Research Service Request Example

Use of bambu in agroforestry, soil conservation, etc...
Bambu products as building material, furnitures, etc…

1. Receiving the request
2. Confirmation of receipt of the request and identification of the information need
3. Defining the search terms
4. Executing the search
   a. On the Internet
   b. In databases
5. Delivering the results

1. Receiving the request

The following research request reached InfoResources via the research service request form on this website.

info = Use of bambu in agroforestry, soil conservation, etc...
Bambu products as building material, furnitures, etc...
english = yes
french =
spanish = yes
german = yes
delivery_until_d = 01
delivery_until_m = 08
delivery_until_y = 2004
delivery_by = E-mail
name = xxx
firstname = xxx
organisation = governmental
phone =
fax =
submit_by = xxx
address = xxx /Peru

2. Confirmation of receipt of the request and identification of the information need

InfoResources answered few time after (13th of July) the request came in (8th of July), so it has not been necessary to confirm the receipt of the request. The request was clear, so it didn’t need more precisions.

3. Defining the search terms

Asking colleagues from Inforest, we discovered that

• mainly in Asia, bambu is also called rattan
• in Latin America, bambu is also called guadua
• China seems to be the most advanced country in industrialisation of rattan.

As our client was able to understand English, Spanish and German, we defined the following searching terms :

• bambu, bambu, bamboo, rattan, guadua
• agroforestry, agroforestería, Agroforstwirtschaft
• soil conservation, conservación de suelos, Boden Erhaltung
• industry/industrialisation, industria/industrialización, Industrie/
  Industrialisierung
• building, construcción, Bauwirtschaft
• furnitures, muebles, Möbel

4. Executing the search

a. On the Internet

As a next step we searched the Internet using Google. We used the search terms above, in various combinations. The results were quite huge (10 ore more pages of hits). We went through the 3 first pages of each result and scrutinized the links which seemed relevant. Here are the final results we selected, in English, Spanish or German. Please note that the validity of the links was last checked in July 2004.

• http://www.bambus-schweiz.ch/books.html
  All from Yvonne Widmer, 1990-1999.
  
• http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/Abstracts/
  Abstracts-S97.pdf
  Includes a case study of Chinese rattan industry, 1997.
  
• http://www.cifor.cgiar.org/publications/pdf_files/Abstracts/
  Abstracts-S98.pdf
  Includes a case study of Chinese rattan industry, 1998.
  
• http://www.forest.ula.ve/~ifla/publicaciones-ifla.html#benefit1
  Selected bibliography of species and forest topics, on bambu in volume I and II.
  
• http://www.koolbamboo.com/aboutbamboo1.htm
  Big bamboo trading Co. Presents products, prices, etc...
  
• http://www.inbar.int/
  International Network for Bamboo and Ratan. Includes a section for Latin America and also one page of publications available in the Internet.
  
• http://www.hardwoodinstaller.com/hardwoodinstaller/
  bamboo-origin.htm
  Bamboo and soil conservation.
  
• http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/bamboo.pdf
  13 p., 1998. With a lot of references and web adresses. Maybe focused on North America.
  
• http://usuarios.arnet.com.ar/bambu/
  Music instruments in bambu. Argentina.
  
• http://www.ecologia.edu.mx/publicaciones/resumenes/5.1/pdf/
  Ordonez%201999.PDF
  Perspectives of bambu for building, México, 1999.
  
• http://html.rincondelvago.com/materiales-de-construccion_
  bambu.html
  Building material bambu.
  
• http://habitat.aq.upm.es/dubai/96/bp084.html
  Bambu houses project, Costa Rica.

b. In databases

We searched in "Cab Tree International Abstract" with the same search terms as above and we got 21 relevant documents.

5. Delivering the results

We do our best to provide the search results within the period indicated by the client. Our customers get the results in the form of a Word or a PDF file attached to an e-mail. If the customer’s IT-infrastructure does not allow to transmit large files, we send the results on paper by ordinary mail or we fax them. Customers living next to our offices are invited to visit us in order to discuss the search results. In order to get a feedback and further optimize our services we always attach a short questionnaire to the research results.