AgInfo Services in Central Asia and the Caucasus

A paper on the 'Development of Agriculture Information Services in Central Asia and the Caucasus' by Oleg Shatberashvili and Ajit Maru was planned for the recent IFLA congress in Quebec. Unfortunately, the authors could not be there to present it.

The paper looks at the status of agricultural information services in five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan) and in the Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia).

The authors conclude that "there is the need to improve access of researchers to international and regional STI and participate in sharing and exchanging regional information internationally. It implies both traditional library networks and ICT-based services."

There is also a "need to enable access to agricultural information to not only researchers but to farmers, and agricultural intermediaries in the market chain. It is a new challenge created by political and economical transformations. In this regard, extension networks should be considered as an integral part of research and innovation systems, working coherently with information services."

Download the paper (PDF)