The Dept of Library Services becomes a member of BioMed Central (a Science, Technology & Medicine open access publisher)

The Department of Library Services has become a member of BioMed Central (a Science, Technology & Medicine publisher) and will as such cover the costs of the articles researchers publish in BioMed Central’s accredited Open Access journals for the next year. Stellenbosch University is the only other current member of BioMed Central in South Africa.

Prepay Membership enables the University of Pretoria to cover the whole cost of publishing for our researchers when publishing in BioMed Central’s accredited Open Access journals. No additional fees will be paid by individual researchers. This is an advance payment system whereby the Department of Library Services pay up-front for accepted articles authored by UP researchers to be processed and published. Upon publication, the full Article-Processing-Charge (APC) for the journal in question, minus a loyalty discount, will be deducted from the UP account.

What are the benefits of Prepay membership?

Full support to UP researchers and Open access to their research:

• UP researchers do not have to pay anything directly for publishing in BioMed Central’s Open Access journals;
• UP researchers are automatically recognized as full Members through IP address or password recognition;
• Without any cost-barriers researchers are encouraged to choose accredited Open Access journals when publishing their research.

For questions about the BMC membership, please contact Elsabé Olivier (Manager: Open Scholarship, UP Dept of Library Services) e-mail elsabe.olivier@up.ac.za or telephone 012 420 3719.

BioMed Central Journals on
Web of Science (ISI)

 BMC BIOCHEMISTRY
 BMC BIOINFORMATICS
 BMC BIOLOGY
 BMC BIOTECHNOLOGY
 BMC CANCER
 BMC CARDIOVASCULAR DISORDERS
 BMC CELL BIOLOGY
 BMC COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
 BMC DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
 BMC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY
 BMC FAMILY PRACTICE
 BMC GASTROENTEROLOGY
 BMC GENETICS
 BMC GENOMICS
 BMC HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
 BMC IMMUNOLOGY
 BMC INFECTIOUS DISEASES
 BMC MEDICAL EDUCATION
 BMC MEDICAL ETHICS
 BMC MEDICAL GENETICS
 BMC MEDICAL GENOMICS
 BMC MEDICAL INFORMATICS AND DECISION MAKING
 BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
 BMC MEDICINE
 BMC MICROBIOLOGY
 BMC MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
 BMC MUSCULOSKELETAL DISORDERS
 BMC NEPHROLOGY
 BMC NEUROLOGY
 BMC NEUROSCIENCE
 BMC OPHTHALMOLOGY
 BMC PEDIATRICS
 BMC PLANT BIOLOGY
 BMC PSYCHIATRY
 BMC PUBLIC HEALTH
 BMC STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY
 BMC SYSTEMS BIOLOGY
 BMC VETERINARY RESEARCH

Retrospective issues of JSAVA available as full text

Issues of the Journal of the South African Veterinary Association are now retrospectively available in full text from volume 1(1) 1927-volume 67(4) 1996 through SABINET Gateway’s African Journal Archive. The digitisation process is not completed yet and some of the issues are still lacking.

The African Journal Archive Project is a retrospective digitisation project of full-text journal articles published in Africa. The project is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Veterinary Science represented in UPeTD high ranking

The Ranking Web of World Repositories which was released recently ranked UPeTD (University of Pretoria electronic Theses and Dissertations) at number 162.

According to webalizer which keeps track of the UPeTD statistcs, UPeTD has received 26437086 hits during the last year (Aug 2010 to July 2011). http://upetd.up.ac.za/webalizer/

A Veterinary Science Masters Dissertation of V Naidoo, done under the supervision of Proff G E Swan and J N Eloff, Dept of Paraclinical Sciences in 2004, was listed in the fourth position in the list of top 20 items accessed in UPeTD. The dissertation had 5515 hits during the period.

Naidoo, Vinasan
Screening of four plants commonly used in ethnoveterinary medicine for antimicrobial, antiprotozoal and anti-oxidant activity
http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03082005-091015/

Open access wildlife information

Iain M W Boardman, Chief Executive of the Wildlife Information Network, Royal Veterinary College, London made the following recent announcement on our worldwide veterinary librarians listserv:

Wildpro Multimedia, the veterinary and scientific information resource created by our Not-for-Profit organisation, has been put in the public domain. This is an enormous milestone for us and I want you to share this resource with all your colleagues and students.

The Wildpro® Multimedia Website ~ an electronic encyclopaedia and library ~ contains a vast amount of scientific information that has been collated over 20 years and for the first time is freely available to wildlife professionals, academics and other interested parties. The information is likely to be particularly valuable in remote developing countries, where access to libraries and similar information resources is very limited.

Visit the Website at www.wildlifeinformation.org

(The Wildlife Information Network (WIN) is a charity dedicated to making information on the health and management of captive and free-ranging wild animals, and emerging infectious diseases, available to wildlife professionals and decision-makers worldwide. WIN was set up in 1992 and became a registered UK charity (No. 1048059) in 1995. It is now part of Twycross Zoo, East Midland Zoological Society a registered charity No. 501841)

Marguerite back after her 10 week long USA study visit

We welcomed our colleague Marguerite Nel back from her USA trip on Tuesday 3 May and cannot believe that a month has already passed since then. We were thrilled to have her back and she enthusiastically shared her experiences with us.

Her six week internship at the University of California, Davis was one of the highlights of her trip and proofed to be very informative and enriching. She especially enjoyed her time at the Carlson Health Sciences Library which among others serves the School of Veterinary Medicine. The UC Davis staff spoiled her thoroughly and she enjoyed loads of hospitality.

Something that specifically impressed her during her library visits was that due to clients’ changing patterns of use of paper and digital collections, physical paper book and journal collections made room for study areas, space for group discussions and workstations to link to the vast amount of online information libraries had to offer.

More information about Marguerite’s visit can be read in the May 2011 edition of our library newsletter, InfoMania.

Another article published

Congratulations to our colleague Amelia Breytenbach for the publication of an article "The use of Metadata and Preservation Methods for Continuous Access to Digital Data" in The Electronic Library. The article was co-authored by Ria Groenewald of the Merensky Library. The article can be read at the following link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02640471111125195

Articles published by staff members

An article written by one of our colleagues, Tertia Coetsee, on research collaboration among a group of post-graduate students of the Phytomedicine Programme of the Dept of Paraclinical Sciences was recently published in Ariadne, a British open access magazine that aims to keep librarians abreast of current digital library initiatives. Refshare, a feature of Refworks was used to enhance collaborative research among the students where reading lists and core documents could be shared.

Article Title: "RefShare: A Community of Practice to Enhance Research Collaboration "
Author: Tertia Coetsee
Publication Date: 30-January-2011 Publication: Ariadne Issue 66

Marguerite Nel, one of our Technical Services staff members, published an article with co-author Ina Fourie of the University of Pretoria’s Dept of Information Science on the information behaviour of veterinary practitioners in South Africa in the Mousaion journal, an accredited journal published biannually by the Departments of Library Services and Information Science of UNISA:

Article Title: "An Exploratory study of the information behaviour of veterinary practitioners in South Africa "
Authors: Marguerite Nel; Ina Fourie.
Publication: Mousaion 28(2) 2010 pp 107-133.

The University of Pretoria Library Services is subscribed to the electronic version of the Mousaion journal and staff and students of the University of Pretoria can read an electron copy of the article.

New developments in 2011

We are looking forward to an exciting 2011. With a new strategic plan in the making for the UP Library Services (UPLS) for the period 2011-2015 we as a faculty library need to re-evaluate and re-align our operational plans for 2011 accordingly.

As part of a UPLS peer-review exercise that started in 2010, a review panel will visit our library in February to ascertain the quality of our facilities and services. The review panel also has access to the library’s web site and a comprehensive report drawn up for the purpose of the peer-review. We believe that this will be a fruitful exercise and that it will contribute towards an even better service for our clients.

One of the most exciting events on our calendar this year will be a study visit to the USA by one of our staff members. Marguerite Nel who was one of the participants of the Research Libraries Consortium Academy sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and held during 2010 in Stellenbosch was selected as part of a group of nine academic librarians throughout South Africa who will be visiting the USA for a period of 10 weeks. The purpose of the visit is to develop the skills of academic and research librarians supporting researchers at their institutions. During her visit she will attend a development course at the Mortenson Center of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, attend the National Conference of the Association of College and Research Librarians in Philadelphia and do an internship for six weeks at the research library of the University of California-Davis. We are looking forward to welcoming her back with new knowledge and skills that will help us enhance our service to our research clients.

Good news for some of our clients will be that the University has recently acquired a campus wide licence for Endnote, another software tool for managing references and bibliographies. Requests for the installation of the software on your computer can be done through the IT help desk.

The library has also subscribed to InCites, a Thomson Reuters product which is a powerful citation-based research evaluation tool that can be used to measure an institution’s research productivity and benchmark output against peers worldwide. Library staff will undergo training in this product during February and March.