The Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstract (ASFA) Partners gathered at Bangkok Holiday Inn Sukhumvit in Thailand, last October 3-6, 2023 for its first face-to-face ASFA Advisory Board Meeting after the COVID-19 pandemic. The ASFA Advisory Board Meeting is an annual meeting of ASFA Partners to discuss activities and plans for the development of ASFA.
Ms. Analiza S. Galang-Linaugo, University Librarian of UP Visayas (UPV), was one of the presenters in the event on behalf of the University, a National ASFA partner.
Ms. Linaugo’s presentation covered updates on the UPV’s ASFA intersessional activity such as indexing, local collaboration with other universities and colleges in the Philippines, input activities in OpenASFA from 2020 to 2023, benefits of ASFA, UPV as ASFA partner, and how UPV can support ASFA.
Other major activities that took place during the four-day collaborative meeting were the revision of partnership agreement, budget and financial planning, project proposals, OpenASFA update, and trainings.
The meeting was co-hosted by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Southern Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC-Thailand). It was attended by ASFA Secretariat, International ASFA Partners, and National ASFA Partners, which is composed of institutions from Argentina, China, Colombia, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, and Uruguay.
Established in 1971, ASFA continues to promote research on aquatic sciences and fisheries. They provide editorially curated resources in their database that were formed through the collaborative efforts of their International and National partners. ASFA is maintained by the Food and Agriculture (FAO) of the United Nations.
UPV has been a national ASFA partner since 2013. It has submitted more than 3,000 articles in the database, which is composed of published and unpublished articles in the Philippines. Being a national ASFA partner, UPV constituents enjoy free access to ASFA database and paid articles through resources sharing. This enables the University to save millions of pesos on subscription cost. UPV also enjoys free membership to the International Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC).
