pro-poor, pro-nature & pro-women.
| Design and Development of Databases and Maintenance Services |
| The Informatics Division has been working to enhance capacity building and information networking by collecting, collating and disseminating actionable information. Informatics is also looking after the intranet, web services, remote administration and email administration. |
| Bioinformatics Centre and CD-ROM Library |
| The Bioinformatics Centre, supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, serves as a vehicle for access to and dissemination of databases. The Centre also supports a CD-ROM library, which offers CAB Abstract searches free of cost. From June 2004 to May 2005, 1,262 researchers from 23 universities, 16 research institutions and 46 colleges used the CD-ROM library. The concept of Open Access is also being promoted. |
| Library |
| The Library provides relevant information and plays an important role in meeting the needs of the research programmes of the institution. The main services rendered are Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC), Current Awareness Service (CAS), Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI), Online Information Retrieval System (E-Alerts), Photoduplicating Service and Publication & Distribution Service. It also provides documentation support through the print and electronic media. |
| The Library holds books, journals, back volumes of journals, reports, newspaper clippings and CDs. These relate to various subjects like Agriculture, Biodiversity, Biotechnology, Climate, Education, Food & Nutrition, Forestry, Gender, Health, Information Technology and Rural Development. |
| During the year, 855 new books were added to the existing collection. The journals available in the library are 110 in number. There is a collection of 98 newspaper clippings relating to MSSRF and its activities during the year 2004-2005. CDs dealing with different subjects have also been added and back volumes have gone up by 228 in number. |
| The Library is open to all and provides open access to its resources. The facilities are used not only by the staff of MSSRF, but also by students and researchers from Chennai and outside. There were 1,057 external users during the year.; |