(Wednesday August 31st, 2016 Issue)
Agriculture
is the largest contributor to the economic well-being of most Gambians. For the
agricultural sector to continue to grow, research-based knowledge of the
existing agricultural practices, the potential of the sector, the approach for
transforming the sector and the impact of transformation on the economic sector
and population is needed.
Therefore
research-based evidence is important to guide decisions that affect The
Gambia’s agricultural sector and its people.
The
quality and effectiveness of policy-making depend to a large extent on the
quality of knowledge on which decisions are based.
Policy
decisions could be shaped by the political, institutional and cultural
environments in which information and knowledge are produced, disseminated and
exchanged among stakeholders.
Frankly
speaking, research findings may not have immediate and direct influence on
decisions, but over time, their impact can be seen more clearly.
The
release of a research report represents an occasion for collective discussion
and perhaps reconsideration of issues raised by the report. Thus understanding
how knowledge and information are produced and disseminated, and how
policymakers use it, should be an essential piece of agricultural policy and
development strategy.
To
provide evidence to support agricultural policy making, researchers need to be
part of an effective research system. Most countries have an established
National Agricultural Research System (NARS) but the effectiveness of these
systems varies.
Research
has shown that the effectiveness of NARS depends on the national research policy
for the system, a stable institutional structure, diverse, sustainable and
stable funding autonomy of the system, human capacity building which doesn’t
stop sort to only researchers but including library support staff to set
research priorities and conduct analytical research.
Within above environment, high quality
agricultural policy and rural development research in The Gambia would
therefore, require that faculty, students, policymakers and other stakeholders
can have easy access to retrospective and current information methodology and
data obtainable in fully and healthy equipped libraries with recent collections
and technological accesses manned by professional librarians.
Libraries
and well trained NARS librarians support actively agricultural research by
enhancing access to information through effective management of its resources
and provision of a wide range of information services and products to
researchers, scientists and policymakers in the agricultural sector.
The
traditional roles of libraries have been the collection, organization,
preservation and dissemination of intellectual outputs, but the approaches to
these traditional roles are evolving to facilitate easier access.
With
the onset of the digital age, the roles of libraries have expanded to be not
only a center of collective printed materials, but one that provides access to
electronic information, therefore the need to train to develop expertise in
information management is crucially growing in NARS institutions.
However,
NARS libraries in developing countries, The Gambia inclusive, are lagging
behind and vary in their ability to provide similar access to knowledge
resources especially those located in rural, remote areas due to centralized
funding of available resources rather than decentralization or non availability
of funding at all, power supply, internet access, infrastructure and lack of
capacity building for librarians.
Developing
a relevant, up-to-date, balanced and usable collection is an important aspect
of library services.
Academic
and research library collections are built to meet the specific research and
information needs of the institutions, academic and research programs.
The
effectiveness of library collections is measured by the extent to which they
facilitate research, student’s projects and must match the expressed needs and
information expectations of the University of The Gambia (UTG).
