Tuesday, June 7, 2011

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)

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

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.