Social Media for Development: Opportunities and Challenges

During the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair, 26 – 29 September 2011, held in Rome, Italy, I gave a short interview on Social media for development: Opportunities and Challenges. Here is the video of that interview. Enjoy it..

Ghanaians Trained on AGORA and TEEAL

Accra, Ghana - Thirty participants, made up of research scientists, lecturers and librarians from agricultural research institutes and faculties of agriculture in Ghana took part in the E-Resources Training-of-Trainers from 1 – 3 November 2011. The workshop was organized by the Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa (ITOCA), facilitated by the FAO Regional Office for Africa, and hosted by the Institute for Scientific and Technological Information (INSTI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). The workshop focused on facilitating access to scientific literature available on Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture (AGORA) portal and LAN version of  TEEAL: The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library.

Subscription and access to scientific literature is a major challenge for most research and academic institutions in Africa, and there therefore AGORA and TEEAL are helping institutions to address this challenge. Both AGORA and TEEAL provide access to full-text PDF articles in digital collections of journals for agriculture and related sciences.

Among others, the workshop programme included an overview of the Research4Life programme, practical exercises on formulating effective search strategies, accessing and retrieving journal articles in PDF from AGORA and TEEAL, organizing e-resources training workshops and publicizing e-resources.

Institutions represented at the workshop included:

• Food Research Institute
• Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
• Ministry of Food and Agriculture
• University of Cape Coast
• University of Ghana
• Water Research Institute

Participants are expected to pass-on the knowledge gained on the workshop to colleagues and students in their institutions.

ZARI Researchers Attend Seminar on Opening Access to Research Outputs

Lusaka, Zambia - Research scientists and research officers at the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute (ZARI) took part in a seminar on “Opening Access to Science and Technology Research”. The seminar which focused on agricultural research, was organized by ZARI Seminars Organizing Committee and the Zambia Agricultural Research for Development Information Network (ZAR4DIN), and covered:

Mr. Davy Simumba from ZARI presenting on ZAR4DIN

• Open Access (OA) Definition of Concepts/Terms
• Constraints to Agriculture Research Impact
• Benefits of Adopting OA Approaches
• Open Access Strategies
• Open Access Initiatives - Examples
• CIARD Initiative
• How to Promote Open Access

The seminar also looked at the ZAR4DIN project activities at the national level and within ZARI.  At the end of the seminar, the general consensus among the scientists was that ZARI should work towards enhancing the visibility of its research outputs.

The seminar was held at Mt. Makulu Research Station in Chilanga.