Australasian ADISC members
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Paul
Andrew |
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Taronga
Zoo |
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Paul Bamford |
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Suzie
Barlow |
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Sea World |
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Sara
Brice |
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Taronga
Zoo |
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Benn
Bryant |
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Western
Plains Zoo |
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Kirsty Chalmers |
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Taronga
Zoo |
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Amanda Embury |
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Ian
Fraser |
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ARAZPA ( |
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Gary Fry |
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Alan
Henderson |
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Museum |
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Marnie Horton |
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Sea World |
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Taronga
Zoo |
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Kevin Johnson (Chair) |
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ARAZPA |
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Andrea
Reiss |
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Taronga
Zoo |
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Jonathan
Wilcken |
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ARAZPA |
Wendy Blanshard,
Records/Special Projects Officer, Sea World
Email: wendyb@seaworld.com.au
Wendy graduated from the
Wendy's computer experience began with some soulless data entry into dBase III
and IV while at Uni, and transferring Lone Pine's koala breeding records at
home into a DOS-based spreadsheet program called VP Planner to calculate the
ages of pouch young reaching progressive milestones in their behavioural development.
Fortuitously commencing work at Sea World in 1995 at about the same time that
ACCESS 2 first became available on a single laptop in the park, she has been on
a learning adventure ever since. Her home computer is a second-hand XT with two
five and a quarter inch floppy drives and no hard drive, but the Sea World
laptop travels a lot... A background in non-Government institutions may help
her contribute to the ADISC list serve discussion group from a slightly
different perspective.
Vanessa Di Giglio, Administrative Assistant, Veterinary &
Quarantine Centre, Taronga Zoo
Email: vdigiglio@zoo.nsw.gov.au
Vanessa has been employed at Taronga Zoo as an Administrative Assistant at the
Veterinary & Quarantine Centre (VQC) since October 1992. Her
responsibilities include maintaining medical animal records, the Division's
computer systems and a variety of administrative tasks related to the day to
day running of the VQC. Since 1993, She has entered
information into the MedARKS anaesthesia, parasitology and clinical pathology
modules for the veterinary department and is solely responsible for submission
of veterinary reports to
Vanessa was instrumental in
the recent development of a wildlife rehabilitation database which is currently
being used at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic at Taronga Zoo. This program
was written in conjunction with
Centre. She also setup ARKS 4.0 to be used for the animal collection and animal
confiscations. She was also involved in Marketing activities, design of signage
and interpretations for the Education department and production of procedures
manuals for animal record keeping.
Marnie Horton, Assistant Manager and
Aquarium supervisor, Marine Sciences, Sea World
Email: marnieh@seaworld.com.au
Marnie completed a Bachelor of Science, zoology major, in 1991 at University of
Queensland, then went on to work as a research assistant for a fish parasitogist, also at U of Q for 2 years. The parasites of
interest were the external monogenetic trematodes that infect the skin and
gills of marine sharks, rays and fish.
This was followed by a year of world travel.
Since then Marnie has been employed at Sea World on
the Gold Coast, beginning as an aquarist for 1.5 years, Senior Aquarist for 2.5
years, then as Assistant Manager/Aquarium supervisor for the Marine Sciences
division which encompasses all animals held at Sea World. During this time it
became evident to Marnie that record keeping for
individual fish was extremely difficult due to large numbers of a single
species and very little individual variation for identification. Marnie's role within this group is to try and assist with
the fishy side of things. As far as I.T. experience
goes, Marnie has moderately good knowledge of Exel and Access data base systems.
John
Inkson, Systems Administrator, Zoological Parks Board of NSW
Email: jinkson@zoo.nsw.gov.au
John has been working for the Board for the last 14 years, in a number of
different roles. In 1988 he commenced work as a Casual Security Officer during
the time the Giant Pandas were on loan to Taronga Zoo. Although originally
determined to stay only 3 months, the Zoo "grew on him" and he
performed various functions on the business side of the Zoos until the
Information Technology section was formed in 1995. John joined the Information
Technology Manager (Jenny Vasseleu), in planning and
deploying the Board's IT infrastructure for the coming years.
From it's humble beginnings the Board's IT section has now grown to 4 full time
staff, servicing 300 plus users and approximately 250 workstations and various
other devices, across Taronga Zoo in Mosman and Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo
NSW. Network infrastructure for the Zoos comprises of an ethernet
network running TCP/IP with the majority of areas running at 100mbps, with a
view to gigabit and wireless infrastructure in selected areas "soon".
Connection between the two sites is via a 256k frame relay link, that will be
extended in the future to accommodate Voice Over IP.
John has been instrumental in the implementation of a number of IT related
projects at the Zoos. Recently (Aug-Sep last year) he was responsible for the
successful migration of the Zoos Windows NT4 domain to Windows 2000 and Active
directory. At the same time, upgrading the Standard Operating Environment from
Windows 95 and Office 95 to Windows XP and Office XP (being part of Microsoft's
Rapid Deployment Program, and one of the first companies in the world to deploy
XP into a production environment), deploying the SOE through Remote
Installation Services and Group Policy. See http://www.microsoft.com/AUSTRALIA/business/casestudy/empoweredemployee/taronga.asp
for details.
John has been actively studying Information Technology since 1996, achieving
Distinctions in a number of Certificate and Advanced Certificate courses with
TAFE and is hoping to commence a degree in IT during the next 12 months. He
also has a number of Microsoft certifications comprising at the moment MCP, MCP
+ I, MCSE (NT4), MCSE (W2K) and is working towards other Microsoft, Cisco and CompTia certifications. John is a member of the Australian
Computer Society.
John's specialisations relates mainly to computer networks, PC type databases,
a number of legacy systems in use by the Board, Microsoft
Operating systems and other products, back end server infrastructure (although
experience with relational databases such as SQL server is
limited.)
Kevin Johnson, Information Technology
Manager, ARAZPA
Email: kevin@arazpa.org.au
Kevin has over 20 years
experience working in the zoo community, in a variety of roles. In 1981, he
began working as a keeper in the veterinary department at Melbourne Zoo. Four
years later he moved to the Native Mammals department at the zoo, and then in
1989, took on the role of computerising the zoo's paper animal records system.
During the four years that Kevin was the animal records officer at Melbourne
Zoo, he
developed some additional reports for the ARKS software, and also helped with
the development of the computerised animal collection planning software,
REGASP.
For the last nine years, he
has worked at the ARAZPA office in
Sjoukje Vaartjes, Animal Records Officer,
Melbourne Zoo
Email: svaartjes@zoo.org.au
Sjoukje started as a work experience Zoo Keeper at Healesville Sanctuary in May
1979. After working voluntary on weekends, she gained temporary keeping
positions to cover holiday leave. This continued whilst studying for her
BSc majoring in Botany and Zoology at
On completion of her university degree, she gained full-time employment as a
keeper at Healesville. Later that year, though, Sjoukje was successful in
gaining a training place at the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust in the
A couple of years were then spent travelling and working in various pubs in
London, and restaurants in South Africa, before returning to Jersey to be a
keeper again for a further two years. The second year was as
keeper-in-charge of the Lemur section.
After then working as a camp counselor in a
Once Kevin Johnson had decided he was leaving to work at the ARAZPA office in