Wishing you joy and prosperity for the Festive Season and in the New Year

The year is heading to an end and we would like to wish everyone a joyful festive season and a prosperous 2016. We hope to contribute in some or other way to your scholarly success in the New Year.

For an interesting overview of what has been happening in our library over the past year, please read our two newsletters published in June and October.

We are looking forward to meeting again in 2016.

Staff – Jotello F. Soga Library

Open Access Week - 19 - 25 October 2015

Our library has been celebrating Open Access Week (19-25 October) as part of a global event that entered its 8th year in 2015.

Once again it was an opportunity to share the benefits of unrestricted open access to research results with clients.

The manager of the Open Scholarship Office of the Dept of Library Services, University of Pretoria, Dr Leti Kleyn wrote an interesting article published by The Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAF) as part of a series of three related articles: Why it’s getting harder to access free, quality academic research

New additions to "The Henry Stewart Talks" database

New additions to “The Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection” of the Henry Stewart Talks are now available.

Eight of the ten newly released online lectures are part of a series covering “Animal models in Biomedical Research”.

• The moral status of invasive animal research Prof. Bernard E. Rollin, Colorado State University, USA
• Legal aspects of using animals for research in the U.S. Dr. B. Taylor Bennet, Management Consultant, USA
• Modern production of laboratory animals Dr. Martin Toft , Taconic Ltd., USA
• Creating animal models by genetic techniques Mr. Emmanuel Gomas, Transgenic Technologies, Training and Consulting, 3TC, FR
• Surgical models and perioperative care in swine Prof. M. Michael Swindle, Medical University of South Carolina, USA; Prof. Mary Ann McCrackin, Medical University of South Carolina, USA
• Improving and humanizing animal models by microbiomic techniques Prof. Axel Kornerup Hansen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
• Behavioral phenotyping of mouse models of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders Prof. Jacqueline N. Crawley, University of California, USA
• Development of immunotherapies for type 1 diabetes. Value and limitations of mouse models. Prof. Matthias von Herrath, Novo Nordisk Ltd, USA

The University of Pretoria has full access to all the lectures which can be accessed from the Library website: E-Resources – Databases – Henry Stewart Talks

UPSpace performs well in webometrics ranking

Dr Leti Kleyn,Manager of the library's Open Scholarship Office announced on Friday that the university's repository UPSpace has moved up a considerable number of places on the webometrics ranking system:

"The new Webometrics ranking were announced earlier today at http://repositories.webometrics.info/en/Ranking_africa

UPSpace is still first in Africa. The repository performed well on the world ranking and moved up from 99th position to 73rd."

We are proud to be part of this achievement as our Veterinary Science component within UPSpace is also growing continuously.

Best wishes for a prosperous 2015!

The library would like to extend a warm welcome to all our clients, especially those who are new on campus. We wish you all a successful year of which we would like to be a significant part. Our first month is already packed with events. We will be offering library training to our new Diploma in Veterinary Nursing students on 14 & 15 January and our Scientific Information Literacy course for the new BVSc II students commences on 21 January. Some of the staff members will be attending an e-learning conference “Flexible futures: shaping e-learning for higher education” offered by the University of Pretoria from 26-27 January. We are also preparing an application to attend the 8th International Conference of Animal Health Information Specialists from 9-12 June in Edinburgh, Scotland. This conference is a highlight in our careers as it provides the ideal opportunity to network and benchmark ourselves and our services with those of excellent animal health information providers worldwide. We are looking forward to an exciting new year.