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April 9th, 2019
Parrish Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring Factiva, brought to you by Dow Jones & Company.
Link: http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/az.php?s=71213 is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: Factiva is a global information resource that provides full-text access to top national and international newspapers (including full text of the Wall Street Journal), newswires, business journals, market research reports, analyst reports and websites.
Tutorial: Click here see the basics of using Factiva.
Start with this hint: Create a simple search using the Home button and search by keyword, company name, or industry. Use the search options to narrow the results by sources or by date.
Why you should know this database: Factiva contains over 8000 publications with content from 118 countries in 22 languages and updated daily. 74% of Factiva’s premium news sources are not available on the free web and thousands more are available via Factiva on or before the date of publication by the source.
Related Resources
Some other databases you might want to explore, are:
This Featured Database comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTMarch 29th, 2019
On May 23, the Purdue University Graduate School and Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies are hosting an invitation-only symposium on the topic of non-traditional theses and dissertations. (A limited number of invitations are available. Visit www.lib.purdue.edu/etdgiantleaps to request an invitation.)
As universities and colleges have moved from print to digital, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) present the opportunity to think beyond the limitations of traditional formats and processes in order to enable students to express their scholarship with greater creativity and impact.
This one-day symposium will feature keynote addresses by University of North Carolina (UNC) Greensboro Dean of Libraries and Professor Martin Halbert and Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Professor Jean-Pierre Hérubel. Sessions will explore the challenges and opportunities of ETDs by bringing together faculty and staff directly engaged in supervising theses and dissertations and managing the processes and infrastructure for producing them.
There is no cost to attend, and lunch will be provided. For more information, visit www.lib.purdue.edu/etdgiantleaps.
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalMarch 28th, 2019
Courtesy of Purdue News Service
A former associate dean and professor at Purdue University will be returning to campus after being selected the new dean of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies.
Beth McNeil, dean of library services and professor at Iowa State University, will join Purdue on July 1.
“Beth’s knowledge of the Purdue Libraries organization and our entire campus will be an enormous benefit as we continue to develop an integrated, campus-wide data science education ecosystem,” said Jay Akridge, provost and vice president for academic affairs and diversity. “Beth brings an impressive record of leadership excellence in library and information science to this important position.”
Previously, McNeil was Purdue’s associate dean for academic affairs and a professor of Purdue Libraries. Before her initial appointment at Purdue, McNeil was assistant, and then associate, dean of libraries for the University of Nebraska. She also has held positions in the libraries at Bradley University and the University of Illinois.
McNeil graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s degree in English, and her master’s in library from information studies. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Nebraska.
McNeil’s research has been published in numerous academic journals and has focused on areas such as librarians and scholarly communication, changes in libraries in the 21st century and performance management and career development.
“I look forward to working with my colleagues at Purdue as we collaborate to create innovative ways to further the work of our faculty, staff and students,” McNeil said. “Purdue is well-positioned to address the rapid development of data science and to lead the way in integrating information literacy into the curriculum.”
McNeil was one of four finalists for this position. In her role at Purdue, McNeil will lead faculty and staff focused on expanding teaching and learning in data and information literacy, digital scholarship, and undergraduate and graduate research. These efforts will be in conjunction with a University-wide Integrated Data Science Initiative in collaboration with all academic colleges.
By Abbey Nickel, see https://bit.ly/2HKKyq0
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalMarch 27th, 2019
In his new book The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist (Purdue University Press March 2019), Julien Gorbach examines the life of great twentieth-century screenwriter, playwright, and activist Ben Hecht.
Gorbach treats Hecht’s activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. His new book details the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history, about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media, and about the consequences.
Read on to see our discussion with the author about Hecht’s life, career, and legacy.
Q. Who was Ben Hecht and why is he significant?
Julien Gorbach: Ben Hecht was a legendary screenwriter, who was also known for breaking the silence in the American media about the Holocaust, and for his militant Zionism. He invented the gangster movie and wrote classics like Scarface, Gone with the Wind and Hitchcock’s Notorious. Hecht was a prolific reporter, novelist, and Broadway playwright. During the Holocaust and the struggle to establish the state of Israel, he was a major force as a propagandist. He became notorious, because of his inflammatory rhetoric and his partnership with Mickey Cohen, a Jewish gangster. Together they smuggled weapons to Palestine in the struggle for a Jewish state.
Q. How did Hecht find himself in the newspaper business, and what was the Chicago School of journalism?
Gorbach: He was introduced to the business through his uncle and quickly took to the work. I think it’s too simplistic to just dismiss Hecht as a cynic, though he was certainly influenced by the hardboiled attitude of other newshounds in his early days chasing stories. Reporters would do anything for a story and, given the fierce competition for scoops, would concoct more than a few. But Hecht’s cynical style ultimately reflected a strain of Romanticism. It was a dark view common among those who came of age during the Great War, the so-called Lost Generation. Like many who lived through the carnage of those years, Hecht developed a grim view of human nature and he looked back at the liberal Enlightenment-era optimism about mankind as naïve.
Q. How was he later influenced by the intellectuals, poets, writers he met in New York? Was The Front Page his breakthrough?
Gorbach: He came into himself as a dramatist in New York. In the 1920s one way to prove yourself was to write a blockbuster novel. Another way was to have a hit on Broadway, which is what Hecht and other friends of the Algonquin Roundtable crowd did. But New York was publicity-oriented, and Hecht found the city more superficial than Chicago. He famously said that he and his friends “were fools to have left Chicago,” but he knew most Midwest writers had to go to New York for their careers. The Front Page was a huge hit and made him famous. At about the same time, his 1927 movie Underworld launched the gangster movie craze, and he won Best Original Story for it at the first Academy Awards in 1929.
Q. How did Hecht get to Hollywood?
Gorbach: Hecht’s first hit movie was silent. When the talkies came in, writers were in demand. There’s the famous story about the telegram he received from Herman Mankiewicz, who said there were “millions to be grabbed out here, and the only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.” For writers, Hollywood was almost too good to be true.
Q. What happened to Hecht’s artistic ambitions and political ideals in Hollywood?
Gorbach: He once said: “We didn’t write movies. We shouted them into existence.” This wasn’t so far off. The writer’s room was a kind of clubhouse, especially since so many of Hecht’s friends from New York also came to Hollywood. He did feel compromised as a writer in Hollywood, so why did he keep at it? The truth is that Hecht was polyamorous—a skirt-chaser. He liked women and ran around with many. His playboy lifestyle ended up getting a bit out of hand, and reached a point where he had a lot of work to do just to make ends meet, keeping up his lavish life with his wife and his affairs. He wrote some great movies but also doctored scripts, doing many uncredited, piecemeal jobs under the table. His time was not spent on novels, which back then, especially, was considered the only real measure of great writers. And he did reach a breaking point, when his personal crises with his marriage and career and the global situation with Hitler all kind of came together at the same time.
Q. How was Hecht prescient about the Final Solution?
Gorbach: Hecht wrote “The Little Candle,” a short story, after Kristallnacht occurred in 1938. No one took from the event that there would be a genocide. That was beyond the imagination, or as the historian Deborah Lipstadt put it in the title of a book, Beyond Belief. But Hecht’s short story vividly describes the Holocaust. Critics said it was a powerful story but Hecht had an insane idea—that the Germans would actually kill a half million Jews.
Q. How did Pauline Kael establish Hecht as a screenwriting legend?
Gorbach: That emerged because of her debate with Andrew Sarris. The 1960s Sarris/Kael debate made film a serious art form for critical consideration. A major question was who is the true author of a film, the “auteur” or the writer? Kael said it was the screenwriter and pointed to Hecht’s groundbreaking contributions, saying artists like him made the movies great.
Q. How might Hecht be reassessed as a writer with a political legacy?
Gorbach: He remains a politically controversial figure, but his significance is his message, which remains especially important now, in the days of the Trump administration. All of Hecht’s work as a writer and an activist is shot through with his concerns about the “soul of man,” which is so fundamental to all the questions we face today about democracy. If we want to remain liberal and democratic, we have to remember what liberalism and democracy are about. We rely on people to be good, but why does the United States also tilt the playing field, for example, by favoring rural people over urban people with our Electoral College and Senate systems? What are the implications for democracy if people don’t turn out to be as good as we expect them to be, or aren’t as good in the ways we expect them to be? What are the implications of our darker nature, our tribalism for example, for our free press and our social media? What are the implications for our ideas of rights, like the Second Amendment, or for our treatment of immigrants and people of different backgrounds? Are we reckoning with the dark side of human nature realistically in our foreign policy, in the way we talk about questions of war and peace? What does our treatment of the environment, and other species, tell us of our nature? These questions are still wide open, and in Hecht’s day, there was more room for error about them. With nuclear weapons, climate change, and the other issues that we confront now, the stakes have gotten much higher.
Q. Do you feel a revival is due of his works in a play or movie festival? How might The Notorious Ben Hecht introduce new audiences to a writer in some ways ahead of his time?
Gorbach: This is in a way three books rolled into one. It tells the story of his Jewish activism, and the implications of that story for Israel, America and Jews everywhere today. It’s the story of a great writer who has never been properly understood or appreciated. And finally, it’s the story of “a child of the century,” a kind of wild tour through all these worlds of the last 100 years—Capone’s Chicago, New York in the ‘20s, Hollywood, World War II, etc. But altogether this is just one big story of an extraordinary life, with an appropriately dramatic arc and ending. I think when people read the story and learn who he is, they’ll appreciate him. But they’ll also understand and appreciate the message that he has for us today. In this book, you can hear him speaking to us, now.
The Notorious Ben Hecht is now available. Check out a free preview of the book.
Get 30% off when you order directly from the Purdue University Press website and enter the code “PURDUE30” at checkout.
Filed under: UncategorizedMarch 21st, 2019
Courtesy of Purdue Today
Purdue University recognized Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Assistant Professor Heather Howard’s contributions to student learning by honoring her with the Exceptional Early Career Award Tuesday, March 19. Howard was surprised with the news while she was teaching a class in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center.
The Exceptional Early Career Award recognizes outstanding undergraduate teaching among Purdue’s early career, tenure-track faculty. Recipients of the award will receive a $5,000 award with additional funds for a department business account.
Howard is among faculty in other departments being awarded this spring. For more information, visit the original piece in Purdue Today at www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2019/Q1/howard,-harwood-honored-with-university-teaching-awards.html.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, general, Uncategorized
March 20th, 2019
Visiting Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of the Pacific Elham (Ellie) Sayyad Abdi will present “Immigrants: An Information Literacy Framework” at 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 23 in Stewart Center, room 320, during her visit to Purdue University. The talk is open free to the public and is sponsored by the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies.
Abdi’s research focuses on uncovering the ways in which different populations conceptualize and engage with information. Her presentation will cover her Australian Research Council-funded study, which explores immigrants’ experiences with information and information literacy to enable them to learn the structure of the new environment, make informed choices, and become active and empowered participants of a new society.
Currently, Abdi is the Australian Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at the University of the Pacific, California. She is an information researcher and working to pioneer the concept of information experience design (IXD), which is about designing and developing interventions for everyday life based on how people engage with information. Her research specifically examines the information experience among immigrant communities.
From 2014–18, Abdi served as an assistant professor in the School of Information Systems at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
Abdi is a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), chairs the LIS Education in Developing Countries Special Interest Group at the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), regularly serves as a reviewer for various information journals, and serves on the program committees of various information conferences.
For more information about this event, contact Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies Associate Professor Clarence Maybee at cmaybee@purdue.edu.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, press_releaseMarch 18th, 2019
Courtesy of Purdue News Service
The public will have a chance to get a closer glimpse into Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong’s life through an exhibit presented by Purdue Archives and Special Collections.
The free, public exhibition, “Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil A. Armstrong Papers,” runs through Saturday, Oct. 12 in the Purdue Archives and Special Collections. It is located in Stewart Center inside the Humanities, Social Sciences and Education (HSSE) Library on the fourth floor of the library. The general exhibit hours are 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. On Saturday, Oct. 12, in celebration of Purdue University’s 2019 Homecoming, the exhibit will be open 8-11 a.m.
The exhibit commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight that landed on the moon – where Armstrong took those famed first steps – and coincides with Purdue University’s July celebration of the moon landing, as well as the University’s sesquicentennial celebration, 150 Years of Giant Leaps.
“Neil wanted his collections to be used for both scholarship and research at his alma mater,” said Tracy Grimm, associate head of Purdue Archives and Special Collections and the Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration, and curator of the exhibition. “Students and researchers have the unique opportunity to have a behind-the-scenes look at Neil’s life and legacy when they conduct research using Neil’s personal papers. This exhibition offers the public an opportunity to get to know Armstrong and the steps leading up to the Apollo 11 mission through access to Armstrong’s papers.”
The exhibition charts Armstrong’s experiences leading up to Apollo 11 mission, including training and coursework, planning for how and where to land on the moon, the success of the mission itself, and the impact it had on society. The following 11 items represent a portion of the items the public can expect to see on display at “Apollo in the Archives”:
In addition to the “Apollo in the Archives,” Purdue’s Ringel Gallery, in partnership with Archives and Special Collections, will present the exhibition “Return to Entry,” which will feature artwork inspired by Armstrong’s archival collection, March 25 to May 11, in the Ringel Gallery, Stewart Center. A reception and a panel discussion will be held at 5:30 on April 4.
For this exhibition, the artists’ challenge was to bring art, engineering, and science together to imagine new horizons informed by archival documents and artifacts contained in the Armstrong Papers and the papers of other astronauts and engineers. This exhibition will feature work by Frances Gallardo, Michael Oatman, and Jennifer Scheuer, who will be part of the panel discussion on April 4.
These exhibitions are one of many events celebrating Purdue’s Sesquicentennial, 150 Years of Giant Leaps. The yearlong celebration is highlighting Purdue’s remarkable history of giant leaps, while focusing on what giant leaps Purdue can take to address the world’s problems. The celebration concludes in October with an astronaut reunion.
Filed under: general, SPECMarch 15th, 2019
The Marshall and Susan Larsen Leaders Academy in the Krannert School of Management provides an ideal place for Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Associate Professor Ilana Stonebraker to teach Purdue students.
The Academy, according to its website, “provides high-achieving students with enhanced academic opportunities and learning experiences to help them become top performers in the world of business.” The program creates “a culture of achievement”—a phenomenon that Stonebraker, as an instructor of the Management 110 course offered to students in the Academy, not only fosters and sustains in her teaching, but also one she takes to heart in the pursuit of top performance in her own chosen field.
In Fall 2018, Stonebraker was among 12 faculty members inducted into the Purdue University Teaching Academy as a new Teaching Academy Fellow. She is the first ever Libraries and School of Information Studies faculty member to be inducted into the elite program, which recognizes Purdue faculty for their outstanding and scholarly teaching in graduate, undergraduate, or engagement programs. This recognition is just one among many honors Stonebraker has racked up over the last couple of years. In June 2018, she was one of 10 individuals selected by the Tippy Connect Young Professionals (TCYP) in the organization’s annual Top 10 Young Professionals Under 40 Award program. Last summer, she was recognized by the American Library Association (ALA) Library Instruction Roundtable as an author of one of the Top Twenty Library Instruction Articles of 2017. (She was recognized for the same thing in 2016 for a different article.) In early 2017, she was named a “Mover & Shaker” in Library Journal’s annual roundup that honors individuals making significant impacts in libraries and in education around the world. Last fall, too, she was elected to the Tippecanoe County Council (representing District 1).
While the accolades are rewarding, she noted, it is her work—like teaching the highly motivated students in the Larsen Leaders Academy—that really inspires her.
“I like to figure out where students are and help them build bridges to achieve their dreams, to help them imagine and then try things they never would have imagined themselves doing before,” she explained. “One of the ways I do this is through encouraging them to explore the ways they use information in their decision-making processes.”
Stonebraker has been at Purdue since 2012, and she has been teaching in Krannert since 2013. In addition to her teaching course load, she serves as one of Purdue Libraries’ business information specialists in the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics. She also researches how individuals use information in their studies and in their work and applies the knowledge she gains from that in her teaching.
“That is how I introduce myself to my students. I tell them, ‘I teach information literacy, and I research how people use information. Based on that, I can teach you skills that others cannot teach you here at Purdue,'” she explained. “Knowing how to use and apply information is increasingly important in a 21st-century economy. People in business, particularly, need to know how to use and apply information quickly. That is basically data analytics.”
Stonebraker is among several Libraries faculty who either teach or co-teach credit courses at Purdue in a variety of departments. She proudly points out that librarians tend to be highly engaged instructors who have been developing and practicing effective active-learning techniques and approaches to instruction for many years (perhaps even before “active learning” became an important practice in education).
“Librarians make interesting teachers because we think systematically about problems. Our brains are set up for inputs and outputs,” she added. “Our default is active learning. You can’t really teach students how to research and use information without actively engaging students in research and information use activities.”
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, HSSEBMarch 14th, 2019
Much of history would be forgotten if we did not have those committed to recording it.
“When I started, much of the historical information wasn’t available.” recalls Purdue professor Fred Whitford.
Now, after authoring more than 250 research, extension, and regulatory publications, delivering over 5,800 presentations to a wide array of audiences, and writing several books about the history of Indiana agriculture, Whitford is responsible for a great deal of what is known about the history of agriculture and extension in Indiana.
Whitford’s books include Enriching the Hoosier Farm Family: A Photo History of Indiana’s Early County Extension Agents; Scattering the Seeds of Knowledge: The Words and Works of Indiana’s Pioneer County Extension Agents; For the Good of the Farmer: A Biography of John Harrison Skinner, Dean of Purdue Agriculture; The Grand Old Man of Purdue University and Indiana Agriculture: The Biography of William Carroll Latta; and The Queen of American Agriculture: A Biography of Virginia Claypool Meredith. These books study the history of agriculture and extension agents at Purdue and in Indiana, often through concentrating on important figures throughout our history. (Find a flyer for the series of books here)
John Calvin Allen, professionally known as J.C., is one of those figures. He worked as a photographer for Purdue University from 1909-1952, and operated his own photography business until his death in 1976. Allen’s photos are the source for Whitford’s upcoming book Memories of Life on the Farm: Through the Lens of Pioneer Photographer J. C. Allen (September 2019), co-authored by Neal Harmeyer an archivist at the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. The book uses Allen’s photographs, which were taken on glass slides, to get a unique look at Indiana’s agricultural history.
“People love old pictures,” says Whitford, “it brings people back.”
This volume contains over 900 images, most never-before-seen, of men, women, and children working on the farm, which remain powerful reminders of life in rural America at the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the collection of photographs is the importance of the the time period they cover. They act as a historical account of a major transitional period for agriculture. “He told the story of change” says Whitford, he explains that it was a time when tractors replaced horses, and superior crops and animals were being introduced.
Why research the history of agriculture and extension in Indiana in such an expansive way? Whitford believes that the past repeats itself, and that learning from it will always have value.
“We take so many things for granted, and all of these things we take for granted had to start somewhere.” says Whitford.
Just as important, it’s a reminder of culture and mission.
“It shows what the culture of extension is, we’ve always been here to help.” says Whitford. “We are here to serve growers.”
Memories of Life on the Farm: Through the Lens of Pioneer Photographer J.C. Allen will be available in September 2019. Get 30% off when you order directly from the Purdue University Press website and enter the code “PURDUE30” at checkout.
Filed under: UncategorizedMarch 7th, 2019
That Sheep May Safely Graze (March 2019, Purdue University Press), by David Sherman, brings light to the human story of Afghanistan, the disruptive impact that decades long conflict has had on rural Afghans, their culture, and the timeless relationship they share with their land and their animals.
The book describes the story of one of the most successful and lasting U.S.-funded development programs in Afghanistan since the start of American nation-building efforts there in 2001. It is a story of bringing essential veterinary services to a society that depends day in and day out on the well-being and productivity of its animals, but also a society that had no reliable access to even the most basic animal health care.
The author of the book, David Sherman, has worked all over the world to provide essential veterinary services such as animal health service delivery, veterinary infrastructure development, transboundary animal disease control, goat health and production, and veterinary and veterinary para-professional education. His work has brought him to over 40 countries, working for a variety of international agencies including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), Heifer International, and Farm Africa.
Prior to the book’s publication, we asked David Sherman about his personal experiences in Afghanistan, the way the world views the country, and more.
Q: What made you want to write about your experiences?
David Sherman: Several things. The United States has been involved militarily in Afghanistan indirectly or directly since 1979 and yet Americans remain largely unaware of the country, its history and its people. Having been involved in relief and development activities in Afghanistan since 1991, I have been able to gain a long-term experience with the country and its culture and I wanted to share that experience with a wider public. Also, for those who have followed events in Afghanistan, the prevailing view has been that billions of dollars have been spent on nation building with little to show for it. Therefore, I wanted to tell the story of our successful effort to provide sustainable animal health care in the country to a wider audience to illustrate that indeed, effective development in Afghanistan is possible. Finally, I wanted to invite readers to get to know some of the fine and decent Afghans with whom I worked, so that they can better appreciate the warmth, grace and resilience of these people in the face of the tremendous hardships and losses they have suffered.
Q: What is the best story that didn’t make it into the book?
Sherman: Oh, so many it is hard to choose. But there was one that epitomized the challenges of doing development work in Afghanistan. I was able to organize a collaborative effort between my employer, the Dutch Committee for Afghanistan, US Army Civil Affairs officers, a British NGO and several volunteer veterinary practitioners from the US to refurbish the teaching clinic at the Kabul University Veterinary Faculty and restore their desperately needed clinical teaching program for veterinary students. Unfortunately, after we had it up and running and farmers were bringing their livestock and expats were bringing their dogs and cats for treatment, the clinic was bulldozed to make way for the newly created American University of Afghanistan!
Q: How do you feel the world’s perception of what is going on in Afghanistan lines up with your own experiences there?
Sherman: Sadly, what the world hears about Afghanistan – widespread corruption, ineffective governance, the opium trade, instability, poverty, insurgency and violence are all true, but the tragedy is that the world hears only about these things. Afghanistan is a country of 35 million people, the vast majority of whom get on with their lives, demonstrating a remarkable inner strength. Every day, they go to work, to market, to school, to the mosque to pray, to the fields to tend their crops, to the pastures to tend their animals, to funerals to mourn their dead and to weddings as an affirmation of their hopefulness for a better future. What the world does not hear about is the dignity and humanity of these Afghan people and their desire for peace and a better life for their children.
Q: How would you explain the importance of the work you did to a layperson?
Sherman: Through our work, we were able to establish reliable access to clinical veterinary services throughout Afghanistan. This was a vitally important achievement. Afghanistan is mainly a rural society whose people still depends largely on agriculture. It is estimated that the livelihoods of up to eighty percent of the population depend directly or indirectly on livestock. Nomadic herders, of which there are millions in the country, depend almost completely on their livestock to survive. Since the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the prolonged fighting that followed to this day, what little veterinary service that had been available to farmers and herders through government had essentially disappeared. As a result, the nation’s livestock had succumbed to a wide range of preventable and treatable diseases due to lack of vaccines and medicines and personnel trained in their use. The livelihoods and well-being of livestock owners as well as the national economy suffered as a result.
While there were numerous relief efforts over the years to provide veterinary services through various donor projects, these interventions were not sustainable because the service was provided for free and the personnel were paid salaries. When the projects ended and the free medicines and salaries disappeared, so did the veterinary services. We took a different approach, recruiting and training young men and later women from their home districts, providing them with a six-month training along with the necessary equipment and supplies required to provide good quality clinical services to their home districts once they returned after training. We made it clear from the beginning that we would pay no salaries and that these trained paraveterinarians would have to charge for their services so that they could earn enough money to provide their own income and to purchase their resupply of additional medicines and vaccines to continue working. This private sector, fee for service model worked very well. Since the first paraveterinarians were trained in 2004, almost 90% of them continue to provide animal health care services to the farmers and herders in their districts, some now for almost 15 years. As a result, hundreds of jobs were created for paraveterinarians, the health, welfare and productivity of Afghanistan livestock have been improved and the livelihoods of rural Afghans enhanced throughout the country.
Q: What are the most important ways your work affects the general public?
Sherman: Throughout the developing world and even in some parts of the developed world, tens of millions of animal owners do not have access to reliable animal health care. There are many reasons – remoteness, lack of roads, telecommunication and other infrastructure, war, civil unrest, misguided policies, insufficient numbers of veterinarians, lack of economic incentive for veterinarians to serve small holder farmers and nomads, poverty and inadequate knowledge of the benefits of veterinary services. The fee for service, private sector, community-based veterinary paraprofessional model for sustainable animal health care delivery that we refined in Afghanistan can serve as a model to improve access to veterinary services around the world.
The benefits of regular access to reliable animal health care are many, particularly in developing countries. Healthy, vaccinated animals offer protection against the disaster of unexpected loss of flocks and herds to disease, improved food security, better nutrition, increased income, expanded opportunities for value chain development in the livestock sector and even social stability for communities that depend on animals for their survival.
Q: If you could have readers take one thing away from this book, what would that be?
Sherman: If I may, I would like to quote a passage from the book to sum up what I would like readers to take away from it. “Sadly, despite so many years of American involvement, the Afghan people remain largely invisible to most Americans, and their hopes and aspirations, so similar to our own, remain unknown. My life has been enormously enriched by the many years spent in their midst and I have grown to love some individual Afghans as if they were my own family. The Afghan people are not faceless ciphers, conniving thieves, ruthless terrorists, and rabid fundamentalists. All societies are complex and contain undesirable elements. It is true of Afghan society as it is true of our own. The Afghans I worked with and came to know well are decent, hardworking people. They are generous, hospitable, good-humored, trustworthy, and devoted to family and community. They have deep and abiding religious faith. Afghans are proud of their country’s beauty, its varied cultures, and its long, rich history. Most of all, Afghans are resilient. They have suffered in ways over the past thirty years that most of us cannot even imagine. They want and deserve better. They want and deserve peace, security, prosperity, and a hopeful future.”
As I write this, the American government is engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. I pray that respect for the quality of life and the basic human rights of ordinary Afghans, especially Afghan women, is on the agenda.
That Sheep May Safely Graze: Rebuilding Animal Health Care in War-Torn Afghanistan is available now. Check out a free preview of the book.
Get 30% off when you order directly from the Purdue University Press website and enter the code “PURDUE30” at checkout.
Filed under: Uncategorized