PUBLICATIONS PLANNED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 10

PUBLICATIONS PLANNED

’THE new Agricultural Engineering Institute is planning to issue a range of semitechnical and technical publications.

Apart from its annual report, newsletters and extension bulletins these will be available to the public at a charge, but those persons who become affiliate members of the institute and firms or organisations which become associate members will receive all publications, except confidential ones, free of charge. The first of the institute’s extension bulletins, which will include material of a descriptive and semi-technical nature prepared for general readers, is due to be published this month. . It will describe in some detail the institute and its functions. ~ - The newsletter, which itill be issued by the institute, is intended as a service to its associate and affiliate members, and issued at frequent intervals it will include information about current activities of the institute and other matters of general interest in the field of agricultural engineering. The institute’s research publications will be of a technical nature and will consist of reports on research activities. Project reports will deal with development projects as if, for instance, the institute helps a manufacturer with the development of a new type of plough. The institute’s test reports will be in two categories. The director of the institute, Professor J. R. Burton, said that the institute would be carrying out tests at the instance of manufacturers or distributors or perhaps Federated Farmers on equipment that was already available commercially in New Zea-

land, and in these cases the test reports would be available to the public. These test reports would follow a standard form and would be factual. They would not recommend one product against another or approve or disapprove a piece of equipment. It would be expected that the farmer reader would make up his own mind.

Confidential testing would apply mainly to testing of prototype equipment. Thus if the institute assisted a manufacturer with the testing and development of a safety frame the reports on this testing would be confidential up until the stage where the product was put on the market. Only after the product

was put on the market would reports of tests be available to the public. The essential point was whether the equipment was available commercially or not, said Professor Burton. The first commercial test report is expected to be published this month. It will cover the strength testing of the Bonser-built safety frame fitted to a David Brown tractor. From henceforth the institute will be publishing its annual report as a separate publication and when its library is operative it will be issuing a regular library abstract series covering current world literature in all aspects of agricultural engineering.