Euforic: Providing other perspectives for the research community

In June 2008, Euforic held its Annual Meeting in Geneva, joining EADI's General Conference on "Global Governance for Sustainable Development".

At last year's AGM we met up with the NGO community; this year we joined a vivid conference of the development research community.

Within this development research community, information resources are still very much centered around book publications and academic journals. Nevertheless there is a strong need to look beyond these traditional formats - especially in development research - to get a broader view including discussions in the NGO community, think tanks and the media.

We met Maurizio Carbone (Glasgow University), who was really euphoric about Euforic's information services:



See Euforic newsfeeds on various areas of international cooperation and development.

Read more on our AGM

R4D in plain English

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Chris Addison (Euforic) presented the Research for Development portal - R4D. R4D is an database containing information about research programmes supported by the British Department for International Development (DFID). The portal contains an elaborated search engine to find information about projects and partner organisations, it offers thematic rss-feeds, e-mail alerts and video messages.

See Mr Addison's presentation:

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

Subscribe toR4D newsfeeds and visit the R4D portal

KIT portals

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Wiebe de Boer (KIT) presented the development portals of the Royal Tropical Institute.

They provide access to full-text documents, e-journals, news and events and other free internet sources. Current portals contain broad and specific information about governance, HIV/AIDS, rural innovation systems, culture for development and value chains for development.

See Wiebe de Boer's presentation below:

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the newsfeed from KIT

IDS Knowledge Services

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Cheryl Brown and Alan Stanley talked about the knowledge literacy service provided by (IDS).

The service aims to improve the information literacy of development actors enabling them to access the information they need quickly. This includes skills to find, value, search and share information.

The challenge of the service as pointed out by the speakers is to decentralize in order to offer trainings over distance in similar quality as face-to-face meetings and also to maintain a high editorial quality with networked staff.

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the news feed from IDS

EADI portal and research monitor

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Can Akdeniz (EADI)presented the EADI portal and research monitor.

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The portal aims at providing better access to research and knowledge produced by EADI member organisations. It also wants to foster ad facilitate information sharing among the different institutes. The added value of the portal is to combine different types of information resources and present not only research results, but also ongoing research projects.



Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

Subscribe to the EADI newsfeed and the feed on EADI research highlights

A new way of working and thinking: the ComPart flowers

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Maarten Boers (ICCO) presented the ComPart flower project.

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ComPart - Communication with and among partners - aims at introducing a new way of working and a new way of thinking in ICCO and among ICCO partners. This way of working is based on the use of 'new' web tools, such as blogs and wikis; however, the innovative element of ComPart is to mainstream information, communication and knowledge sharing, and embed these activities into the work of the different ICCO programmes. By fostering collaboration and co-creation, ComPart aims also at addressing the needs of ICCO in its process to become a decentralised organisation working with thematic learning networks.

Listen to Maarten presenting ComPart



Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the newsfeed from ICCO-Alliance

EL@ND: "Unlocking Europe's Library and Information Resources for International Development"

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Susanne von Itter (EADI)presented EL@ND, the European Libraries Network for Development.

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EL@ND is a search engine that harvests library catalogues of several EADI members organisations, together with other specialised search engines such as Focuss, Google Scholar and Books, Open Access Journals. The strength of this service is that its content has been selected by librarians, making the search results more relevant for development practitioners.

Listen to Susanne's introduction to EL@ND - video in German



Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the newsfeed from EADI.

ISS: Focuss.info Initiative

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Richard Lalleman talked about the Focuss.Initiative. Focuss.info is a collaborative platform of peers in the field of global development who are storing and sharing regional, national and international knowledge of valuable electronic resources. The portal provides a place to store and share knowledge by indexing social bookmarking websites.


The added value of the search engine provided by focuss.info is that it offers resources which are usually not available on normal search engines like google.

Mr. Lalleman called on development staff to start social bookmarking their resources and to join the foccuss.initiative to make the platform even more valuable.

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the news feed from ISS

ReliefWeb: Humanitarian aid information exchange

During the Euforic/EADI workshop case study workshop ‘Showcasing knowledge and information services’ Eva Vognild presented the Relief Web website, an information exchange tool for the humanirtarian aid community.

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ReliefWeb was created after the Rwanda genocide, responding to the need of the international community for to overcome a clear lack of information in crisis situations. It aims at providing timely information on natural disasters, emergencies and crisis situations. Staff is located in five regional offices around the world, making possible to provide a 24/7 coverage and constant flow of information.

The information is at the moment offered in 3 different languages, but the idea is to have more in the near future. Together with that, ReliefWeb plans also to offer more analysis and contextualizes information, on top of the large amount of news updates that is published every day.

Listed to Eva presenting ReliefWeb



Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

Hinari Information Service for Biomedicine and related development issues

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Kimberley Parker (HINARI) talked about an access to information service designed for partner institutions. The service offers access to published literature including journals, textbooks, databases and reference works all dealing with biomedicine and related development issues. Currently 3300 users from 108 eligible countries are using the service.

See Ms Parker elaborating on the service:

Ms Parker pointed out that the project is a big success with 1000 institutions from developing countries using it. Nonetheless there are still problems with access to internet technology in the South and proper bandwidth.

Ms. Parker pointed out that access to knowledge is a main asset for development. In this sense the presented project is an important step forward.

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

InfoResources - Information on natural resources and development

During the Euforic/EADI workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Fani Kakridi presented InfoResources, an information service for development practitioners interested in natural resources and the related discussion in international development. The special demand of the target group is to get hand on the most important information in a short and elaborated format.

We asked Ms. Kakridi to give us a summary of the main features:





Under the mandate of the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency (SDC) the service selects and comments on innovative resources which are published in free publications available in print and electronically. The publications are offered in English, Spain and French. As main challenge Ms. Fani mentioned the diverse target group interests with a hunger for information in the South and too much information in the North.

See her presentation below:

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

Newsfordev: an aggregator of agricultural and rural development feeds

During the Euforic/EADI workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Kevin Painting (CTA) introduced Newsfordev, a RSS aggregator with thematic feeds on rural development and agriculture.



The project is the result of a workshop in 2005. It targets especially users with low bandwidth internet access by offering customised newsletters and options to personalize homepages.

Currently the database includes 680 feeds with about 650.000 articles organized in thematic dossiers and searchable via keywords.

As main challenge Kevin Painting sees the inclusion of other languages besides English.

See Kevin's presentation:

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the news feed from CTA

LEISA Network Portal

During the Euforic/EADI case study workshop ‘Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services’ Wilma Roem (ILEIA) talked about the LEISA Network Portal, which is standing for 'Exchanging Information on Low External Input and Sustainable Agriculture'.



LEISA offers a magazine providing experience articles on sustainable smallholder agriculture. The global edition of the magazine is published in English but beside that there are regional editions for West Africa (French), India (English), China (Chinese), Latin America (Spain), Brazil (Portuguese) and Indonesia (Indonesian).

Over 4000 articles are available on the LEISA portal which mainly serves the exchange for the 7 partner organisations of ILEIA but also offers resources for a broader community. The interactive site offers information about events, provides library resources using tools including newsletters, discussion forums, thematic dossiers, intranet for the partners, blogs and rss-feeds.

According to Ms. Roem the portal is the leading portal on sustainable smallholder agriculture and is a treasure for all practitioners.

See Ms. Roems presentation:

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Read more stories from the workshop

See the Euforic dossier and the feed on Information, Knowledge and Communication.

See also the newsfeed from ILEIA

Showcasing Information Services: Euforic 2008 annual meeting in Geneva

The 2008 annual meeting of members was held in Geneva on 24 June, alongside the EADI General Conference "Global Governance for Sustainable Development"

From 14:30 - 17:00, Euforic joined with the EADI Information Management Working Group in a workshop 'Showcasing Knowledge and Information Services.'

The session was meant for people working with information and knowledge in development. It showcased diverse information and communication services, allowing participants to learn about the various initiatives, comparing and contrasting their approaches, and assessing their usefulness to their own efforts. Among the services introduced: R4D, Hinari, Reliefweb, Newsfordev, focuss.info, El@nd, ComPart Flowers, LEISA, InfoResources, EADI, IDS Knowledge Services, and KIT.

You can read a report of the session on the EADI Conference Blog.

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