TEEAL Reach Grows
Agricultural science researchers in the Caribbean and Pacific regions will now have instant access to thousands of articles from more than 200 high-quality research journals in agriculture and related sciences, thanks to an important advance for The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) project at Mann Library.
Founded in the early 1990s on a belief that long-term improvements in food security and agricultural development would not be possible without giving scientists better access to current research, TEEAL is a searchable, offline, digital library available to public and nonprofit institutions in eligible-income countries.
The first set was shipped in 1999 to the University of Zimbabwe on 172 CDs, weighing 50 pounds. The library now fits on a single small 1TB hard drive, with this year's update delivered on a single 32GB flash drive. Financial support by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as well as a new round of funding from the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) is making it possible for Mann to deliver TEEAL at reduced or no cost to eligible developing country institutions.
More specifically the new CTA funding will allow the distribution of full TEEAL sets to 50 new institutions, with the Caribbean and Pacific regions—where ten new clients have recently received TEEAL, including the first institutions in El Salvador and Guatemala—joining Sub-Saharan Africa as a target for expansion in the distribution of this invaluable research resource.
For the full story, see Cornell Chronicle article. Additional information about TEEAL is also available in 2/3/2012 Cornell Sun article.