The Belarus Agricultural Library (BelAL) is the central library
of Belarus agriculture. The main aim of the Library is to provide
the agriculture development with scientific and technological
(S&T) information. BelAL discharges as the national centre of
agricultural S&T information and is the unique body in Belarus in
fulfilling the following tasks:

* Providing the immediate access to the principal international,
foreign and national data bases (DBs). The Library creates,
purchases, maintaines and uses 28 bibliographic, abstracting,
full-text and factographic DBs collecting 10 million items of
world information space and hundreds of thousands of full-text
pages. Agricultural universities, colleges, research institutes
and experimental stations use the information resources of BelAL.

* Possessing the most representative collection of agricultural
literature in the country. There are more than 0.5 million of
ducuments issued during 30-40 years from hundreds of sources of
various countries in the Library. Over 5,000 specialists use
these documents immediately, and hundreds of them - through
interlibrary loan (IL).

* Being the national centre of AGRIS international information
system of FAO, the Library processes and sends to AGRIS (Vienna,
Austria) the information on Belarus agricultural literature to
include it into the AGRIS DB.

* Entering into the CARIS international information system on the
research projects in developing countries of FAO and sending
there (Rome, Italy) the data on Belarus research projects.

* Entering into the international network of agricultural
libraries of FAO - AGLINET and having the right of use free
international IL.

* Entering into the Association of Central Agricultural Libraries
of CIS and being user of free international IL in central
agricultural libraries of CIS countries.

* Being centre of international IL BelAL searches and receives
thousands of documents from abroad.

* Being centre of national IL BelAL supplies 400 Belarus
organizations with BelAL documents.

* Being centre of co-ordination of information resources of
Belarus agriculture, the Library supplies and maintains the
information software and fulfils the work on the support of
strategy on MARC-formats of data entering and exchanging and
methods of access to S&T information.

* Playing the role of Internet public access centre.

* Entering into the˙International Association of Agricultural
Information Specialists, the  International  Association of
CDS/ISIS Users, the U.S./Central and Eastern European
Agricultural Library Roundtable, Belarus Library Association.

In the conditions of isolation of Belarus from world information
space, the Library is the unique body which provides to the
scientists and agricultural specialists, businessmen, farmers the
access to the world and national agricultural information
resources. Nowadays BelAL plays the role of intermediator in the
transmission of information from international sources to
national users and from national sources to transnational DBs.
There is no forecasted probability of progress in the access to
the information immediately in universities, research institutes,
colleges, experimental stations and other agricultural
institutions in nearest years. Therefore, probably, efforts must
be made in order to organize the access to information in BelAL
and to develop the system of information transmission to all
interested persons and organizations.

The volume of information stored at BelAL and the level of
national and international co-operation of the Library contradict
to the primitive information technology used in BelAL. In the
work with 28 DBs containing 10 million items and hundreds of
thousands of text pages the Library uses 8 PC (2 - AT/286, 5 -
AT/386 and 1 - AT/486). The possibilities, such necessary for the
organization of free access to information resources, as OPAC,
information transmission to Internet are absent as well as the
possibilities of working with information in various
communicative formats, work places for immediate access to the
information. The solution of multiple technological problems of
Library depends on the establishment of Local Area Network