ISTIA  LIBRARY

ˇ     PUBLIC LIBRARY
ˇ     SPECIALISED LIBRARY


THE ACTIVITY OF THE LIBRARY

1.  THE  BUILDING  OF  THE  BOOK  FUND
2.  THE  BUILDING  OF  THE  AGRO-CATALOGUE
3.  OFFERING  LIBRARY  INFORMATION  SERVICES


1.    THE  BUILDING  OF  THE  BOOK FUND



THE   FAO   DEPOSITORY   LIBRARY

FOUNDING:         1993

NUMBER  OF  HOLDINGS:         654

NUMBER  OF  PERIODICALS:      7

DOCUMENT  LANGUAGE:           ENG


THE  ACTIVITIES  OF  THE  FAO  DEPOSITORY  LIBRARY

*        ACQUISITIONS
*        INFORMATION FLYERS
*        EXPOSITIONS
*        PARTICIPATION  IN  SPECIALISED EVENTS
*        INFORMATIONS  ON  THE  INTERNET
*        SELLING  FAO  PUBLICATIONS
*        DISTRIBUTION  OF  FAO  BOOK 
*        DONATIONS


EU  FUNDS

FOUNDING  OF  THE  SPECIAL  COLLECTION:    1996

INFORMATION  SOURCES:
    
ˇ   PUBLICATIONS
ˇ   PERIODICALS
ˇ   CD-ROM


CD  DATABASES:

1.   CELEX   JUSTIS
2.   OFFICIAL  JOURNAL  OF  THE  EC
3.   EUROSTAT
4.   EUROFARM
5.   OECD  STATISTICAL  COMPENDIUM
6.   SCAD


GUIDEBOOKS  AND   MANUALS

ˇ   DICTIONARIES
ˇ   ENCYCLOPEDIAS
ˇ   MANUAS


Ladies and gentlemen,

allow me to introduce you on the activity of the  Institute of
Scientific and Technical Information for Agriculture Library
(ISTIA) in Nitra.
Within  the  organizational structure of  our  Institute,  our
Library  occupies  a  firm position. In the  first  place,  it
serves our fellow colleagues, but at the same time it is  also
a  Public  library  and is visited mostly  by  scientists  and
other  university  workers. The specialized structure  of  the
Book  Fund  as  well  as  the modern information  sources  and
services   attract  the  scientific  public  from  the   whole
Slovakia.

The activity of the Library is directed at three areas:
1.  The building of the Book Fund
2.  The building of the Agro-Catalogue
3.  Offering library information services

1.  The building of the Book Fund

Our Book Fund has three special collections:

1.  The FAO Depository Library
2.  The EU Fund
3.  Guidebooks and Manuals


   1.The FAO Depository Library

was  founded  in   November 1993, when   our  Institute  UVTIP
(ISTIA)  following the entry of Slovakia into the  FAO,   have
obtained  the Statute FAO Depository Library. Since that  time
we  receive one copy of every publication issued by   FAO.  In
the  framework of the Book Fund, FAO publications  make  up  a
special collection, which is put out of the study room and  is
anailable  to  the  public. At present  our  Library  has  six
hundred  and fifty-four titles from FAO and 7 periodicals.  It
is  an  agricultural literature in English language, which  is
oriented to analysis of the state of world agriculture.
Global   statistical   overviews  from  various   regions   of
agriculture, collections of regulations and laws, lectures and
reports  from expert sessions and various FAO commissions  are
the   unique   sources  of  global  information  about   world
agriculture.
Publications from FAO we obtain in English and to overcome the
language  barrier we translate the titles into Slovak,  attach
them  Slovak descriptors and characterize the contents in  the
form  of  annotations. The most interesting titles and reports
about which is the greatest interest among our users are  also
translated into Slovak. To determine it we use questionnaires.
It  would  be  pointless to build a special Book Fund  without
informing  the scientific public about it. So we  try  various
forms of enlightenment:
ˇ     regularly  we  publish  acquisition  lists   about   new
 publications and send them to all research institutes in  the
 field of agriculture, to specialized and scientific libraries
 as well as to private perdsons
ˇ   about the latest and most interesting titles we prepare
information flyers in Slovak language and send them out to
workplaces involved in the particular area
ˇ    we  arrange exhibitions of documents on current   themes,
 for  example the fifth birthday of the FAO,  the        World
 Food  Summit  and so on, which we promote in the  specialised
 press and mass media
ˇ     every   summer  we  hold  our  own  exhibition  at   the
 international agricultural exposition AGROKOMPLEX    here  in
 Nitra
ˇ   we report about our activity at specialised sessions,
seminars and other events
ˇ   we also use the most up-to-date technology:

*     under Home Page of our Institute in Internet we set  out
 the basic informations about FAO Depository  Library
*    from next year we want to replace our printed acquisition
 lists with informations through Internet that we would prompt
 inform our users about new acquisitions in our library
*    likewise  we  want  to  solve the problem  of  duplicates
 distribution. Some titles we obtain in several copies and  we
 send them to research institute and Universities libraries and
 via the Internet we can to reach that FAO literature also get
 in the remotest regions.
    We  hope,  that when we offer a posibility to choose  from
duplicates
     through  I  nternet,  their  distribution  will  be  more
effective.
ˇ    a futher possibility is to get informations about our FAO
 documents   through on-line searches into our Agra-catalogue,
 which  is available through Internet in database centre CEDAR
 in  Vienna. The catalogue is built in cooperation with eleven
 research  institutes in database system micro CDS/ISIS  under
 the application od ADEM 3.8 and the research module IRIS
ˇ    among  other activities we are also licenced to sell  FAO
 publications
ˇ    our  Library takes part also in the distribution of  Book
 Donation, which we obtained from FAO. We have spread the offer
 lists  on  FAO literature to all institutes in the  field  of
 agriculture  and to research institutes which are  busy  with
 agricultural problems and we also send them to all scientific
 and specialised libraries in Slovakia. The greater public  is
 made aware of it through the daily and specialist press.


2. THE EU FUND

A  second  constituent of our Book Fund  is  a  collection  of
information sources oriented at agriculture in the EU. Despite
of that we begun built this Fund only recently, already now we
have  the fundamental informations. Our orientation is  mostly
directed  at  acquiring  CD  databases.  Each  worker  in  our
institute  and  also each visitor of Libary can  work  through
computer network LAN with databases:

*   legislative CELEX Justis (laws and regulations)
    OJ  CD  (Official Journal of European Communities)

*   statistics EUROSTAT (statistics dates  about EU)
    EUROFARM (economy  resultes of agricultural enterprises)
    OECD

*   bibliography SCAD   (bibliography  informations about
    publications of EU)
              

 Our LIBRARY of HANDBOOKS is for internal use. It consist  of:

*     dicitionaries from the most European languages
*     encyclopedias
*     specialised manuals

 We  know  that  entering into new information  networks  also
 changes  the organization of libraries work. For that  reason
 we  try to use the Internet and so to improve the quality  of
 our library and mainly reference services.
 We are convinced that for the optimalization of our work also
 contribute  our  today´s conference because the  exchange  of
 informations  in  the  library - information  sphere  at  the
 international  level  is  a  unique  opportunity  to   obtain
 informations about existing technologies and services .


 Thank you for your attention