January 2004 • Volume 38 • Number 1

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APS Joins TEEAL Initiative

TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library) has been called “The Library in a Box.” It is a collection of CD-Roms that contain the contents of the foremost agricultural journals, including the Annual Review of Phytopathology, Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology, Plant Pathology, and other leading phytopathological periodicals. Currently, TEEAL includes the complete text and images for 140 journals from 1993 to 2001, representing more than 1.8 million pages on 381 compact discs.

TEEAL was created specifically to help agricultural scientists in developing areas. Conceived by Wally and Jan Olsen (respectively, former senior research associate and former director, Mann Library, Cornell University) and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, TEEAL is now found in more than 70 libraries around the world. It is only available to the world’s poorest countries, or what World Bank defines as developing countries. Subscribers must pay for this resource, but it is available at a much reduced cost. For example, a full subscription worth about $700,000 costs $20,000. In most cases, external funding is identified to help libraries purchase TEEAL.

As expected, TEEAL is widely respected and highly sought in developing areas. Gracian Chimwaza, TEEAL distribution director for Africa, indicates that 90% of the librarians he talks to have heard of TEEAL and that “everybody wants it” once they understand what it offers. Elisio Ponce, director of the Philippine Bureau of Agricultural Research, concludes that “TEEAL has a profound effect on agricultural research. It provides access to the world’s most important scientific literature, which would otherwise be unaffordable even to key research institutions. It helps bring about research excellence in agriculture.”

After the APS Publications Board confirmed the value and desirability of contributing our journals to the TEEAL effort, APS staff evaluated the impact TEEAL membership might have on journal revenue, the major source of income for APS. The APS leadership has been cautious when considering issues that have financial implications. Considering that TEEAL cannot be networked and calculating the number of subscribers who might be lost if APS journals were freely available in target libraries, APS staff concluded that the impact on revenue would be relatively minor. Consequently, the FAC/EXEC Committee recently decided that APS would become a member of TEEAL.

Beginning with a September 2004 release, the 2003 year-end CD-Roms of Phytopathology, Plant Disease, and Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions will become part of the TEEAL catalog. OIP applauds this decision and is excited that our journals will now reach a wider audience in developing countries. For additional information and a list of the 111 countries that are eligible, visit the TEEAL website at www.teeal.cornell.edu.

 

Time to Nominate APS Officers!

You should have received an e-mail on January 6 encouraging your participation in the APS officer nominations process. Your involvement is important. To submit your nominees for APS officers, simply use the web form at apsnet.org/members/nomination.asp. (Paper nomination ballots were sent only to those members without an e-mail address on file at APS headquarters.) All nominations must be received on or before Friday, January 30, 2004. Please exercise your right as a voting APS member to nominate fellow members for the offices of APS vice president and councilor-at-large.
 

Annual Meeting Online Abstract Submission Available January 9

Online submission of APS abstracts for the upcoming annual meeting in Anaheim, CA, July 31–August 4, 2004, will be available January 9 on APSnet at www.apsnet.org/meetings/2004/. The deadlines for submission are February 27 for oral paper presentations and March 12 for poster presentations. You are encouraged to submit before the last day to avoid delays due to high system usage.
 

 
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