Final news update for 2016

The year is drawing to a close and we thankfully look back on a few highlights we accomplished since our last update in May:

Veterinary Science research support LibGuide

We published our Veterinary Science research support “LibGuide” during May and plan to expand it in the near future to add more valuable information for postgraduate students. We also provided a LibGuide for Veterinary Science legislation and training material.

ORCiD membership

The University of Pretoria recently signed an ORCiD membership agreement in its endeavour to improve the university’s research visibility. Researchers are encouraged to register for a unique ORCiD ID, to populate their ORCiD record with publications and professional information and widely use it during their scholarly life. Information specialists at the different Faculties were tasked to train and assist researchers in obtaining and using ORCiD ID’s. We found it very appropriate to market ORCiD during and beyond this year’s Open Access celebrations during October.

Conferences and Workshops

Staff members were fortunate to attend the following:

SARIMA (Southern African Research and Innovation Management Association): Creating an enabling environment for postgraduate research

LIASA Interlending Workshop, National Library of South Africa

Southern African Online User Group – 13th International Southern African Online Information Meeting

University of Johannesburg Library Conference: Reinventing African libraries

During September Amelia Breytenbach presented a “Dublin Core Metadata Workshop” to staff members of the University of Pretoria’s Department of Library Services.

Hybrid Fair participation

A Hybrid fair was recently held at the University of Pretoria to celebrate its hybrid model of teaching and learning. Our colleague Marguerite Nel was involved in preparing material for the exhibition and representing us at the fair.

Experiential training of final year Information Science students

A group of 58 students from the University of Pretoria’s Department of Information Science completed their Experiential Learning Project at the library. The library’s Open Scholarship Office and Digitisation section hosted them for the period.

The Veterinary Science library was fortunate to have a group of them working on digitising and uploading part of the “Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research” to UPSpace.

This gave our collection quite a boost. You can read more about this student project in the Dept of Library Services’ July/August/September 2016 newsletter.

With this we would like to wish our clients a blessed Festive Season and a well-deserved period of rest. May we all return in 2017 with renewed energy and innovative plans for the New Year.