Research4Life workshop focuses on information resources related to land
During the recent State of Land Data & Information in East Africa workshop from 8 to 10 May in Nairobi, Kenya, Research4Life organised a session to present the Research4Life programmes, focusing on information related to legal resources and land.
The workshop focused on the following R4L programmes: AGORA (Access to Global Online Research in Agriculture), OARE (Online Access to Research in the Environment) and, especially, GOALI (Global Online Access to Legal Information).
The 51 participants explored how to find scientific journals and books in Research4Life, in particular legal research related to land.
Research4Life training overview
The presentation focused on information resources and legal research related to land, emphasizing the cross-cutting aspects.
Topics included an overview of Research4Life and its content portals, how to search, an introduction to legal information and legal systems, and the legal research process.
Kristin Kolshus from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) presented the session
On AGORA…
The AGORA programme, set up by FAO together with several major publishers, enables developing countries to gain access to an outstanding digital library collection in the fields of food, agriculture, environmental science, and related social sciences.
AGORA is one of the five programmes that make up Research4Life: AGORA, Hinari, OARE, ARDI and GOALI.
On OARE..
OARE is managed by UNEP in partnership with Yale University and international scientific publishers and provides access to journals, e-books, and other information resources on the natural environment, including ecology, climatology, geography, environmental law and policy and more.
Both AGORA and OARE contain excellent scientific journals and books on land-related information.
..and GOALI
The session had a special focus on GOALI, the newest Research4Life programme which deals with research for global justice. GOALI is managed by the International Labour Organization (ILO), and provides free or low-cost online access to legal research and training in the developing world.
GOALI is a public-private partnership of ILO as a UN agency, together with Brill Nijhoff, the International Training Centre of the ILO and academic partners Cornell Law School Library and the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale Law School.
Users can access thousands of peer-reviewed journals and e-books in selected subject areas of law from the world’s leading academic publishers.
Lively discussions ensued regarding conversion of customary land rights, land tenure, gender issues in inheritance, legal pluralism and how different countries are finding pragmatic ways forward.
The State of Land Data and Information in East Africa Meeting
The State of Land Data & Information in East Africa: Catalyzing East Africa’s Land Data Ecosystem was co-organized by FAO Kenya, the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), the Local Development Research Institute, GODAN Africa, Research4Life and the Land Portal and took place at the University of Nairobi.
The overall goal of the workshop was to uncover the land data and information ecosystem in East Africa and contribute to a regional policy dialogue on access to data.
The meeting followed the launch by the Land Portal of the State of Land Information: Uncovering the Information Ecosystem report, which aims to uncover the many different sources of land data and information in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan.
For the very first time, the report looks at the entire landscape of data and information related to key land topics in these four countries, assessing over 690 land resources from 317 different sources to see trends and gaps when it comes to data availability as well as how accessible it is online.
