About Us
Who we are
The Institute of Agriculture Economics and Information (IAEI)
is a specialised allowance organisation with the scope of activities on
a national level, which was founded by Ministry of Agriculture of the CR.
We are an institution charged with a mission that is unique not only in this country
but also in the neighbouring European countries: our task is to provide the full complex
transfer of departmental knowledge information from the sectors: agriculture, food production,
nutrition, food safety, consumer protection, forestry and environment.
The Institute's history dates back to 1926 whereas the date of the 1st Jan. 1993 is important
for the present situation, when a fundamental decision was taken - the former Institute of
Scientific and Technical Information for Agriculture and the Technical Information Centre of
Food Research Institute merged. The third largest departmental library in the world
(after U.S. Beltsville and Moscow) is a part of the Institute: it has 1.2 million volumes in
its holdings.
The IAEI also administers a depository of the library in Kojetice near Neratovice and a training centre in Benešov.
What we are doing - What services we are providing
The Institute's activities can be divided into two basic groups. The first group is information resources, the other group is education and consultancy.
Agricultural and Food Library provides complex services based on the use of modern information technologies. The library services, built since 1926, are extended by a number of derived information sources and services, mostly electronic ones:
- An on-line catalogue with sophisticated looking up is accessible to the public. On the catalogue pages you will find lists of new and interesting documents processed for the resources. If a document is of older date and is not in the on-line catalogue, you will find it in a scanned card catalogue.
- Registered readers may order and reserve documents through the on-line catalogue whenever and wherever from.
- Readers are informed in the on-line Czech Agricultural and Food Bibliography what important articles were published in Czech specialised agricultural and food periodicals.
- You will find information about important articles published in foreign periodicals from the area of agriculture and food production in CAB and FSTA databases accessible in a study room and in a freely accessible database AGRIS.
- The Library provides an access to full-text electronic periodicals, to some of these periodicals in a study room only. The Library is subscribed to ca. 550 titles of specialised agricultural and food periodicals in hard copies.
- If you want to order a copy of an article from a periodical, you can use reprographic services; electronic copies can be ordered by means of Virtual Polytechnic Library.
- The Library administers the information websites Agronavigátor containing Czech abstracts of articles published in foreign specialised periodicals. Readers can themselves look up articles dealing with a given subject or they can set up a profile and through the mailinglist they will get new contributions published in Agronavigátor free of charge every day.
- The Library monitors developmental trends
in the world and elaborates monothematic information reviews and studies.
Attention is drawn to novelties in the given discipline, to new knowledge and to the latest results in research, development, production and consumption. - Editorial works on Terminological Dictionary and A-Z Dictionary of Food Safety are coordinated by the Library.
- Eleven scientific periodicals of the Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, with their editorial offices in the Department of Information Resources - section of scientific journals - publish peer-reviewed papers of Czech and foreign authors.
- The Library runs an InfoDesk where questions of the public and of the professional community are answered - "Ask a question about whatever you like, InfoDesk will answer it". The InfoDesk is a part of complex information and extension services.
- The Library provides other paid services, such as information retrieval and elaboration of specialised studies.
All these non-address but complex services are to inform users of a broad spectrum composed of not only scientists, academic community, students, farmers and food producers but also of the general public.
The Education and Consultancy Department coordinates the services of information systems of IAFI and its communication-oriented activities and creates the environment for synergic and multiplication effects of information-communication campaigns.
It guarantees the activities of the Consultancy Coordination Centre, where among others conceptual proposals of departmental consultancy are elaborated; it also coordinates the work of consultants, i.e. of 500 agricultural and food specialists from the whole Czech Republic. One of the tools for communication with both the professional community and the general public when the services of these specialised consultants are frequently used is the INFODESK - free information services provided for 24 hours a day to professionals as well as to the public.
The complex realisation of educational projects laid down by a departmental directive on education is a part of the activities of the Education and Consultancy Department. In the framework of EU pre-accession aid it was the implementation of Measure 3.1. of SAPARD Project. Currently, IAEI is a beneficiary of the aid from Measure 2.2. Education, Operational Programme for Rural Development and Multi-functional Agriculture; in the framework of this programme specialised seminars are organised on the basis of publicly announced themes. The Institute also has a function of Food Safety Information Centre (FSIC). FSIC cooperates with the participants of the Interdepartmental Coordination Group for Food Safety, i.e. with specialised institutions, scientific committees, information systems of government authorities and civic consumer organisations. In this concept of an info-centre it is unique that, while by the way there does not exist such an analogical situation in European countries, IAEI as a state-funded institution provides the complex information background to nongovernmental (non-state) organisations that are active and cooperate in the food safety sector.
Within a broad spectrum of communication services irregular activities are also carried out such as seminars, specialised actions, publication of departmental materials, organisation of exhibitions, creation of multimedia products and technical conference services.
What we want
Our objective is to be a natural integrator of all departmental library, web, educational, communication and extension services, and of the transfer of science and research knowledge into practice. We can provide these services in a complex way, "under the same roof", because we have our own continually replenished information resources at our disposal.
The slogan of our INFODESK is: "Ask a question about anything, InfoDesk will answer it". The paraphase of this sentence is a motto of IAEI activities.
IAEI web sites 
