History

The Central Agriculture Library of the Department of Agriculture is the oldest Agricultural Library in Sri Lanka, as it was established in 1810, when a Botanical Garden named ‘Kew’ was opened in Slave Island, Colombo by the British Governor. In 1813, the Garden and the Library were moved to in Uggalboda, Kalutara and the library was moved again when Department of Agriculture was established in 1912 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya. Later, the library was shifted to Gannoruwa, present location in 1971. It is functioned under the Horticulture Research and Development Institute, Gannoruwa.

In 2017 this library was hand over to the National Agriculture Information and Communication Centre, Gannoruwa with the mission to Creating an agricultural knowledge society through the preservation of Library publications, encouraging the utilization of information and communication technology for an effective library service and Easy access of the DOA videos.

At present, the library  hold nearly 75,000 publications comprising 10,900 text books, 10,000 other collection books. It also has over 40,000 journals issues under more than 800 journal titles  related to Agronomy, Genetics and Plant breeding, Soil and plant Nutrition, Plant Pathology, Entomology, Plant Tissue Culture and Cell Culture, Post Harvest Technology, Agricultural Economics and Microbiology. DOA Library established links with other foreign agricultural research institutions such as, FAO, SAARC, ICRISAT, MAFF, SAIC, IFDC, JIRCAS, IRRI & CABI etc.

Traditional libraries are still handling largely printed materials that are expensive and bulky. Information seekers are no longer satisfied with only printed materials. They want to supplement the printed information with more dynamic electronic resources and therefore, demands for digital information are increasing.

This digital library will provide clearly enhanced services to the user of the library by improving the availability of useful information and the speed of access and delivery. The advantages of digital information libraries include nearly unlimited storage space at a much lower cost, no physical boundary, round the clock availability, multiple access, enhanced information retrieval, preservation for some print material and universal accessibility. This will facilitate the user through access to large amounts of information wherever they are and whenever they need it, support multimedia content along with text, user-friendly interface, advanced search and retrieval and integration with other digital libraries.

In 2017 December Central Agriculture Library and national Science Foundation entered into an agreement to implement the National Digitization Project. Which will ensure the easy, quick and enhanced on-line access to DOA Publications.  All these digital files are secured in the NSF repository server and these materials are available at doa.nsf.ac.lk website.