IRRI Library on the WWW: Your Information Partner : an update

Whether you live in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas, the IRRI Library can give you the rice information you need. Here are 12 reasons to try out the Library’s web site:

1. Online Catalog. Search for books and journals about rice, agriculture, ecology, plant breeding and other subjects of interest. The Library also has books on training, information technology, human resources, as well as guides to better writing, countries of the world, and more.

2. Rice Bibliography. The flagship of IRRI Library covers all technical rice literature of the past 50 years. Do a literature search, limit your search by date or by language, and export selected references to your email address. Many citations carry hyperlinks to the full text. And remember if you are from a developing country you can get free literature from the Library via electronic delivery.

3. E-Journals. More and more electronic journals can be read via your desktop, open access & licensed site. Simply Search the OPAC by title or click on E-Journals.

4. Virtual Reference Desk. Online encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesaurus, country information, index to acronyms – dozens of reference sources are but a click of the mouse away. Ask your questions via Skype, or contact IRRI Library.

5. Online Databases. Do a literature search by opening one of the several online databases on agriculture and other related subjects.

6. News. On your computer screen, read today’s edition of the Manila Bulletin, Washington Post, Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Bangkok Post, etc.

7. World Libraries. Connect to the catalogs of great libraries of the world, from the Library of Congress to the University of Queensland.

8. IRRI’s Knowledge Resources:
• Journal papers by IRRI Staff. Full text journal articles written by IRRI staff are linked to the Library’s web site.
• IRRI Books. Read/download the full text of more than 300 IRRI- published books via GoogleBooks.
• IRRI Photos. Browse through or download IRRI photographs on various subjects.
• Cereal Knowledge Bank. Explore the leading repository of extension and training materials related to rice, maize, and wheat production .

• IRRI’s Institutional Repository. Read the full text of IRRI’s published and unpublished research outputs, seminar presentations,and theses, etc.

9. Research Impact. Scientists can track down the number of times their papers were cited by other researchers via Web of Science’s Science Citation Index.

10. Alerts. Open Current Contents Connect to be aware of the latest in your field of study via daily, weekly, or monthly alerts. Create a search profile by simply keying in your search terms. You may do this on your own or ask the IRRI Librarians to create alerts for you.

11. Standard Rice Terminology. Connect to the IRRI Rice Thesaurus and find standard terms used in rice research, then search for related literature via Google, Yahoo, IRRI Rice Database, and Agricola via the same platform.

12. Other Internet Sites. Several more are available: from the CGIAR Virtual Library to various online databases and the web sites of all CGIAR centers and other institutions.

Try IRRI Library for your information needs. You’ll soon be hooked! http://ricelib.irri.cgiar.org

-Ian Wallace 7 May 1998 ; revised by Mila Ramos 15 January 2010.