Veterinary Subject Repository

One of the most refined consequences of open repositories such as the Igitur Archive is the possibility to build user services for different target groups around these repositories. These services are based on the open access principle, which allows metadata to be collected from various repositories and used to point users to the full text of academic articles, papers, congress proceedings, reports, etc.

The Utrecht University Library, in cooperation with Utrecht Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, has started developing one of these services: the subject repository for veterinary science & medicine. This subject repository collects relevant veterinary data from different high quality repositories and databases such as: Pubmed Central, the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Wageningen Yield, Zürich University, Cornell, Glasgow University, Queensland, Melbourne, the RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment), Ghent University and Utrecht University. Our goal for the future is to connect as many high quality repositories as possible in order to increase the assurance of relevance and completeness for the user.

The user portal of the subject repository for veterinary science & medicine will be launched in the first quarter of 2009. Because no campus licensing is involved, users from all over the world will be able to search the repository and access the full text documents. With the use of Google Analytics, we will be able to get an idea of the usage and thus the relevance of this subject repository. If the feedback is positive, we expect to build more subject repositories for other disciplines in the future.

The temporary website announcing this new library service is: http://vetrepository.library.uu.nl.

Please contact Astrid van Wesenbeeck should you have any questions about the veterinary subject repository.