Speakers biographies

David Baker
David Baker became a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists at the age of 17. As Organ Scholar of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, he graduated with a first class degree in music. His other degrees are MMus (London), MLS and PhD (Loughborough) and MBA (Open). He has worked in the university libraries at Nottingham, Leicester and Hull universities, and became Chief Librarian of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, in 1985. He was promoted to Director of Information Strategy and Services in 1995, and Pro-Vice-Chancellor in 1997. He became Principal of the College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, in July 2003.

David Baker has published twelve monographs and some 100 articles.

Anne Bell
Anne Bell has been Librarian at the University of Warwick since 2003. Anne’s experience includes managing both converged and non-converged services, various building projects, organisational restructuring and strategic planning.

Recent capital investment at Warwick has enabled a new student-centred learning space, The Learning Grid, to be developed which uses an innovative service model based on both peer and expert support. Learning from that development is helping to inform future capital projects for both the Library and academic departments.

Anne has taken an active role in collaborative activities (e.g. as a former Chair of the M25 Consortium) and various national roles, including being the current Chair designate of SCONUL.

Ian C Butchart
Director of Library & Information Services at the University of Teesside since 1986.

The university is committed to 'Providing Opportunities – Pursuing Excellence' for its student population of 20,685, with over 40% of full-time undergraduate students aged over 21. Overall, a majority of students at Teesside are studying part-time. It has strong links with further education colleges in the Tees Valley and the University is planning higher education centres in the neighbouring towns of Darlington and Hartlepool in collaboration with the local colleges.

Ian’s major professional interests are in developing the collaborative work between further and higher education institutions and the development of electronic learning resources. He is Chair of the JISC Working Groups on Learning Materials and X4L2.

He considers himself fortunate that he has worked in the following institutions in the North East of England: Sunderland Public Libraries, Newcastle University Library (student placements), St Hilds and the Venerable Bede Colleges of the University of Durham (Librarian), School of Librarianship Newcastle Polytechnic (Lecturer), and New College Durham (Chief Librarian).

Jane Core
Professor Jane Core is Director of Library and Learning Services at Northumbria University. She sponsors institutional projects to integrate library services with the e learning portal and the development of a library resource discovery portal. Recent major institutional projects have focused on capital investments to develop physical learning spaces to reflect new styles of learning and resource use and in this she works closely with Northumbria’s Centre for Excellence in Assessment for Learning.

At a national level she sits on a number of projects and initiatives including: the JISC Learning and Teaching Committee, JISC Infonet Board, JISC Plagiarism Board, SCONUL Executive Board and HEA National Teaching Fellowship Advisory Board.
Contact:

Professor Jane K Core
Director of Library and Learning Services
City Campus Library
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST

Tel: 0191 227 4126
E-mail: jane.core@unn.ac.uk

Steve Hitchcock
Steve Hitchcock is a researcher in the IAM Group at Southampton University, where he has worked for over 10 years, also graduating with a PhD in 2002. Currently he works on two JISC projects: as manager of the new EPrints Community (http://www.eprints.org/community/), which aims to give institutions with critical repository requirements better information and more interaction to influence software developments; and as project manager on Preserv (http://preserv.eprints.org/), which is investigating preservation models and services for repositories. Previously Steve was involved in the Open Citation Project, which introduced EPrints as the first IR software in 2000. He is a member of the advisory group for the ongoing JISC programmes on Digital Repositories.

Bob Hunter
Bob Hunter is the founding Director of the Learning Development Unit at the University of Birmingham; his main areas of responsibilities include the development and embedding of innovative ways of learning and teaching using learning technologies and leading projects such as the JISC eSpaces project. Bob has over 20 years experience in HE, as Media Services manager at the University of Lincoln he was responsible for the learning and teaching spaces across five campuses then as Development Manager he led the development of one of the first virtual learning environments that was in use with over 2,000 students in September 1996.

Mike Keller
Michael A. Keller is Stanford’s University Librarian, director of Academic Information Resources, founder/publisher of HighWire Press and publisher of the Stanford University Press. Before Stanford, Yale, UC/Berkeley, Cornell, and SUNY/Buffalo employed him in various library and teaching roles. Keller was educated at Hamilton College (biology and music), SUNY/Buffalo (musicology) and SUNY/Geneseo (librarianship). He has served on several boards (Ebrary, Alibris, Groxis, Long Now Foundation, Cisco Learning Institute, and Hamilton College). Keller has a wide consulting practice (facilities, organisations and systems, informatics, publishing) with many clients (e.g. Newsweek, Princeton, City of Ferrara, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Indiana University, Singapore Management University). He was a founder and president of the Digital Library Federation, initiating the Aquifer project. He has spoken twice at the World Economic Forum. Projects begun under his leadership are HighWire Press, LOCKSS/CLOCKSS, the Stanford Digital Repository, CourseWork (Sakai), the GATT Digital Archive, Medieval & Modern Thought Text Digitisation Project, and the Matthew Parker Online Library, among others.

Dr Peter Knight
Dr Peter Knight joined Birmingham Polytechnic in 1985 and as a result of its designation as the University of Central England in Birmingham, became its first Vice-Chancellor.

In April 1989 he was appointed by the Secretary of State to be one of fifteen founder members of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council. When the Polytechnics and Colleges Employers Forum was formed in 1988 Dr Knight was appointed to the Board of Management, becoming Chairman in 1992. During 1993 Dr Knight was a member of the Flowers Committee which reported on the Review of the Academic Year. In October 1994 he was appointed to membership of the Teacher Training Agency.

Within the West Midlands Dr Knight has an interest in the provision of social housing. Since 1996 he has been Group Chairman of Prime Focus, which has over 12,000 homes for rent and nearly 1500 bed spaces in hostels and other forms of supported housing. Dr. Knight was appointed to the Armed Forces Pay Review Body in 2004, and is also a Trustee of Millennium Point, the landmark millennium project for the West Midlands. He holds honorary degrees from the universities of Aston and York; he received the award of Commander of the British Empire for services to higher education in 1995.

Dr Liz Lyon
Dr Liz Lyon is the Director of UKOLN at the University of Bath UK, where she is involved with the development and implementation of the common information environment. This includes promoting synergies between digital libraries and Grid-enabled e-research environments, exploring aspects of the scholarly knowledge cycle and understanding the role of digital repositories for the management of open access data in a federated landscape. In this context, she has led the eBank UK project, which is exploring links between research data, scholarly communications and learning in the crystallography/chemistry domain, and she is Associate Director (Outreach) of the UK Digital Curation Centre, in which UKOLN is a partner.

Although Dr Lyon has worked in various university libraries in the UK, her background was originally in biological sciences and she has a doctorate in cellular biochemistry.

Paul Miller
Senior Manager & Technology Evangelist, Talis

Paul joined Talis in September 2005 from the Common Information Environment (CIE), where as Director he was instrumental in scoping policy and attracting new members such as the BBC, National Library of Scotland and English Heritage to this group of UK public sector organisations. Previously, Paul was at UKOLN where he was active in a range of cross-domain standardisation and advocacy activities. At Talis, Paul is involved in work to dramatically extend the reach of the library, combining the IT industry's notion of 'Web 2.0' with the unique skills and focus of the library domain. Paul has a Doctorate in Archaeology from the University of York.

Todd Miller
Todd Miller is the President and Founder of WebFeat, one of the world’s leading providers of federated search technology and services. Mr. Miller began his career in information technology as a Product Manager for Information Access Company, where he was responsible for the launch of the successful InfoTrac CD product line. Prior to starting WebFeat in 1998, Mr. Miller was president of KR Source One, a Knight-Ridder subsidiary. Mr. Miller has received awards from organizations such as the Gartner Group and Library Journal, which recognized him as a 'Mover & Shaker' in 2002. Mr. Miller holds two patents in the field of federated search.

Eugenie Prime
Eugenie Prime retired in 2003 from Hewlett Packard Company where she served as manager of corporate libraries for 17 years. Prior to HP, Eugenie served as president and executive editor at CINAHL, publishers of the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature. Eugenie lectures internationally in the areas of strategic planning, knowledge management and digital libraries. She has served on the library advisory board to John Wiley and Sons, the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine, which she chaired 2003-2004.

Eugenie was the first recipient of the Dow Jones Leadership Award for 21st Century librarianship. Eugenie has an MA in history, an MS in information science and an MBA

Oliver Pritchard
Assistant Director - Services – Student and Learning Support, University of Sunderland

The University of Sunderland is a dynamic and innovative University with a strong commitment to teaching, learning, research and reach-out. Diversity and widening participation are key elements of our mission. Student and Learning Support incorporate a range of functions including Library Services and Student Services, University IT and Learning Development. My role includes responsibility for the delivery of Library Services via our 3 campus libraries, staffing, learning resource collections and quality assurance and the overall management of Student Services including careers, counselling, health and disability.

The VAMP (Value and Impact Measurement Programme) Subgroup

The VAMP Subgroup is formed of members of the Working Group on Performance Improvement under the leadership of Maxine Melling, Director of Learning & Information Services at Liverpool John Moores University, and also Chair of the SCONUL Working Group on Performance Improvement. Philip Payne is Librarian of Birkbeck College and Rupert Wood is Head of Collections at Reading University Library. Stephen Town is Director of Information Services at Cranfield University's College of Defence Management & Technology and is acting as Project Manager for VAMP.

Les Watson
Les Watson is Pro Vice-Chancellor at Glasgow Caledonian University. He is a member of the University Executive and is responsible for all academically related services such as Library, Information and Communications Technology, and Student Services. He has been at Glasgow Caledonian since 1999 and previously worked as a Dean at the University of Gloucestershire. He has worked in education for 35 years as a teacher of Biological Science, lecturer and researcher in computers in education, and as a senior manager. His interests include the application of technology to learning, learning environment development, and creative management. He is a member of the Chartered institute of management, fellow of the RSA, and regular contributor to the Times Educational Supplement.

Caroline Williams
Caroline Williams is the Resource Discovery Network (RDN) Executive Director. She is responsible for the strategic development of the RDN and its transition to Intute; Intute will be launched on the 13 July 2006. Caroline manages the Executive based at MIMAS, University of Manchester. Her previous roles include Library Services Manager (Electronic Services Development Team) at Manchester Metropolitan University, Site Librarian of the Hollings Faculty, Manchester Metropolitan University and Subject Information Specialist Team Leader at the Open University Library, Milton Keynes.

Caroline can be contacted on caroline.williams@manchester.ac.uk

Martin Wolf
Social Sciences Librarian, University of Warwick

Martin joined the University of Warwick in 2004 after working as an Information Specialist at Cardiff University. In addition to his role as subject liaison, he also has responsibility for devising research support strategies for the University of Warwick library.

Martin has published on the topic of ejournals and spoken at international conferences about OPAC developments. He is heavily involved in the JISC/CURL project EThOS (Electronic Theses Online Service).