Partners in Animal Health: A Faculty-Library Collaboration
USDA provides $500,000 to create materials that will address the risk of avian flu
By Terry Kristensen
Are you a pet owner wondering how to care for your animal companion? Or a practicing veterinarian who needs to brush up on diagnostic and treatment procedures? If so, you may find the Web-based educational materials created by Partners in Animal Health to be just what you need to deal with an animal-health related issue.
The primary purpose of Partners in Animal Health, co-sponsored by the Veterinary Library and the Department of Clinical Sciences in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), is to provide practicing veterinarians, pet owners and anyone else concerned about animal health issues with state-of-the-art multimedia Web-based information and tools.
For pet owners, the topics covered include day-to-day care, such as clipping claws or administering medications, as well as extensive guidance on diseases, such as diabetes and cancer.
Veterinarians can obtain help in conducting procedures, such as a bovine necropsy (similar to an autopsy for humans) through viewing step-by-step videos of the procedures, or in identifying and diagnosing diseases and conditions through the viewing of images that show normal organs and tissues as well as how various diseases or conditions present themselves.
Partners in Animal Health -- with an emphasis on Partners -- is aptly named for reasons beyond playing an essential role in educating those interested in animal health.
It is an alliance between the CVM faculty and the Veterinary Library. Dr. Jodi Korich, a graduate of the College and once a practicing veterinarian, serves as the director of the program while Terry Kristensen serves as associate director while continuing in her role as associate director of the Veterinary Library.
Korich and Kristensen define the program, strategize and determine projects to be conducted. Korich maintains relationships with the faculty and professional organizations who contribute to the projects, creates the content and oversees production. Kristensen provides project management and focuses on day-to-day operations. Lance Merkur, a third member of the team, creates the animations that supplement the video components of the materials. For production, the program works with Insights Video for videography and Sunnywood Designs for the Web-based components of each project.
Other Cornell organizations also contribute to the success of the program. Members of Cornell University Library’s Digital Library and Information Technologies (DLIT), most notably Adam Smith, play key roles in developing the CVM Media Archive, which is the technical infrastructure for holding and maintaining the collection of images and videos that make up a major portion of the materials created by Partners. Smith’s work is done in collaboration with the FEDORA team, who hope that the Archive created will serve as a prototype for other universities and organizations who want to use FEDORA for their digital asset management needs. And the Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) Hosting group partners with the program to provide a physical home for the Archive.
Finally, the program partners with sponsors who share an interest in providing high-quality, authoritative and user-friendly materials. These include companies such as Purina, who provided funding for production and distribution of DVDs on Home Care for Cats.
The program’s most recent partnership is with the USDA. In order to address the risk of avian flu, the USDA has just provided Partners with $500,000 to create materials that enhance disease recognition, diagnostic capabilities and disease preparedness among veterinarians as it applies to avian health. These materials will provide protection within the United States and worldwide.
The Veterinary Library’s commitment to Partners in Animal Health may be seen as a departure from standard library services, however, it is fundamental to the way the library serves its constituency, and co-sponsoring the program makes the library an integral part of the college.
The Archive being developed with DLIT will serve as an indispensable resource for the CVM in its educational mission and as it continues to strive to be viewed as the top veterinary college in the country. The library plans to eventually use the Archive to hold not only digital assets for the Partners program itself, but for the entire college, including videos, animations and images of such things as surgeries and procedures, animals affected by certain diseases and conditions, normal and diseased tissues and equipment used in the animal hospital.
Visit Partners in Animal Health at http://www.partnersah.vet.cornell.edu/.
Terry Kristensen is the associate director of the Veterinary Library and associate director of Partners in Animal Health.