Full Study Manuals · Every Country Welcome
The Living Sciences Library is full study manuals in the agricultural and life sciences, written at a university register for students preparing for a course or an examination.
It exists for students in countries that have never had anything written for them. Agricultural higher education outside a handful of countries runs on photocopied notes and textbooks written for another continent's soils, climate and crops, and a student who cannot afford a university library has nothing else.
The manuals are real manuals — subject by subject, chapter by chapter, with sources — rather than summaries. A student can read an entire subject here.
It is free and needs no sign-in to browse, deliberately. A library that asks a student to register before he can see whether it is any use is a library he leaves.
It is deliberately separate from the Applied Agriculture Library, which is written for a farmer growing a crop this season. Same subject matter, different reader, and collapsing the two would fail both.
It is honest that a manual is not a syllabus: what is examinable this year is set by your own board or university, and that has to be checked there.
What it is. Forty-five agricultural science subjects — from Principles of Agronomy and Weed Science to Dryland Farming and Agroforestry — each with a full written manual you can download as PDF, Word or PowerPoint, and a quiz to check what actually stuck.
When to open it. While studying for an examination, while preparing to teach, or when a subject you half-remember has become relevant again.
Have ready.
Step by step.
What it will not do. It is a written library. It is not a course, has no instructor, and is not a substitute for a syllabus — the manuals are general to the subject, not specific to your examining body.
Preparing for an examination that covers weed science.
What goes in:
What comes out:
Take the quiz a day after reading rather than immediately. Immediate recall measures short-term memory and consistently flatters you; a day's gap measures what you will still have in the examination hall.
Forty-five, including Principles of Agronomy, Farming Systems and Sustainable Agriculture, Weed Science, Dryland and Rainfed Agriculture, and Agroforestry. Each one is marked as taught worldwide or common regionally, so you can tell a core subject from a specialised one.
Yes — as PDF, Word or PowerPoint. PDF to read, Word if you will annotate it, PowerPoint if you will teach from it. The manuals are password-protected, and the password is today's date.
A day after reading, not immediately. A quiz taken straight afterwards measures short-term recall and reliably flatters you; a day's gap measures what you will still have when it matters.
An AI operating system for agriculture: free guides, manuals and tools written for every country.