7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

on the pattern of Land-Grant colleges in the United States of America. The first
Agricultural University in India was established in 1960 at Pantnagar in Uttaranjal. At
present, the country has 38 State Agricultural Universities, 5 Deemed to be Universities, 3
Central Universities dealing with various educational programmes and one Central
Agricultural University (Appendix-1).
2. Agricultural Libraries In India
The Indo-American Agricultural Survey and Study Team in its final report on ICAR
Institutes and Agricultural University Libraries (1969), recommended that every
agricultural library is a special library which must be oriented to the service of agriculture.
Its collection and the clientele are both discrete. The agricultural universities have
recognized the need for proper library and information services and established libraries
with a planned collection of books, periodicals, reports and other records to meet the study
and research needs of a specific clientele.
At present all the 38 Agricultural Universities and their constituent colleges and the
research institutes have libraries of their own. The Deemed Universities have also
established libraries of their own to extend effective library and information services to
their clientele. However, the services rendered in the Agricultural Libraries are confined to
the agricultural scientists, researchers and students (Kaur, 1996).
Information is a vast dynamic and inexhaustible source that affects all disciplines and
agriculture is no exception. Information in agriculture is used to support research and
development, for the production of foods and services that touch all over lives. It can be
used to improve the quality of life. But, the agricultural libraries are faced with a crisis –
the cost of production and processing of documents is increasing much more rapidly than
the budgets of the libraries which leads to non-availability of all the required resources in
one library.
The role of agricultural information depends on the level of user group served and there are
researchers, teachers and even policy makers and planners who have to keep abreast of new
developments in agriculture all the time. Their main sources of information are research
papers published in the scientific serial literature, conference proceedings (Perumalsamy,
2000). Though the 38 State Agricultural Universities and 5 Deemed Universities have
established library and information service facilities, there is no sharing of resources among
the libraries in a big way. Inter-library lending, the oldest concept of library cooperation, is
also in the infant stage in India. But, effective and efficient library resource sharing is very
important for the agricultural universities.
It was noted that out of 38 State Agricultural Libraries, 35 have their own web site. At
least the list of current serials subscribed by the libraries can be made available over the
web site of the university. But, that too is not available in the agricultural university web
sites. The web sites of the agricultural universities contain only very brief information
about the library and the current serials subscribed by the libraries, holdings details, web
enabled online catalogue are not available in any of the agricultural libraries. The web site
of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) provides web enabled online catalogue
and it is meant only for their library members which requires a login password to use the
web OPAC. Efforts are being taken to form library consortia among agricultural libraries to
subscribe to online journals. However, no effort has been taken so far to throw light on the
back volumes of journals available in the agricultural libraries in India, which will provide
very useful information to the agricultural scientists of this country.
249