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Welcome to ITOCA


ITOCA (Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa) is a capacity building organization aimed at enhancing information and communications technology (ICT) skills for African librarians, information specialists, scientists, researchers and students in Sub-Sahara Africa. Formerly, TEEAL Africa Office, ITOCA was established in February 1999 as a marketing and support office for Cornell University 's Albert R. Mann Library TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library) programme for Africa . Now, ITOCA spearheads programme support for TEEAL, AGORA, HINARI and OARE in the region.

Latest News

LanTEEAL 2.0 – bigger, better, and faster!

We are launching a brand-new version of LanTEEAL with the 2006 update, which includes an overhauled interface and improved search capabilities. LanTEEAL 2.0 runs in a browser window, and for networks running Windows Server, there are no limitations to the number of simultaneous users!

Access the same quality full-text scientific literature, but with a look and feel more closely resembling your favorite research databases such as EBSCO and ISI Web of Science.The interface is intuitive and easy-to-use – although of course there will be a full help section included. Furthermore, all articles in the 1993-2006 collection are now PDFs for easy opening, viewing, and printing.

All subscribers ordering the 2006 update will receive an entirely new hard drive loaded with the entire database at no extra charge. Our new hard drives are smaller AND have more capacity,so there's no worry about running out of space with future updates.

The expected launch date for the new software is mid-February 2008

 

Ibadan University hosts 18th AGORA/HINARI National Workshop

Ibadan University in Oyo State was host to the 18th AGORA/HINARI National workshop for Nigeria from 26 -29 June, 2007. The ITOCA team has been on the road conducting the Training of Training workshops in AGORA and HINARI since beginning of 2005 and the journey has seen the team through Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Ghana, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Mozambique, Senegal, Mali, Zambia and Lesotho. The workshops bring together 25-30 participants from various institutions and equip participants with necessary skills to fully utilize these programs as well as other resources available over the internet and how to market and cascade the training. The Training of Trainer approach is proving to be paying dividends as over 5000 participants have been trained downstream.

The Ibadan workshop brought together a total of 31 participants from 22 institutions . Marcus Banks a member of Librarians Without Borders- an MLA Global Initiative (Co-funders of the workshop) had this comment about the workshop

Overall, I think it is excellent. The modules all flow logically into one another, and there is excellent documentation and many exercises to reinforce skills.
Great job everyone
!!”

Let Your Voice be Heard on Electronic Scientific Journals Access and Use in Africa!

The HINARI, AGORA, and OARE (HINAGOA) Africa User Community Forum kicked off  with enthusiasm in 2007, and saw users from all over the continent expressing interest to join. The aims of the forum are:

  • To network and share information and experiences
  • To keep abreast with developments in the field of information and learn about breakthroughs in e-resource access and management  through the HINAGOA gateways
  • To collectively provide feedback to the HINAGOA programmes and help shape the future of the initiatives
  • To learn and update user skills on electronic resources so that they can effectively benefit from the HINAGOA programmes

HINAGOA programmes were developed to answer the need to improve access to up-to-date scientific scholarly literature in biomedical, health sciences, agriculture, environmental sciences and related fields for scientists, researchers and information managers in low income countries.

At the beginning of 2008, a themed approach to the discussions was introduced on the forum. Topical issues were raised on:

  • Are you using HINARI-AGORA-OARE resources? If you are, tell us how and what are you using the information you get from the HINAGOA resources for?
  • What are the limitations/challenges that you and your users encounter in using the HINARI-AGORA-OARE resources?
  • What investments have been made by the institution to promote and facilitate access to HINARI-AGORA-OARE resources?
  • What improvements regarding the HINARI-AGORA-OARE programmes would you like to see in order for the HINAGOA resources to make a positive impact in your work?
  • Lessons learned/Best practices and Recommendations in order to move the HINARI-AGORA-OARE process forward.

In order to be part of the discussions and have a chance of influencing future developments of the HINARI-AGORA-OARE programmes on the African continent, please join the User Community Forum by going to: http://www.itoca.org/hinagoa_usercommunity.htm

 

 


ITOCA

Partner Programmes

TEEAL

TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library) program www.teeal.org is an innovative scholarly scientific database .... more

 

AGORA

AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture) is an online program www.aginternetwork.org that gives educational, government departments .... more

 

HINARI

Health InterNetwork Access to Research Initiative (HINARI) www.who.int/hinari is part of the United Nation’s ... more

 

OARE

Online Access to Research in the Environment (OARE) www.oaresciences.org an international public-private consortium co-ordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Yale University, and leading science and technology publishers ... more

 

 

 

 


Funding and resource guide for African students

For students wishing to apply for fellowships, plan ahead. Application deadlines are often at least one year in advance, and some deadlines listed here may change.....more (pdf only)

 


 

Training Workshops


Our training workshops are currently scheduled as per table below (these are subject to change). Detailed information can be obtained by writing to
itoca@itoca.org

 

Country

Date

Madagascar

29 Jan - 1 Feb 2008

Cameroon 8-11 Apr 2008
Sudan 29 Apr - 6 May 2008
Togo 6-9 May 2008
Burundi 9-13 Jun 2008
DR Congo 26-29 Aug 2008
Burkina Faso 23-26 Sep 2008
Nigeria 4-7 Nov 2008
 

 

 
 
Agora - http://www.aginternetwork.org
TEEAL - http://www.teeal.org    HINARI - http://www.who.int/hinari                  
OARE
 

 Copyright © ITOCA 2007                               Last Updated 25 April 2008

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