AGRIS

http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/home

HISTORY

AGRIS is the International bibliographic Information System for the Agricultural

Sciences and technology. It was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of

the United Nations (FAO) in 1974, to facilitate information exchange and to bring

together world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture. It become operational

in 1975 as an international initiative aiming to build a common information system for

science and technology in agriculture and related subjects, based on a collaborative

network of institutions. AGRIS uses computer configuration and software packages

located at the Vienna, the INIS centre.

SCOPE AND PURPOSE

AGRIS covers the wide range of subjects related to agriculture science and

technology, including forestry, animal husbandry, aquatic sciences and fisheries,

human nutrition, and extension. Its content includes unique grey literature such as

unpublished scientific and technical reports, theses, conference papers, government

publications, and more. A growing number (around 20%) of bibliographical records

have a corresponding full text document on the web which can easily be retrieved by

Google.

The major objectives of AGRIS will include among others:

 “Development of Decision Support Systems (DSS) on Production Practices

and Systems”. It facilitates farmers in adopting appropriate agricultural

production practices;

 “Creation of Metadata” to become the Country’s initiative of “National Spatial

Data Infrastructure (NSDI) on Agriculture”

 Preparation of Guidelines on standardized methodology/best practices to be

used for building Agricultural Resource Information System in similar districts

of the Country.

ii) Services: The Indian Centre of AGRIS provides the following services:

 Training on AGRIS methodology, indexing, abstracting and AGRIS

Classification Scheme.

 Provides training for the use of AEROVAC.

 Provides training to information and documentation personnel from

developing countries.

 SDI services.
  Retrospective services.

USING AGRIS

AGRIS search engine, is designed to help users locate the agricultural scientific and

technological information and data they need. Since AGRIS is made up of

bibliographic resources, searching through these leads the user to agriculture,

science and technology information available worldwide. More than 1.8 million

AGRIS records lead the user to the full-text access of the record on the web.

In this way, AGRIS facilitates access to information and data from journal articles,

monographs, book chapters, books, and grey literature - including unpublished

science and technical reports, theses, dissertations and conference papers.

There are two search approaches that are available for users, (i) Simple search and

(ii) Advanced search

The simple search is available via the AGRIS Search interface and is very easy to

use. Simple types in your keyword, phrase or syntax in the search bar and click the

search icon on the far right. In the result window to your left hand, you can apply

various filters to narrow down your results.

AGRIS also offers advanced search capabilities via the AGRIS Advanced search

interface. Advanced search users can apply Boolean search techniques, they can

search specific content type, they can also browse records by AGRIS centers, and

countries. There is also a possibility to perform multilingual searches.