Widen your horizons!

This CD-ROM database of 4,000 agricultural information centres is technically correct and simple to use, although its manual s use of non-agricultural examples from other databases suggests a lack of user-mindedness. It is extremely focused on North American and European centres, with a mere handful of developing country services and mainly the older and Northern-linked institutions at that. Why? Perhaps the compilers knew not how to explore beyond their own horizons, and perhaps they just never got enough replies to their questionnaires. Its basic data covers centres addresses, Internet references, topics covered, numbers of documents and staff. There is no imaginative mention of links to networks, membership of thematic groups, or titles of bulletins in the helpful style of, say, the International Union of Associations. It amounts to an update of an already inadequate directory of 1995, rather than a new edition. A shame, since so much more information is openly available than the compilers found. We compared the database with a sample issue of Spore: of the eleven agricultural information centres mentioned in Spore 80, the database lists just two both European. The result is surely better than nothing, but it is to be hoped the noticeable omissions of ACP institutions are corrected in future editions. Maybe they should make themselves better known, as well as the compilers looking further. Agricultural information resource centers A world directory 2000 (CD-ROM) compiled by IAALD, National Information Services Corporation, USA. 2000. CTA Number 1040. 80 credit pointsAgricultural information resource centers : A world directory 2000 (CD-ROM) compiled by IAALD, National Information Services Corporation, USA. 2000. CTA Number 1040. 80 credit point