Open Access celebrations

With one of the focus areas of the library being the promotion of open access to research done at the University of Pretoria, the library is once again during this week participating in the worldwide Open Access celebrations.

The University of Pretoria’s repository UPSpace which houses the OpenUP collection, currently appears amongst the top 300 (position 296) Institutional repositories on the Ranking Web of World Repositories.

An interesting article was published on how the rankings of open access repositories are done.

OpenUp is one of the collections within UPSpace that houses the full text of published research articles authored and co-authored by UP staff and students.

You can learn more about OpenUP by reading or downloading the library's OpenUP brochure,watch a YouTube video on the benefits of Open Access and learn more about what you as a researcher can do to promote open access at your institution.

Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research in Open Access format

The Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research, one of the premier veterinary science journals in the Jotello F Soga Library’s collection is published in Open Access format from 2010 onwards on the OP Journal’s dedicated website

The journal is published through OpenJournals Publishing,a proud division of AOSIS (Pty) Ltd (African Online Scientific Information Systems) situated in Tygervalley, Cape Town. According to their website, OJP is the first African publisher to offer publication in print, as well as Open Access in PDF, HTML and XML. Articles will be freely available upon publication. Articles from several past issues are also available electronically and information on the print journal is provided.
As the publisher promotes the archiving of journal content on multiple platforms, accessibility of new researched knowledge and teaching is improved. Articles can be easily retrieved through search engines and other electronic indexing platforms. This will ensure a stronger online presence of the journal and its articles. Susan Veldsman, Director of the Scholarly Publishing Unit of ASSAF (Academy of Science of South Africa), confirmed that the Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research will in the near future be added to their open access journal platform SciELO SA.

Soga library staff visits Onderstepoort Primary School

It is always a thrilling experience to pay a visit to the pupils and teachers of our local Onderstepoort Primary School and spoil them with a few gifts.
Five staff members of the Jotello F Soga library had the privilege to pay such a visit on Friday the 16th of July. It was a visit planned a number of months before when we had the dream of supplying every child (approximately 180 pupils) with his/her own book in support of the “Every Child a Book” campaign initiated by our professional organisation “ Library and Information Association of South Africa”. We received quite a number of books as donations for which we are very grateful and though we could unfortunately not supply each pupil with his own book, we could offer the teachers a whole crate full of interesting books which they could distribute among the different class rooms.
With the visit being close to the completion of the World Cup Soccer and all the soccer magic still in the air, we thought it a good idea to add a number of soccer balls to their gift which also included the regular chips and sweets.
The visit also coincided with Mandela Day on the 18th of July and it was good to know that we could participate in the endeavour to contribute 67 minutes of our time to creating a better world around us.

Valuable resource donated to our library

Dr Rick Last, a specialist veterinary pathologist of Veterinary Diagnostix in Pietermaritzburg and former student of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, donated a very valuable resource to our library on Tuesday, the 18th of May 2010:

Laboratory Manual. 2nd ed. / Last RD, Hill JM, Vorster JH, Bosch SJ, Griffiths, C. Vetdiagnostix. Veterinary Pathology Services.

The Laboratory Manual printed on durable high quality paper, contains much sought after information that will be very useful to our clients.As they mention on their Webpage http://www.vetdiagnostix.co.za/it is a 412 page comprehensive guide with practical hands on advice for sample collection and result interpretation and contains more than 1500 full colour images. It is regarded as an essential source for veterinarians, veterinary students and nurses and animal health technicians that will guarantee reliable, cost-effective laboratory results.

Impressive statistics on the use of Veterinary material in UP's digital repository

We were thrilled to see that statistics distributed by the Web manager of our Dept of Library Services, Christelle Steyn, indicated that the SA National Veterinary Repository and the Veterinary Science communities of the library’s digital repository UPSpace, were amongst the 5 Communities accessed most from 4 Jan 2010 – 10 March 2010.

See statistics below.

Top 5 Communities accessed:
1. Engineering, Built Environment & Information Technology http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/71
2. Economic & Management Sciences http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/1682
3. Education http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/63
4. South African National Veterinary Repository http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/3809
5. Veterinary Science http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/78

Top 5 Sub-communities accessed:
1. Architecture http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/72
2. Southern African Transport Conferences http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/5201
3. Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/8641
4. Research Articles (Jonathan Jansen ) http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/111
5. HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies http://repository.up.ac.za/upspace/handle/2263/11004

IVY Academic Search: Veterinary Science and Medicine

We have heard the welcoming news that the Veterinary collections of the University of Pretoria's Open Access Institutional Repository UPSpace, have been added to an open access subject repository of the University of Utrecht: IVY Academic Search: Veterinary Science and Medicine. As they state on their webpage, their mission is to:

"provide the local, national and international veterinary community wih a high-quality academic information search and retrieval system for veterinary research"

This will contribute to the further exposure of our Faculty's research output as well as all other valuable digital veterinary science collections currently part of UPSpace.

One of the advantages of using the University of Utrecht's IVY Academic Search facility is that a central point is provided to search the open access repositories of all participatory Veterinary Institutions worldwide. Search results can be printed, e-mailed, saved or exported to Refworks.

We are proud to contribute to this initiative of the University of Utrecht.