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National Agricultural Library and Mississippi State University Pilot Project Will Test High-Value Science Information System for Agriculture

Dean of Libraries Frances Coleman assists President Charles Lee (second from left) with documents formalizing a new collaboration between Mississippi State and the National Agricultural Library. Looking on are NAL director Peter Young (second from right) and Vance Watson, the university's vice president for agriculture, forestry and veterinary medicine.

BELTSVILLE, MD , January 20, 2004 - The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Library has established a pilot demonstration project with Mississippi State University (MSU) in Starkville, MS which will give MSU researchers, teachers, and students easier and faster access to the latest and best available information in the agricultural sciences. National Agricultural Library Director Peter R. Young and Mississippi State University President Charles Lee signed a cooperative agreement at Starkville, MS to establish the first-of-its-kind partnership between the University and the Library and to launch the Digitop PLUS Pilot Demonstration Project.

The collaboration means the MSU community will have licensed access through the World Wide Web to science-based information in agriculture and related fields through electronic scientific journals. This service will be integrated with electronic reference and document delivery services provided by the National Agricultural Library, based in Beltsville, MD.

"This demonstration project will provide MSU faculty members, researchers and students the ability to access leading resources electronically," Lee said. "Through NAL, it brings the most up-to-date research literally to their desktops."

In addition to the benefits to MSU , the project will provide NAL opportunity to test the feasibility, costs, and effectiveness of extending the digital desktop system to other colleges and universities with programs in agricultural sciences.

"Agricultural research and education needs high-value, science-based information which is digital, current, and always available," said National Agricultural Library Director Peter R. Young. "We hope this project with MSU will make it possible to do something similar in support of agricultural teaching, research, and extension in other locations."

The MSU Digital Desktop PLUS service is patterned after Digitop, NAL's Digital Desktop Library for USDA introduced in January 2003. Digitop provides USDA employees with access to electronic newspapers, directories, databases, and thousands of full-text journal articles in agriculture and related sciences.

The National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, MD , is the world's foremost agricultural library. The Library is part of the Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.