword, phrase or syntax in the search bar and click the
search icon on the far right. In the result window to your left hand, you can apply
various filters to narrow down your results.
AGRIS also offers advanced search capabilities via the AGRIS Advanced search
interface. Advanced search users can apply Boolean search techniques, they can
search specific content type, they can also browse records by AGRIS centers, and
countries. There is also a possibility to perform multilingual searches.