VET’s digital community under the spotlight – ENABLING ACCESS TO HISTORICAL RESEARCH (https://www.up.ac.za/dspace/handle/2263/80)
The Veterinary Science Library participated once again in Faculty Day at Onderstepoort with a hands-on display of one of its growing UPSpace communities, the Theiler Collection.
Ably assisted by Ria Groenewald, the AI digital expert, and Amelia Breytenbach (VET’s digital expert and main force driving the project) we were able to show our clients and visitors what a powerful tool such a digital collection is, enabling access to historical documents including rare photographs of ARNOLD THEILER who founded the Faculty in 1920 and his colleagues and friends and family. Ria made an excellent scanned copy of his own thesis presented at Berne University in Switzerland in 1901 (Die Malaria des Pferdes) and it is included in the Collection for all the world to read. I wish I was there in 1901 to tell him that the future would give him even greater exposure than he had in Pres. Paul Kruger’s time!
Diseases of production animals are of importance worldwide, but Africa has a special abundance of diseases and therefore attracts interest from various research bodies internationally. Human health is inevitably linked to animals, with serious repercussions if diseases are allowed to spread as seen now with Bird Flu. Most of the early research reports on Africa’s animal diseases appear in our local veterinary or animal science journals.
The need to digitise these early works is imperative.
Theiler’s report on Lamsiekte (Parabotulism) in cattle in South Africa, published in 1927, is being studied now by a Research group in Germany – we provided the material which was unobtainable in any library in that country. We are holding thumbs that they will help us with funding to digitise these early publications.
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