JISC at the RVC

Last week, Paola from JISC visited the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) to discuss progress of the OVAM project. We briefly talked about the recent activities, including the student e-curator weekend and meetings with the publishers. Overall everything seems to be under control so far but we would not want to speak too soon! Most of the resource collection work is yet to commence but we are sure that with so many enthusiastic individuals involved it will be a success.

At the RVC museum

Triggered by the discussion about the Programme event  in Birmingham Nick attended, we talked about how many of the RVC projects funded by JISC made following projects possible, links not always easily identified. It is wonderful how so many ideas that made it to fruition then led to other ideas and projects, often quite innovative. Even OVAM project is really a follow up of Opening Veterinary Access to Literature (OVAL) and has so many connections with another project RVC is also part of, PublishOER.

The visit would not have been complete without showing Paola the "real" veterinary museum, where she could put her hands on some specimen used in teaching.

Manson Publishing Meeting

Manson Publishing is another of the partners in the OVAM project. They will be contributing a percentage of content from their texts to the museum. Manson's were also involved in the previous JISC funded Opening Access to Veterinary Literature (OVAL) project where flashcards were created using questions from some of their books.

Nick and Bara met with Matt from Mansons to discuss the details of how we will work together for the museum. Some key anatomy texts were identified which have some fantastic images and diagrams in them. These contributions will be a very important addition to the museum and will be recognised in a similar way to the flashcards in the OVAL project with attribution to the contributor and a link to their website for those interested in purchasing the whole text.

The next step in the process is for us to carefully work through the texts and identify the parts we feel will be most valuable as a learning resource for students. This will not be an easy task as we are really spoilt for choice!