AGORA: Workshop Exercises and Activities

AGORA: Workshop Exercises and Activities

Exercise 8: Other Electronic Resources

Participant’s Worksheet-Hands-on exercises and Group discussion

In this session we will work as individuals or in pairs (depending on the number of participants and terminals available) and use the computers to practise using other electronic resources in agriculture and related areas.

Document Notes

Author ITOCA

Date Last updated 13/03/2007 08:00:00

Summary

On completion of this session the learner will have:

1. Searched AGRICOLA
2. Searched AGRIS
3. Done global and document searches in CGIAR InfoFinder
4. Examined journal coverage in HINARI as compared to AGORA, searched PubMed through HINARI and determined your institution’s eligibility for access to HINARI
5. Considered which resources are best for certain purposes

Step 1

1.1. Exercise explained

With the guidance of the facilitator, individuals or pairs of workshop participants will undertake hands-on work using the computer lab to practice navigating, retrieving citations, and utilising features found on electronic resources such as AGRICOLA, AGRIS, CGIAR InfoFinder, HINARI, and PubMed. Users should record the answers to any questions in the spaces provided in this handout. A short report back and discussion of using the resources will be conducted at the end of this session.

Hands-on duration: 20 minutes,

Report back and discussion: 10 minutes.

1.2. Objective

To navigate, retrieve citations from, and utilise special features found on electric resources in agriculture and related areas.

1.3. Task

Use electronic resources in agriculture, such as AGRICOLA, AGRIS, or CGIAR InfoFinder, HINARI, and PubMed to perform the tasks and answer the questions below.

Step 2

2.1 From the Journals page on AGORA, choose AGRICOLA. In the Journal Citation search, choose the (advanced) search option underneath the Quick Search box and do a keyword search for rice AND Africa. Note how many citations you get and where they come from. Can you get full-text through AGRICOLA or do you have to go back to AGORA? Can you save citations?

2.2 From the Journals page of AGORA, choose AGRIS. Do a Simple Search in the current AGRIS database (1996-present) for information on rice&Africa. Note how many citations you get and where they come from. Can you get the full-text or save the record?

2.3 CGIAR InfoFinder

2.3.1 Do a Global Search for rice AND Africa and make sure the box is checked to include FAO resources. Note how many citations you get and from what sources. Re-run the search using only keywords and omitting the Boolean operator AND. Note how many citations you get.

2.3.2 Using the Documents Search for this resource, find all online documents from CGIAR’s interagency initiative on Gender and Diversity. Can you get the full-text?

2.4 HINARI

2.4.1 Go to HINARI’s Scientific Publications page and choose Browse Journals by Subject. Find two journals each in HINARI that cover agriculture, environmental science and tropical medicine. Can these journals be found in AGORA?

2.4.2 Though HINARI, choose Search for articles through PubMed (Medline). In the simple search box at the top of the page, search for rice AND Africa and note how many and what kind of citations you receive.

2.4.3 Go to the main page of HINARI (http://www.healthinternetwork.org/) and click on About HINARI on the left-hand navigation menu. Look at “who is eligible.” Is your country eligible for free HINARI access?

2.5 Questions

2.5.1 If you are interested in getting documents and webpages produced by FAO, which resource(s) would you most likely use?

2.5.2 If you are interested in international agricultural research centers?

2.5.3 The Future Harvest Centers in particular?

2.5.4 Tropical medicine and nutrition?

2.5.5 A broad range of journal literature concerning agriculture? Concerning biomedicine?