The CGIAR Virtual Library Bridging the Gap Between Agricultural Research and Worldwide Users

Abstract

This chapter introduces the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Virtual Library as a tool for linking researchers and agricultural research results. The CGIAR is a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organizations, and private foundations supporting 15 international agricultural centers that work in partnership with national agricultural research institutions and societies. The research results generated are numerous and cover a wide range of subject fields. While these are properly documented, locating relevant and timely information across the system’s 15 centers is a long and tedious process as individual databases have to be searched. The CGIAR virtual library (CGVLibrary) project of the CGIAR Libraries and Information Services Consortium (CGIARLISC) was created in 2005 to address the difficulty of information retrieval across the various centers. It is now available via the WWW (http://vlibrary.cgiar.org/) and knowledge generated by the CGIAR can now be retrieved with a few mouse clicks.