VARANASI: The Central Library of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) would develop an Indian version of The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (Teeal) with the help from Cornell University, to create a nationwide network of agricultural libraries for easy access to resources among scholars.

BHU chief librarian AK Srivastava said a workshop will be held by the end of the year to discuss implementation of Indian version of Teeal, in which several agricultural scientists from India and abroad and delegates from Agricultural Innovation Partnership (AIP) would participate.

The Central Library will also function as the nodal information resource centre' for AIP project launched with the support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), under the 'Feed the Future' initiative. In collaboration with Albert K Mann Library of Cornell University, BHU library will form a link of information between scholars, scientists, researchers, trainers and farmers. The endeavour of Aip is to increase food security and improve farming methods in the eastern parts of India.

The Central Library is set to undergo several new developments which includes digitalization of manual knowledge of farming, digital preservation of information for easy access to rare and fragile study material and books, database management, automation and networking and development of digital archival structure.

Srivastava and Vaishampayan, the two librarians from BHU, attended a 45-day training programme from July to August on 'International Library Capacity Building' organized by AIP at Albert R Mann Library. They got training in e-learning, e-resource development and digitization of study material. The two also visited around 30 to 40 libraries, including New York Public Library, New York State University Library, Colombia University Library and University of Pittsburgh to observe to seek good points of all these libraries.

"Library has been fully computerized a month ago, students can check the location and availability of books from anywhere inside the campus. We are also planning to give remote access to students who are not residing inside the campus," Srivastava said. The process of digitalization of rare books had already been started. The library has also increased its online assets. There are around 16,000 online journals while students can also access online books from Cambridge University Press, Sage HSS, Taylor and Francis and several other publications.

The library of Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU will also be computerized.