27 Jan 1986 CAB holds one day workshop at Lincoln College

References on agricultural science subjects - from adoption to zoonoses (diseases that can be passed on from animals to man) - can be obtained from the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux abstracts computer database, so CAB is holding a one-day workshop at Lincoln College at 10 am Monday (February 3) to make the service more widely known.

Leading the Online User Workshop, being held in Room 5 of the Hilgendorf Block at Lincoln College, will be Mr Chris Ison, a CAB trainer from Britain.

The workshop is one of a series being held through Australia and New Zealand during January and February.

Intention of the workshop is to demonstrate online access to the 150,000 abstracts, broadly on agriculture and applied biology, produced each year from 8500 current world journals in 37 languages.

CAB, an international non-profit organisation funded by British Commonwealth Governments, is a clearing house for collecting, collating and disseminating information to scientists in the applied biological and social sciences.

Nearly two million records are available from CAB through online access providing immediate information on references to papers published since 1972

CAB offers references to information on agricultural engineering, animal health, and animal nutrition, entomology, forestry, human nutrition and medicine,leisure, recreation and tourism, mycology ( the study of fungi ) , and rural development.

Organising the workshop at Lincoln College is librarian Anne-Maree Scott, of the College George Forbes Memorial Library.

Miss Scott emphasised the importance of abstract services to librarians, and said one intention of the workshop was to make the CAB online access known to scientists, technical officers, doctors and others who might require references from abstracts.

She said she expected that many in government, local government and commerce would also get much from the workshop.

Information from CAB was obtained through online access by a computer program known as DIALOG, using a telephone line. 

Those at the workshop would see getting information through Dialog demonstrated, and some would get "hands-on" experience, she said.