Resource centres
Practical Action's Resource Centres, based in the Practical Action offices, are open to the public and hold a distinctive collection of appropriate technology and development literature. Subjects covered include agriculture, agro-processing, energy, building materials and shelter, mining, water, and manufacturing and processing industries, plus information on a range of development issues.
Other resource centres are also available.
United Kingdom Resource Centre
Practical Action's UK resource centre includes over 18,000 publications, and journals, videos and photographs.
Due to limited study space the Centre is open by appointment only from 9:00 - 13:00 and 14:00 - 17:00 Monday to Friday, and it is requested that these visits are booked at least three days in advance where possible.
Bangladesh Resource Centre
Practical Action Bangladesh's Resource Centre is open to the public. This office has published many booklets and pamphlets on small-scale agro processing, small enterprise development and many other subjects, that are sold at a minimum price.
Practical Action Bangladesh also conducts training for its partners.
South Asia Resource Centre
Practical Action South Asia's Resource Centre primarily consists of a library and a technical enquiry service. The library holds a wealth of information that is rare and may not be found in other libraries in Sri Lanka.
The collection is mostly on Appropriate Technology and Development, and focusing on Practical Action programmes and interests, such as micro-hydro, wind energy, biogas, agro-processing, transport, rural roads, disaster mitigation, gender and rainwater harvesting.
The library, open to the public, is used predominantly by Practical Action staff, development workers, researchers, undergraduates and academic staff, and offers the following services:
- Inter-library lending for institutions
- Literature search through computer database
- Photocopy service at a nominal fee
- Annotated bibliographies on new arrivals
- Technical Enquiry Service
- Periodicals and newspaper clippings on current topics
The Resource Centre is open from 9:00am - 5:00pm, Monday to Friday.
Nepal Resource Centre
The resource centre of practical Action in Kathmandu contains around 4500 books, Publications, magazines and papers. The collection covers a large rang of topics, mostly comprising of the areas we work on. There is also a sound collection of international magazines and journals.
Most technical enquiries are received via the resource centre, although others come via email and telephone. 200 people are expected to use the centre, which is open to the general public five days a week, in 2007-8. The visitors vary from students to freelancers, from development workers (NGOs and INGOs) and private sector professionals. The resource centre regularly sends technical briefs and other publications to college and university libraries, where user numbers will be multiplied.
Southern Africa Resource Centre
Practical Action Southern Africa's Resource Centre, based in Zimbabwe, has a collection consisting of over 3000 books, journals, and technical briefs.
A computerised database management system is used to store, search and retrieve material for users. The Resource Centre also holds slides and photographs of Practical Action Southern Africa Projects.
About 40 to 50 users visit the Resource Centre each week, and whilst many people utilise the centre for reference purposes, recommended users can borrow material without a charge.
East Africa Resource Centre
Practical Action East Africa's Resource Centre comprises of publications, videos, slides, periodicals and Practical Action archive material.
The Centre has over 5000 publications on computerised database, which facilitates searches and easy access to information on specific topics. The video library contains more than 5000 prints and slides, mainly depicting the activities undertaken within Practical Action programmes. The archive material is a collection of all documents produced by Practical Action East Africa. Presently, there are more than 500 documents in the archive, including annual reports, research work, workshop proceedings, reviews and evaluation reports.
Latin America
At ITDG-Practical Solutions, we know that access to technical information, useful, timely and in the appropriate formats, is a rare privilege for many people in our region.
That is why one of our most successful strategies and recognized over 22 years of work in Peru has been facilitating access to information and knowledge to contribute in the process of poverty reduction.
We have one of the most complete information centers in Latin America in technologies for the development and personalized services and specialized in providing top quality care to our users most important development organizations, micro-entrepreneurs, small farmers, researchers and authorities.
The Documentation Center of ITDG-Practical Solutions offers the community an extensive collection of specialized information on appropriate technology and sustainable development. With over 7000 documents and 100 journal titles, the collection of the Documentation Centre is one of the most complete in Peru.