Jotello F Soga library off to a good start in 2012

Judging by the load of activities of the first two months of 2012, the library staff can look forward to a fruitful year.

We started off with hands-on training sessions for the new "Diploma in Veterinary Nursing" students and our new series of library lectures for the new curriculum’s BVSc II students.

The library has the privilege to become part of the new BVSc curriculum introduced in 2011 and will be delivering lectures as part of the newly introduced Veterinary Professional Life module. Our lectures will focus on “Identifying and describing the need for, finding, evaluating, utilizing and managing information”. As part of the training the students will complete a practical assignment and demonstrate their ability to apply their newly acquired information literacy skills effectively. This is a first for the library as the time allocated for library training in the past was much less and the training was not integrated with the formal curriculum.

This couldn’t have come at a better time, as we started using our premier database CAB on the ISI platform since the beginning of the year and students had to receive the relevant training. Lunch hour training sessions are also offered to staff and students to acquaint themselves with CAB on the new platform.

Another bit of good news was when our colleague Tertia Coetsee was informed towards the end of last year that she was one of a privileged few academic librarians from South Africa chosen to, as part of the Carnegie Research Academy initiative in South Africa, participate in a ten week long study tour to the USA. The purpose of the visit is to gain insight in effectively supporting researchers at an academic institution. As with our colleague Marguerite Nel who had the same opportunity in 2011, Tertia will undergo a training program at the Mortenson Centre of the University of Illinois Library, have the opportunity to network with overseas colleagues, visit institutions like the OHIO State University, the Online Computer Library Center in Dublin, Ohio and the Association of College and Research Libraries in Chicago, Illinois. She will also spend a considerable amount of time at her host institution, the Purdue University Libraries. We look forward to learn from her when she returns in May.