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NAL launches Phase One of Electronic Ag Information System at Mississippi State

BELTSVILLE, Md., February 27, 2004 - The National Agricultural Library (NAL) and Mississippi State University (MSU) have jointly begun the first phase of the NAL/MSU Digitop PLUS Pilot Demonstration Project at the MSU campus in Starkville, Mississippi.

The first phase of the project will enable MSU faculty, staff, and students, as well as researchers at the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Stations and the Mississippi State Extension Service to have NAL-facilitated access via the World Wide Web to science-based information in agriculture and related fields in about 70 select journals not previously available electronically through MSU libraries.

These MSU Digitop PLUS journals are tagged with a Digitop PLUS icon and available through the Libraries' Electronic Journals A-Z List maintained on the MSU Libraries' Web site. MSU users may click on the MSU Digitop PLUS icon or on an article title, and be automatically linked to full-text articles licensed through the National Agricultural Library.

The next phase of the demonstration project will add additional journals and integrate these publications with access services that include reference and document delivery provided by the National Agricultural Library. NAL and MSU are working with EBSCO Information Services, an information access and management company, to license electronic access to journals and databases, and to integrate NAL's AGRICOLA database with the electronic resources available to MSU. These electronic resources include EBSCO's Academic Search® Premier, Business Source® Premier, and other resources available through the MSU Libraries.

NAL Director Peter R. Young and MSU President Charles Lee signed a cooperative agreement in January to establish the Digitop PLUS Pilot Demonstration Project. The project will provide NAL opportunity to test the feasibility of extending the digital desktop system to other colleges and universities with programs in agricultural sciences.

The MSU Digitop PLUS service is patterned after Digitop, NAL's Digital Desktop Library for USDA, introduced in January 2003. Digitop provides USDA employees with access to thousands of electronic resources in agriculture and related sciences.

The National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, MD, is the world's foremost agricultural library. The Library is part of the Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

EBSCO Subscription Services, EBSCO Publishing, and EBSCO Book Services form the EBSCO Information Services group. For more information, visit EBSCO's Web site.