Professional associations typically offer their members resources in the form of journals, manuals and other publications. However, these may not be fully digitised or provided in a consistent format that is easily searchable. This can make it time-consuming and unwieldy for users to find and access the information they seek. For associations, the task of organising, digitising and managing those resources can be daunting. The British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) turned to Ingenta for help.
BSAVA exists to promote excellence in small animal practice through education and science. The Association was founded in 1957 as a professional body to serve veterinary surgeons who treat companion animals and now has over 11,000 members. The majority of their members work in practice and represent over a third of the working veterinary surgeons in the UK.
BSAVA provides a highly regarded range of publications and online resources aimed at veterinary professionals. Some were already available in digital format to members, but BSAVA leaders wished to open up access to institutions and other markets, as well as to add functionality—for example, by enhancing online searchability. All this had to be done in a manner that aligned with BSAVA’s unique situation. “We needed a solution that was flexible enough to accommodate our different types of content and our requirements regarding member access and pricing, but also conformed to industry standards and provided us with a structured approach for our content,” said Ian Mellor (Head of Publishing).
After careful consideration of several potential options, BSAVA chose to have the BSAVA Library built on Ingenta Edify. The BSAVA team liked its user-friendly and intuitive nature, as well as its capacity to host and deliver a wide range of information and publications for the association’s diverse audience of veterinary professionals, students, veterinary nurses and practice staff.
Working together, Ingenta and BSAVA identified and integrated tools and features that would support BSAVA’s vision for the library.
The library mirrors the design of the BSAVA.com site, providing a seamless user experience and reinforcing the BSAVA brand identity. It is fully responsive and optimised for a range of devices, including mobiles and tablets.
The site also integrated the BSAVA Single Sign On system, eliminating the need for separate login credentials and providing access to both bsava.com and bsavalibrary.com.
Ingenta Edify’s flexible content management framework supports the addition of non-traditional academic content such as drug formularies, client information leaflets and poison guides in addition to standard academic publications such as books, journals, conference proceedings and supplementary material such as podcasts and videos.
Ingenta Edify also uses extensive and detailed content tagging—such as by clinical topic, type of animal and publication format—to enable a categorised filtering function in the BSAVA library, allowing users to easily narrow down their results.
The content tagging enables rich interlinking between resources allowing users to explore related content that provides additional context or research.
The rich interlinking is used in the site search enabling users to easily find the content they are looking for as well as discover related content. For example, in addition to book chapters covering a certain illness or topic, the search results also provide links to other resources – including some hosted on other sites – that might provide further evidence to support a diagnosis or treatment.
Additionally, BSAVA used Ingenta Edify’s powerful content management tools to create collections, which provide fast and easy access to content on topical subjects or problem areas for small animal practice.
One of BSAVA’s key features as the leading veterinary association for companion animal vets and veterinary nurses is its comprehensive range of membership benefits to meet the different needs of its diverse audience. Ingenta Edify enables content access for various membership tiers for the BSAVA Library, including:
Each tier provides a variety of benefits and access rights, but every member receives five free downloads the first time they log into the BSAVA Library.
In addition, the BSAVA Library uses Ingenta’s “carnet” model as a convenient option to download content. Users can purchase a Library Pass at three different levels, allowing them to instantly download content as needed up to the amount in the pass, rather than go through the shopping and payment process for each order.
Ingenta Edify provides a convenient, user-friendly, and searchable digital publishing platform for the BSAVA Library’s trove of publications and resources, with benefits for both BSAVA and users:
• Access is enhanced for both existing and new audiences.
• The platform’s scalability and flexibility support the creation and addition of new content and projects in the future.
• The increased availability and visibility of BSAVA content support the growth of the association’s online brand presence.
BSAVA are delighted with the platform. “It was a challenge to get our various content types digitised and presented in a coherent way, but Ingenta helped us to channel our ideas and also provided some neat solutions – and continues to do so as we develop the site,” said Ian Mellor. “Having our content on an industry standard platform presents many opportunities to develop new products and content areas, reach new audiences and also engage with other online solutions.”
BSAVA also received positive feedback from users:
“The library allows me to search for manual chapters, articles and podcasts for specific conditions or procedures, ensuring that I have the latest information available at the click of a button.”
“I can quickly use search functions to find specific information chapters rather than having to scan pages, saving me time in practice.”
“The ease of searching by species or topic ensures that I can target my searches to my clinical cases or my interests.”
“On the whole, I find the BSAVA Library ensures I can access a wider range of resources with more ease in busy clinics.”
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You can discover more about Ingenta Edify the premium branded content publishing platform and the features available. However, you may also be interested in reading about Ingenta’s other publishing platform solutions. Ingenta Connect may be a suitable lower cost alternative or Ingenta Connect Unity a publishing platform which enables a branded identity. Ingenta also have an open access publishing platform – Ingenta Open.