Ithaca, new York
August 20,  2001

Cornell University's Albert R. Mann Library has reached a milestone in disseminating information to the developing world: It has sold its 50th "library in a box," a full set of scientific journals packed onto 296 CD-ROMs. Distribution began in 1999.

The 50th set was sent to the Bunda College of Agriculture in the sub-Saharan Africa county of Malawi. Bunda's library serves about 600 students, scientists and lecturers in an isolated community about 30 kilometers from the country's capital, Lilongwe. The library, supported by donors, had subscribed to nearly 100 journals. Because of financial cuts, the library has had no journal subscriptions for the past three years.

Now, like 49 other institutions in the developing world, Bunda has a "library in a box," called The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library, or TEEAL. "The Bunda library was very enthusiastic to
acquire TEEAL with its full-text articles and graphics," says Nicole Joos, the Mann Library's TEEAL project manager.

The boxed library -- which includes 140 journals with back issues to 1993 and with provisions for updates through 2005 -- is available for sale only in 111 developing countries and is priced at $10,000. That may seem like a lot of money: but an annual subscription to all 140 journals, ranging from African Crop Science Journal to the World's Poultry Science Journal, if bought separately, would cost well over $350,000. Because leading scientific publishers have waived royalty fees, the library is able to offer TEEAL at a fraction of the real cost. Several donor agencies, including the World Bank and the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, make financial grants available.

From idea to reality, TEEAL had to clear years of hurdles to assemble the collection, including about five years of negotiations with the world's leading scholarly journals on agricultural and life sciences. Jan Olsen, former director of the Mann Library, and Wallace Olsen, a former research associate there, originated the idea, negotiated copyright agreements and convinced publishers that distributing their journals by CD-ROM to developing countries would not hurt potential subscription sales. The 75-pound set is perfect for place like Bunda, where reliable Internet access is spotty; in 1999, for example, Malawi had only one Internet service provider. "The infrastructure
for web access in the developing world is unreliable and costly right now," says Joos. "TEEAL offers instant access to full text and graphics of articles, and it is available at a fraction of the cost
of journals in the developing world."

Recently, the World Health Organization announced it would provide 1,000 medical journals via the web to medical schools, research laboratories and government health departments through a pilot
program in developing countries. "We're keeping a close watch on this recent phenomenon of publishers offering their medical journals online to developing countries at a low cost, or free of charge," says Joos. "Knowledge is without a doubt the new currency, so this is heartening news. Together, TEEAL and online medical journals are a powerful knowledge base of food and agricultural development and health information."

Related World Wide Web site:
The following site provides additional information:
The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library: <http://teeal.cornell.edu/>

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Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
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Cornell Uniersity news release
N3732