Photo gallery of the Conference

Memorable moments have been captured by photographers Trenton C. Boyd, Paula King, PerAnders Akersten, Amelia Breytenbach, Marguerite Nel and Antoinette Lourens

Visit the website: http://www.ais.up.ac.za/vet/icahis/icaphotc.htm

5 ICAHIS SPONSORS

A big THANK YOU to our sponsors :

in alphabetical order -

Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria
CAB International
CTA (Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation), The Netherlands
EBSCO
Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria
INTERVET
KARAN BEEF
NISC
SABINET
SKY Information Suppliers
South African Online Information Services
SWETS
Virbac

We would also like to thank TRENTON BOYD, Veterinary Librarian at the University of Missouri, USA for the unique postcard he commissioned for this conference.
It shows Africa's Big 5 carrying a banner "Marching to Pretoria" and led by a rather chirpy looking hippo on their way to the conference building (the Sir Arnold Theiler Building at the veterinary faculty campus) where an African vulture is keeping a wary lookout!

This is a limited edition postcard, with artwork by Rick Geary, an internationally known cartoonist, illustrator and postcard artist. The publisher is C. Trenton Boyd, an internationally known collector of veterinary related postcards - BoydT@missouri.edu

5 ICAHIS : POSTER SESSION 7 July 2005

POSTER SESSION 7 July 2005

Chair: Monica Hammes, Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria

1. The Hernquist Library – Changing Bookshelves, Changing Roles. Beata Akersten, Hernquist Library, Sweden

2. How Information Beats Iron or Knowledge Management Enables Strasser Hoofcare. Martha de Jager, Knowledge Management, Deloitte & Touche, South Africa

3. Mentoring in a veterinary library. Raisa Iivonen, Viikki Science Library, Finland

4. The Health Sciences Library as Partner in Case-based Learning Exercises: the Diagnostic Challenges at Washington State University. Sarah K. McCord and Vicki F. Croft, Washington State University , Health Sciences Library, Pullman, WA, USA.

5. OPEN ACCESS ISSUES and how these are being addressed at the University of Glasgow. Maureen McGovern, James Herriot Library, University of Glasgow, Scotland

6. Totally E: Meeting the challenge of going electronic only for document delivery and interlibrary loan. Becky McKay, Outreach Services and Document Delivery Librarian, Chris Foster, Client Services Manager, Martha Bedard, Associate Dean and Director, Medical Sciences Library, Texas A&M University, USA

7. Harnessing information resources: collection management at the Veterinary Science Library, University of Pretoria. Marguerite Nel, Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria, South Africa

8. Promoting Information Literacy as a cooperative project between five Nordic countries. Teodora Oker-Blom, Viikki Science Library, Finland, Anne Cathrine Munthe, Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, Norway, Heli Myllys, Viikki Science Library, Finland

9. The international scientific visibility: the case of the research in veterinary medicine in Mozambique. Horácio Francisco Zimba, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Moçambique, Suzana Pinheiro Machado Mueller, Universidade de Brasília, Brazil

10. Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “Giuseppe Caporale” and International Cooperation. S. Del Papa - OIE Collaborating Centre for Veterinary Training, Epidemiology, Food Safety and Animal Welfare. B. Alessandrini, O. Pediconi - Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “Giuseppe Caporale”, Italy.

11.A knowledge platform in veterinary public health: the experience of IZSA&M. B. Alessandrini, P. Colangeli, D. Orientale, S. Del Papa - Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “Giuseppe Caporale”, Italy.

12. Development of an expert information system for the management of animal diseases epidemics. P. Colangeli, R. Lelli - Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “Giuseppe Caporale”, Italy

13. Bluetongue entomological surveillance in East European and Balkan countries: collection and display of geographical data. L. Savini, Carla Ippoliti, Sandro Pelini, Annamaria Conte, Paolo Calistri - Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “Giuseppe Caporale”, Italy

5 ICAHIS:7 July Session 6 & 7

5 ICAHIS 7 July 2005
Thursday morning's Keynote speaker was Prof Bruce Rubidge, Director of the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, University of the Witwatersrand. He presented a fascinating picture of southern Africa's ancient animal life based on the fossil record. South Africa can proudly boast of having the following:
· The oldest tortoise ancestors
· Best record of Therapids in the world
· Oldest dinosaur ancestor
· Oldest dinosaur eggs in the world
· Oldest evidence of human-made fire in the world (at Swartkrans, Cradle of Human-kind)
· Best record of an extinction event – 250 million years ago – 96% of ocean species and 70% of land species vanished
Prof Rubidge also related the importance of information storage and retrieval in palaeontology to librarianship.
Our second keynote speaker was Dr Glenda Myers, head of the Health Sciences Library, University of the Witwatersrand.
She gave a lively and thought-provoking presentation on the role of Evidence-based Librarianship (EBL) and how it can be used to improve the quality of professional judgements. She invited our participation in a survey she will be undertaking.

SESSION 7 : THE ROLE OF THE INFORMATION SPECIALIST. Chair: Hilda Kriel, Asst Director, Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria

Nancy Burford and Robin Sewell, Texas A&M University, described a research project undertaken at the TAMU Health Sciences Library on benchmarking, especially in the collection development area.
Vicki Kok, Virginia Polytechnic and State University, USA, presented a paper on the shifting issues in library management, starting from the pre-electronic era to the present.
Muyoyeta Simui, Veterinary Library, University of Zambia, described her study on the information specialist’s role in enhancing access to animal health information in Zambia. One of the challenges is enabling wildlife workers to access information as they are far from information centres when stationed in the bush.
Erica van der Westhuizen and Elna Randall, University of Pretoria, reported on the Academic Information Service project to improve information support to researchers and postgraduate students to enhance research output.
In the final presentation Fiona Brown, Veterinary Library, University of Edinburgh, UK, described her library’s efforts to train incoming veterinary students in information literacy skills. They have established an effective education program that defines IR skill competencies and provides instruction and supporting documentation for the students. They collaborated with their medical library colleagues in preparing this training program.

VISITS AND BANQUET
After a delicious "potjie" lunch participants visited the Medical Library of the University of Pretoria where Magriet Lee, the Head, described their activities within the Health Sciences Faculty. Mike Volschenk demonstrated their unique online product which supports undergraduate student learning, the Block programme.
This was followed by a tour of the Veterinary Hospital and Research Section of the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa, led by Dr Ian Espie, the Zoo's chief vet. We peeked through the theatre window to glimpse a chimp undergoing surgery. We were also able to fit in a quick walk through part of the Zoo before the end-of-conference banquet at the Waterhole Restaurant.
Unfortunately it was too dark by then to see the animals at the waterhole, so we concentrated on food and drink and the gifts that the lucky numbers drew for some!
Sanah and Maria's beautiful singing rounded off an enjoyable evening and their bidding us farewell in all 11 official languages of South Africa was much appreciated.

5 ICAHIS: 6 July 2005 SESSIONS 4 and 5

Wednesday’s activities started with a visit to the De Wildt Cheetah Breeding Reserve. Conference attendees were given a tour of the facilities and introduced to a number of native species in a natural habitat including cheetah and wild dog, not far from Onderstepoort.
After a picnic lunch, sponsored by SWETS, the paper presentations continued.

SESSION 4 : KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT. Chair: Correy Sutherland, National Electricity Regulator, South Africa and Facilitator, KM Practitioners Group, Pretoria

After the visit to De Wildt 3 papers were delivered in the KM session.
David Swanepoel, Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute Library, South Africa reported on a research project aimed at reconstructing knowledge about livestock management in southern Africa before colonisation. He described the use of rock-art, oral history, and archaeological findings to develop an understanding of livestock management before written history of the area (~15th century).
Ruth Lawrence, Department of Primary Industries, Victoria, Australia described the efforts to consolidate a number of specialised regional libraries and replace them with virtual collections and services available electronically. Virtual libraries with subject gateways now provide access to a consolidated, central storage facility for the once dispersed collections.
Johann van Wyk, Academic Information Service of the University of Pretoria, described the communities of practice (COP) in academic libraries and their role in supporting explicit (written) and tacit (unwritten) knowledge within the organisation. He gave examples of how to capture tacit knowledge and described various COPs at UP such as Water Research, African Goats, and Architecture.

SESSION 5 : THE WEB. Chair : Trenton Boyd, University of Missouri, USA

A progress report on the implementation of digital collections in Mozambique was provided by Horacio Zimba and Dr Mohamed Harun, University of Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo. They described a poor paper-based library environment made modern through web access, and efforts to digitise local PhD theses and scientific reports. They also displayed photos of the new library made possible by German and Dutch funding. (Dr Harun mentioned the friends he had made through the Vetlib-l listserv through the years)
Christel Smith, Academic Information Service, University of Pretoria next presented a paper prepared jointly by 6 staff members of the University of Pretoria on capturing and managing tacit knowledge (the digitisation of 40,000 slides), a joint undertaking between the Department of Telematic Learning and Education Innovation, the Veterinary Library, and the Faculty of Veterinary Science. Metadata implementation to enhance access to this slide collection is placing increasing focus on the important role of the cataloguer/classifier
Linda Coates, Manager, Library Services of the Zoological Society of San Diego, USA, described the process of selecting relevant, useful information to be included in an animal science web portal. This includes information on animal training, environment enrichment and husbandry. She emphasised the need to keep information products up-to-date and to promote the collections both online and offline.
The final presentation of the day, a joint paper by Antoinette Lourens, Tertia Coetsee, Amelia Breytenbach and Erica van der Westhuizen focused on web portals created and maintained by the Library of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria, most notably the African Goat Portal (http://www.ais.up.ac.za/vet/goatweb.htm)
Poultry Web (http://www.ais.up.ac.za/vet/poultry.htm)
and Ostrich Web (http://www.ais.up.ac.za/vet/newost.htm).

The day ended with a barbecue at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, with an informal lecture/demonstration on elephant contraception techniques by Prof Henk Bertschinger, Department of Production Animal Studies at the Faculty.
At this occasion the Scientific Committee of 5 ICAHIS presented a citation to Prof Koos Coetzer and Prof Roy Tustin in acknowledgement of their contribution to the world veterinary literature through the recent publication of their 3 volume book, Infectious diseases of livestock.

5 ICAHIS: 5 July 2005 Summary Session 2 and 3

SESSIONS 2 and 3 : E-RESOURCES

Chair : Greg Youngen of the University of Illinois

The first paper was by Tandi Lwoga of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. She looked at the coverage of African animal health on the Internet. 27 databases were selected for the research project. Only 8,28% of websites gave information on African animal health topics. She asked delegates to supply African animal health information on their websites.

The second paper was by Didace Agaba of Makerere University in Uganda. He assessed the utilisation of Makerere University's electronic information resources by the academic staff. It was very interesting to see the reasons why the staff were not using the Internet.

Robin Sewell of Texas A&M University Library delivered a paper on enhancing the use of electronic resources in a university library. She took us through the difficult decisions they had to make and implement to put their library's electronic resources in subject groupings.

Paula King of the Kresge Library at the Scripps Research Institute in California presented a paper on "Seamless library services using the Open URL syntax". She described her library's decision to use SFX (the OpenURL resolver tool from Ex Libris) which simplifies the researcher's access to full text. We enjoyed her slides with animals for a background.

Dr Tayo Babalobi from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria discussed the Internet and Information and Communication Technologies for veterinary medicine education in Nigeria. In 2003 only 25 people at the University had Internet access. This was through a dial-up service. In 2005, only two years later, they were ranked as the best veterinary faculty in Nigeria (there are 5 faculties). This was possible through the McArthur Grant allocation of $3 million which allowed them to develop an entire network infrastructure. Dr Babalobi sees the road forward as one of marketing and promoting the use of the newly available Information and Computer technologies. This will enable them to reach their vision.

We were pleased that Leta Mojanaga from the Glen College of Agriculture Library was able to give a short presentation, informing us of the problems that the emerging farmers in the Free State province in South Africa have in obtaining information. The agriculture extension workers there do not reach all these new farmers so they turn to the wrong people sometimes for help - often people with even less knowledge than they have themselves. Another problem is the language situation. These emerging farmers are often not literate and their Afrikaans and English language skills are very poor. She pointed out the need for more information in languages that these farmers could understand, such as Sesotho. Leta will be training extension workers to find the information their farmers need on her return.

The morning session was followed by a visit to the Veterinary Science Library of the University of Pretoria (the hosts of the conference).

After lunch the participants were taken by bus to the Agricultural Research Council Production Animal Institute at Irene. The Librarian, Andries Labuschagne gave an introductory lecture about the Institute, and this was followed by a visit to the Parasitology section and afterwards the Library.

Then it was back to the bus and on to the Rietvlei Nature Reserve.
When we arrived the guides for the night drive were waiting for us. Each participant received a cosy handmade (tiger skin) blanket to keep out the cold. A huge bonfire was burning in the centre of the lapa. While the first group of 20 went on their night drive the rest enjoyed a delicious barbecue, the meat expertly cooked by Marguerite Nel's husband, Dries.
It was the second group who were fortunate to see the mother rhino with her baby calf. A most rewarding experience!

5 ICAHIS : 5 July 2005 Summary

Tuesday 5 July
Our keynote speaker for the second day was Mr Roy Page-Shipp, a consultant and leader of the South African Research Information Service (SARIS) project.
He discussed online access with all the positive and negative aspects. An amount of R110 million is spent per annum on online acess but this does not ensure that all researchers have the same level of access to information.
Some are well served, while others are very poorly off. The problem is that the publishers are still striving to make the rules.
Under the Open Access issues he mentioned that there are a few scattered initiatives but up to now it is still more important for a researcher to publish in a subsidised journal than in an OA journal. This means that publishing is limited to a selected group of journals.

eScience is the global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure will enable it. Researchers need to be part of this infrastructure to be competitive.
The eResearch librarian is, according to Page-Shipp, the new way for the future. There will be opportunities for information specialists in the new research environment. They must be willing to move into online information support and recognise the realities of self help. They must show their users the right way to search for information, improving their searching skills. He advised the information specialists to take the lead when being disintermediated!

5 ICAHIS : 4 July 2005 SUMMARY Session 1

SESSION 1 : Library Products and Services (Chair: Teodora Oker-Blom, University of Helsinki, Finland)

It was interesting to hear about services provided in such a variety of veterinary libraries:
a) veterinary libraries at universities (Ohio State University, USA, University of Zimbabwe, and Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania)
b) information services provided by PRAIS (University of the Free State, South Africa) and by Pirbright Library, UK.

Sarah Murphy described how they promote information services to veterinary professionals in Ohio. Zanele Hadebe of Zimbabwe inspired us all to better our client relationships while Wanyenda Chilimo of Tanzania discussed the effective disseminating of veterinary information at Sokoine University's library. Ernene Verster walked us through the Programme for Agricultural Information Service (PRAIS) and showed very interesting statistics about the type and number of requests received at PRAIS.
Sheila Shrigley showed how the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the UK in 2001 was handled by the Pirbright Library. Her F&M database is a valuable information asset, used worldwide in answering questions, including the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute.

The afternoon of Day 1 was spent visiting the Veterinary Academic Hospital. What a visit it was! Everyone was most impressed by the professional appearance and management of the hospital where South Africa's future veterinarians are trained. Vukile Siyotula and Sr Sarah Maritz were excellent guides.
Delegates then took a brisk walk to the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute. Tea was taken in the courtyard outside the Museum where delegates were welcomed by Dr Johan Grobbelaar of the OVI Directorate. The library was then visited where David Swanepoel was the host.

The welcoming cocktails, sponsored by EBSCO were followed by a barbecue at the Faculty. Guests were welcomed by Dr Gerhard Steenkamp, the newly elected President of the South African Veterinary Association.
Everyone enjoyed the social interaction and the traditional South African menu.

5 ICAHIS : 4 July 2005 SUMMARY

Our Conference starts!

4 July 2005: The Welcome
The participants from the USA were thanked for spending their National holiday working in South Africa, by the Acting Director of the Academic Information Service, Robert Moropa. (Attending conferences is hard work!)

The Vice-Principal of the University of Pretoria, Prof Andy Mogotlane and the Dean of the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Prof Nick Kriek, welcomed all participants as well. Prof Mogotlane stressed that ignorance makes people vulnerable and that information professionals give the Gift of Information
The Dean spoke about the critical issues in accessing e-information in Africa, especially bandwidth problems. Robert Moropa emphasised that the lives of animals are in our hands through the information we provide.
Keynote speaker Dr Adi Paterson, Deputy Director General, Dept of Science and Technology, South Africa, gave a thought-provoking presentation with many interesting comments such as:

• the need to build networks of people before other facilities can improve
• all changes in research have an impact on Info Specialists' work
• SA Research Network has been started but bandwidth connection costs are still extremely high in South Africa
• Open Access versus commercial access to journals - Regulations will be written during the following 18 months regarding an OA repository for publications in South Africa
• Animal health informatics not as well developed yet as human health informatics
• shared information is crucial in Africa especially - for example, trans-frontier game parks where the borders between countries have been removed
• the discipline of palaeontology has changed through new genetic research
• data of HIV Aids research cannot be shared as there is no metadata protocol of the data. Aids is the first disease showing this dilemma in sharing of data
• for the period 1990 - 2002 98,000 journal articles were published in 5508 journals (half appeared in 132 journals)
• we must become more radical - how to get more information to more people as quickly as possible
• form an association - AVIP = African Veterinary Information Professionals - a network to share information
• There is a need to change the basic value system, to break the cycle of overdevelopment in the developed world and the cycle of despair in third world countries