Germany has four faculties of Veterinary Medicine. They are located at:
Of these, Berlin and Munich are separate units of their university libraries. In addition to the four, there is a separate School of Veterinary Medicine:
The five veterinary libraries connected with these institutions serve not only their own campuses, but also satisfy regional and federal demands. Apart from that, there is a nationwide special collections programme for various subjects, subsidised by the German Research Society - in which one library hosts a special collection or (several) - for a certain subject, and makes it available for the rest of the country. Consequently, there is also a special collection of veterinary literature, which will be referred to below.
There are six regional library networks, covering from one to several of the sixteen states. So far. only the veterinary collections of Berlin, Gießen and Hannover are in machine-readable format, but in no case are the complete holdings available in this way. Since the OPACS of the three libraries are also available via Telnet, the holdings are known to a wider public and interlibrary lending from them is increasing. Nevertheless, the libraries not offering machine-readable data would be contacted in some cases, since their holdings are traditionally known to be more extensive in special fields. Despite the non-availability of all these libraries' catalogues in electronic form, it is still useful to give a short survey of the individual collections.
Due to the fact that until the reunification of Germany there were two faculties of Veterinary Science in Berlin, there are actually two sites there. One is the library of the Veterinary Faculty of the Freie Universität, the other one is the former faculty library of the Humboldt Universität, which is now integrated into the library of the Veterinary Faculty of the Freie Universität as a branch of it. In the near future the libraries will be merged, which will lead to the weeding of a large section of the collection as duplicates are removed. The library has to make every effort to usefully offer these duplicates, especially to libraries in Eastern Europe. Part of the library is a "Dokumentationsstelle" (Documentation Centre), the task of which is to run literature searches on online databases via the DIMDI host, and to input German veterinary literature into AGRIS.
| Library of the Freie Universität: | |
| Holdings: | 125000 bound volumes, 750 serials |
| Budget: | DM 350000 (whole faculty) |
| Staff: | Library 1 veterinarian/subject specialist, 2 graduate librarians, 4.5 library assistants, 11 student workers with a total of 440 hours per month. |
| Users: | 1500 students/academic staff/practising veterinarians and others. |
| Documentation Centre | |
| Staff: | 2 veterinarians, 1 doc assistant |
| Holdings: | 5000 bound volumes (inc. serials after 1965), 72 serials |
| Budget: | DM 244169 (shared with human medicine) |
| Staff: | 1.5 academic librarians, 1.5 graduate librarians, 3.5 library hands. |
| Users: | 1650 students/academic staff/practising veterinarians and others. |
The library of the Veterinary School of Hannover has the most complete collection of the five. It would not have such a collection, however, without subsidies for the purchase of foreign literature relevant to research in the field of Veterinary Science, (including laboratory animals), and general parasitology. In return, the library has to buy all the literature in these fields which is published in the German language and make it extensively available for national inter-library lending. Three institutions in Hannover share the education of biology students (University of Hannover. Medical School of Hannover and Veterinary School of Hannover), so literature in the biomedical foundations of Veterinary Science, as well as in Zoology, and even Botany, is included in the holdings of all these institutions.
| Holdings: | 188000 bound volumes, 1640 serials |
| Budget: | DM 485100. Plus DM 63000 from the German Research Society. |
| Staff: | 2 academic librarians, 1 veterinarian (information specialist), 6 graduate librarians, 1 library assistant, l accountant, l secretary, 3 library hands, 8 student workers with a total of 180 hours per month. |
| Users: | 2600 students/academic staff/practising veterinarians and others. |
The University library of Leipzig, an institution with a long tradition, is at present being reorganised and efforts are being made to broaden the veterinary collection. Agriculture, which is at present taught at Leipzig, is going to be discontinued in the future, so literature on animal keeping, animal breeding and animal husbandry would no longer be shared between the two sections of the library, but will have to be fully considered by the veterinary section of the university library. At Leipzig there is a large collection of the congress literature of Eastern Europe from before the recent political changes.
| Holdings: | 53000 bound volumes, 219 serials |
| Budget: | DM 250000 |
| Staff: | 1 subject specialist ( 1/4 of working time devoted to veterinary science), 1.75 library assistants, unspecified fraction of central services |
| Users: | 1137 students/academic staff/practising veterinarians and others. |
In Munich the collection policy nowadays is somewhat influenced by the fact that the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, also in Munich, collects veterinary literature on a considerable scale. Nevertheless, there is a rather rich collection of holdings of historical interest. Agriculture is also taught at Munich, at the Technical University. Consequently, literature which could be attributed to one of the two fields, or either, is to be found here in large measure. It is not evident, without consulting the Bavarian Central Catalogue (not machine - readable with respect to these holdings), from which library to request material on inter-library loan.
| Holdings: | 53000 bound volumes, 219 serials |
| Holdings: | 56000 bound volumes, 88 serials |
| Budget: | DM 96000 |
| Staff: | 1 academic librarian (1/3 of working time devoted to veterinary science), 1 graduate librarian, 1 library hand, student workers with a total of 25 hours per month |
| Users: | 2100 students/academic staff/ practising veterinarians and others. |
Cooperation between these libraries is mainly in inter-library lending, and contacts therefore have been on a rather formal level until recently. Individual personal contact between some librarians has existed, but a meeting of all the librarians in charge has yet to take place. Such a meeting is scheduled for 1996. It would be helpful and logical, in that we share the same language, to invite Austrian and Swiss colleagues to participate.
Fields of interest not covered by the libraries already mentioned may b served as follows:
| Agriculture: | Central Library c Agriculture, Bonn (German Res. Soc. special collection) |
| Human Medicine: | Central Library of Medicine, Köln/Cologne |
| Pharmacy: | University Library c Braunschweig (German Res. Soc. special collection) |
| Zoology: | Senckenberg Bibliothek Frankfurt (German Res. Soc. special collection) |
A number of university libraries also cover these fields to some extent, and in some cases they would b good alternatives to apply to for inter-library loans, especially if the; are closer to the requesting library A list of libraries would b inappropriate in this context. A list of addresses of all relevant libraries is available from the author.
I would like to thank my colleague in the libraries concerned for supplying me with facts and data, in particular Holger Kulemeyer, who largely rewrote the section on Berlin.
|
Friedhelm Rump Tierärztliche Hannover Hannover Bibliothek Postfach 71180 30545 Hannover Germany | |
| PHONE: | + 49 511 953 7110 |
| FAX : | + 49 511 953 7119 |
| E-MAIL: | rump@bib.tiho hannover.de |
The Royal Veterinary College Library, London, has recently won 2 government grants, totalling 142,000 BP to preserve and exploit (through a major cataloguing project) the books etc. in the Historical Collections. The project will last for four years, with the aim of making the collection more widely accessible. We shall be cataloguing on-line into our LIBERTAS automated library system.