WOUGNET’s resource centre was started in 2000 when the organisation began its activities, The resource centre was  mainly online with  just reports with no books. 10 years down the road, the resource centre has a variety of books ranging from Agriculture, gender and ICT, HIV/AIDS, Citizen journalism, general collection and many others.

Since WOUGNET’s  inception, the resource centre has not been automated, yet there is a big global transition technologically. Many organisations have resorted to digitizing their information material, this instigated WOUGNET to automate the resource centre to catch up with the changes.   Initially, users accessed the books and information through a manual process by checking direct  on the shelves and registering manually. This process has however been tiresome and time consuming.

Automating the resource centre is going to ease work as the books will be classified according to their collection like ICT, gender and ICT, Agriculture, and HIV/AIDS among others.

 The biggest  number of the books in WOUGNET resource centre are generously given  by  different WOUGNET partners such as Technical Centre for Agriculture and Rural Co-operation- CTA, Hivos, Ministry of Gender labour and social Development,  ministry of Agriculture Animal Industries and Fisheries and the ICT ministry among others

The Process of Automation.

The books are first classified according to collection for example gender, Agriculture, ICT, HIV/AIDS, general collection among others.

The they are Classified to find the titles, author and publisher, number of copies, subject, year of publication, International standard book number (ISBN) or international serial Number

Using Dewey decimal classification concepts,  different books are explained, for example ruminant, production as it goes into specific categories.

Then information is entered into the database using CD-ISIS 1.5 for windows, this is a program that is used in libraries to store data for future reference.

Finally the spine labels are fixed on the books showing the numbers from the Dewey decimal classification (DDC). For example 636.21 this number then identifies the booksand corresponds with what is entered in the database.

The Importance of automating the resource centre.

       · Identification of the books according to authors will be simplified because the title will be shown together with the author or editor.

·         It will become easier to find the number of copies available in the resource centre for use.

·         It will also help persons interested in borrowing or using books to find out which books are available in the resource centre and those that are not

With the automation of the resource centre, it is believed that the number of users will increase and the retrieval and dissemination of the information material from the resource centre will be easier.

By Rita Oyaba and Maureen Agena