Veterinary Practitioners’ Access to and Use of Modern Information

Abstract

Many Dutch veterinary practioners are using computers for the management of their daily practice. The first management computer programs (in the eigthies) were dedicated to patient and financial administration. At that time the practioners were using mainly more or less traditional methods for keeping up-to-date with scientific developments: a personal library with journals and (hand)books, organizing journal circulating-systems, following post academic courses, going to meetings et cetera.

The library of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Utrecht (the one and only in the Netherlands) was at that time steadily keeping up with the new developments of information retrieval systems: automation of the catalogue, buying new types of sources as CD-ROMs, offering online search facilities. As these new facilities were mostly still only locally useable within the university and rather difficult and/or expensive in use, they were not very well accessable for the veterinary practitioner or other interested people form outside the university.

Technical advancements (software and hardware) made the veterinary practioners slowly more aware of the accessability of new information sources. At the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine a small host-organisation, called PREX, was being set up in 1990, allowing veterinarians and others access to the CAB-database and other major biomedical databases. PREX operates on an annual subscription base and is for most practitioners an affordable accession to many information sources.

Courses were setup by the Dutch Post Academic Education Foundation to teach the basics on literature searching to veterinary practitioners. These courses were given by PREX and the veterinary library.

The consequences of the new developments on information technologies for PREX and the veterinary library were discussed. Several new digital databases are becoming available for keeping up-to-date with veterinary developments or getting access primary information, for instance on drug use (formularies) and animal diets. Some statistics of the use of these databases was presented. Internet as an information source is becoming more and more important. The number of home pages of Dutch veterinary practices is increasing, showing the involvement of the Dutch veterinary community with Internet. The expectations of the role of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, especially of the library and PREX, as information suppliers for the veterinary practioners was discussed.