INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION DIVISION

ICRAFs primary objective in the area of information and communications is to identify and bring together useful information on agroforestry and make it available to a wide audience. In pursuit of this goal, the INFOCOMM was substantially expanded and restructured in 1988. It now consists of two sections: the Information and Documentation Unit and the newly created Communications Unit. Permanent staff of these units doubled in the course of the year, most of the growth occurring in the last six months.

In collaboration with COLLPRO and ROD, the two units of INFOCOMM work to increase awareness of the potential of agroforestry to meet development needs and to promote the incorporation of agroforestry research programmes into institutional agendas and national development plans. This work is based on continuous expansion and improvement of ICRAF's store of agroforestry information and the capacity to make it available to a wide range of users. The target audiences identified by INFOCOMM include researchers, donors, policy-makers, extension groups, non-governmental organizations, development agencies, rural development projects, educators and the general public.

In keeping with these objectives, the division formed close links during the year with two groups within the network of international agricultural research centres supported by the CGIAR. The bead of the Information and Documentation Unit became a member of the CGIAR Committee on Information and Documentation, while the director of INFOCOMM was invited to join the CGIAR's Public Awareness Committee.

INFORMATION AND DOCUMENTATION UNIT

At the end of the year, the ICRAF Library collection included 4,750 books, 8,704 reprints and subscriptions to more than 120 periodicals, in addition to more than 100 periodicals received gratis or on an exchange basis. Information on new accessions is published on a regular basis in a Bimonthly Accessions List, with entries indexed by author, title, subject, plant species and geographic area.

Women in Kathama, Kenya plant Flemingia congesta seedlings among maize.

ICRAF documentalists have compiled information from the library collection into two specialized bibliographies— Agroforestry literature: a selected bibliography sod Agroforestry literature: a bibliography with abstracts on subsaharan Africa—with funding from IDRC. The first of these has been published and the second is now in press.

The computerized library database is expanding on a continuous basis. At the end of 1988, it contained more than 12,000 entries, identified according to author(s), subject(s), key words in the English title, plant species, publisher, year and language of publication. On request, ICRAF staff search the database and provide a printout of references free of charge. Institutions and individuals outside ICRAF requested 518 database searches in 1988, almost doubling the number of requests received the previous year. To speed up responses, the library database is being integrated and transferred to Micro CD/ISIS software, developed for this purpose by UNESCO.

French-language requests for database searches increased during the year to four times the 1987 level, reflecting expanded agroforestry activities in francophone Africa linked with COLLPRO's increasing involvement in the region. To facilitate assistance to francophone clients, a French-language documentalist, an information specialist seconded by the French government, and a bilingual secretary joined the unit's staff in 1988.

The continued growth of COLLPRO's outreach programme—primarily through AFRENA—has stimulated a corresponding growth in information and documentation services for COLLPRO projects, outposted staff and their host institutions. In 1988, 15 librarians and documentalists came to ICRAF for a two-week course on Information Management Methods for Agroforestry. They included participants from the agricultural libraries of eight national research institutions in Eastern and Southern Africa that collaborate with AFRENA programmes in the region. The course was designed to acquaint library staff with the concept of agroforestry as a land-use system, the nature of agroforestry information and literature, and ICRAF's organization and programme of work. Course participants also gained hands-on experience with ICRAF's library database, using the Micro CD/ISIS software.

A major achievement of ICRAF's Information and Documentation Unit in 1988 was the inauguration of Agroforestry Abstracts, a quarterly journal published by ICRAF in collaboration with the CAB International. Two regular issues and one double issue were published in 1988, containing a total of more than 1,000 abstracts. Unit staff helped establish the scope of the publication, design its table of contents and select the terminology used for literature retrieval and indexing. They also coordinated the preparation of overview articles for selected issues. The first of these appeared in the September 1988 issue. ICRAF provides subscriptions to this useful periodical to 500 selected libraries and research institutions.

Subject to international copyright law, the Information and Documentation Unit provides photocopies of most documents in the library, except books, free of charge to users in developing countries. Other users receive copies on a cost-recovery basis. In 1988, 872 documents were photocopied on request from researchers and field workers in developing countries.

Photocopies of relevant documents are also provided regularly through a current awareness service, directed primarily to researchers collaborating with ICRAF field projects through AFRENA and to former participants in ICRAF's training programme. As of year's end, this service was providing literature to scientists and field workers in 145 locations.

Finally, ICRAF's Information and Documentation Unit provides information throughout the year to visiting agroforestry specialists. In 1988, the library received 104 visitors.

COMMUNICATIONS UNIT

ICRAF's former Publications Unit was replaced in 1988 with an expanded Communications Unit. New staff members joining the unit during the year included a unit head, consultant editor, translator, graphic artist, audiovisual coordinator and bilingual secretary. The arrival of an English-to-French translator in the second half of the year meant that it will be possible to produce ICRAF's new quarterly magazine—Agroforestry Today—and other documents in French closer to the publication dates of the English-language editions.

ICRAF's Annual report 1987 appeared in the middle of the year with substantial changes in format and design. Other publications produced during the year included The potential of agroforestry, containing texts of the keynote addresses presented at ICRAF's 10th anniversary conference; one ICRAF Working Paper, 14 AFRENA Reports, two fact sheets, a publications booklet and two brochures for visitors. Editorial work was also completed on two monographs in ICRAF's Science and Practice of Agroforestry Series—Agroforestry for dryland Africa and Agroforestry for soil conservation—as well as on an executive summary and a full proceedings publication from the Second Kenya National Seminar on Agroforestry, held at ICRAF in November. The unit also distributed reprints of 11 articles published by ICRAF scientists in international journals and inaugurated an external peer review process for major manuscripts.

A slide/tape presentation, The promise of agroforestry, was completed in 1988 and used extensively to brief workshop and course participants as well as visitors to ICRAF. This production will be revised in 1989 and other audiovisual presentations prepared with the help of an audiovisual producer working at ICRAF on a 12-month fellowship supported by SIDA.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The division's public affairs activities in 1988 aimed at increasing media attention to agroforestry. The BBC interviewed ICRAF scientists on several occasions and paid two visits to the Machakos field station. Radio features on agroforestry and on ICRAF were aired in the BBC's Science in Action and Fanning World series. ICRAF staff were also interviewed on Kenya television and radio and a six-page article, 'Agroforestry, a new name for an old practice', was placed in the July/August issue of Ceres, published by FAO. In Zambia and Tanzania, print and broadcast media featured agroforestry and ICRAF in articles and radio and television productions to coincide with a visit by members of the Board of Trustees to COLLPRO projects in Zambia and the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Tanzania.

The Division also wrote and published three issues of the ICRAF Newsletter, each successive issue expanded and redesigned in terms of content and format. This process marked the gradual transformation of the newsletter into a new, general-audience magazine—AgroforestryToday. One issue of the newsletter appeared in French in 1988 and translations of the other two issues were in progress.

 Communications staff interview a farmer during a field trip in Kenya.
 

InfoDoc staff teaching at the Information Management Methods for Agroforestry (IMMA) 1988 training course.