Open Access and Open Source: Considerations for Agricultural Academic Libraries in Promoting Collaboration and Sharing of Information and Knowledge
Lwoga,Edda Tandi / 2006

This paper discusses how open access (OA) and open-source technology can be used by agricultural academic libraries in Africa to improve collaboration and information and knowledge sharing among agricultural researchers and other stakeholders. The study draws from literature review and from various case studies to discuss the application of open-source technology and OA concepts to foster information and knowledge sharing. This paper observes that if used effectively, open-source technology can provide a number of tools that can be used by agricultural academic libraries to improve information and knowledge sharing among their users on an OA basis. Such tools include content management systems and journal publishing software. Since the application of OA movement is still very low in Africa, this paper urges African agricultural academic libraries to adopt open-access archives (OAA) to increase accessibility, visibility, interactivity and usability of African agricultural research, thus accelerating the world's research activity. By implementing OAA, agricultural libraries can also benefit from other value-added services, which include search engines that provide citation and indexing services (for example, Google), blogs, discussion lists and wiki. However, more consideration should be put on the following to increase the use of OAA: OA awareness programs, technical abilities, standards and institutional policies that should be strongly supported by institutions and research funding agencies