NAL Upgrades AGRICOLA Online Public Catalog

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has released a significant upgrade to its Web-based AGRICOLA catalog of records for the materials in its collection. The new version of AGRICOLA provides improved access--many new search and retrieval capabilities, with daily updates--to over 4 million bibliographic records, the world's largest compilation of agricultural information.

The new AGRICOLA catalog, which replaces AGRICOLA98, is one of several modules implemented in NAL's migration to Endeavor's Voyager library system. In addition to a search and retrieval engine for AGRICOLA, the new Voyager system supports NAL's acquisitions, serials control, cataloging, indexing and circulation operations.

Other features of NAL's new AGRICOLA catalog include:

• Users may search the catalog of books, journals and nonprint items; search the catalog of article records for the journals indexed; or search the two catalog databases combined.
• Users may choose to either display results of searches or e-mail the search results to themselves.
• Hotlinks enable users to obtain the full text of resources, where available electronically.

Future enhancements to the new AGRICOLA will allow user-initiated requests for patrons who have document delivery and borrowing privileges. The National Agricultural Library and Endeavor are working with Relais International to develop a fully electronic request and delivery management system linked to the AGRICOLA bibliographic and holdings records. NAL plans to implement the document delivery system in late spring 2004. Details are at:

http://www.nal.usda.gov/spevents/relais.html

Access to the new AGRICOLA online public catalog is through

http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/

Users visiting the former AGRICOLA98 address will be automatically redirected to the new location.

NAL, located in Beltsville, Md., is part of the Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency. NAL is one of four U.S. national libraries and is known for an expert staff, extensive AGRICOLA bibliographic database, leadership in information services and technology applications, and strong collections in agriculture and related sciences.