Open and Hidden Strangeness Production in Nucleon-Nucleon Collisions

We present an overview of the description of K and eta meson productions in nucleon-nucleon collisions within an effective Lagrangian model where meson production proceeds via excitation, propagation and subsequent decay of intermediate baryonic resonant states. The $K$ meson contains a strange quark ($s$) or antiquark ($\bar s$) while the $\eta$ meson has hidden strangeness as it contains some component of the $s{\bar s}$ pair. Strange meson production is expected to provide information on the manifestation of quantum chromodynamics in the non-perturbative regime of energies larger than that of the low energy pion physics. We discuss specific examples where proper understanding of the experimental data for these reactions is still lacking.