CAIN: A Computerized Literature System for the Agricultural Sciences

CAIN, an acronym for CAtaloging-INdexing, is a document locator and bibliographic control system for the collection of the National Agricultural Library. Bibliographic information about new monographic and serial titles and signed journal articles is captured when this material is cataloged and indexed. The Library, as one component of the national library system for the United States (the other two components are the Library of Congress and the National Library of Medicine), is primarily responsible for the collection and dissemination of agricultural information on a national and international basis. For over 112 years, publications in many languages have been acquired through gifts, exchange from foreign correspondents throughout the world, and by direct purchase. This literature is chiefly in monographic and journal format. Since 1970, the bibliographic records for newly acquired publications, including signed articles selected from some 6,500 journals and serials, have been exploited to build a data base of information in economics, rural sociology, animal industry, engineering, entomology, food and human nutrition, forestry, pesticides, soils, fertilizers, botany, and related subject fields. The National Agricultural Library began in 1967 to develop systems to prepare indexes for the “Bibliography of Agriculture,” the “Pesticides Documentation Bulletin,” and for the categorical and alphabetical issues of the “Agricultural Biological Vocabulary.” These systems were consolidated and expanded in 1969 to process all input data within one set of parameters. This system, inaugurated in 1970, includes all bibliographic records, numbering over 500,000 entered into the CAIN data base since that date. CAIN does contain some earlier records published in the now defunct “Pesticides Document Bulletin” from December 1967 through December 1969. Bibliographic records from the Food and Nutrition Information and Educational Materials Center of the National Agricultural Library were added to the CAIN data base in 1973. These records differ from the others added to CAIN, in that they contain abstracts. This additional information is required by the Center in order to carry out its mission to support the School Lunch and Breakfast Programs and training programs for school food service personnel of the Food and Nutrition Service, USDA. Other data bases served by the CAIN system, but not included in the major one, are the Herbicides data base of the Agricultural Research Service and the International Tree Disease data base of the U.S. Forest Service. Access to these data bases is through their respective agencies.