Speakers biographies

Marshall Breeding, the Director for Innovative Technologies and Research for the Vanderbilt University Libraries in Nashville, TN, designs and develops digital library resources and investigates emerging technologies. He serves as the Executive Director the Vanderbilt Television News Archive (www.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu). Marshall Breeding the creator and editor of Library Technology Guides (www.librarytechnology.org) and the lib-web-cats online directory of libraries. His column "Systems Librarian" appears in Computers in Libraries; he is a Contributing Editor for Smart Libraries Newsletter published by the American Library Association, and has authored the "Automation System Marketplace" feature published by Library Journal for the last eight years. He has authored seven issues of ALA's Library Technology Reports, and has written many other articles and book chapters. His most recent issue of Library Technology Reports was titled "Open Source Integrated Library Systems". He has spoken at conferences throughout world and has recently returned from a three-week Fulbright grant project in Argentina.


Professor Tom Cochrane is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Technology, Information and Learning Support) at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. The position heads a Division combining Libraries, Information Technology Services, Teaching and Learning Support Services, and other areas in the one structure.

His current external duties include: Chair, Australian eResearch Infrastructure Council; Chair, Australian Libraries' Copyright Committee; Director, Australian Digital Alliance; Director, Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation. He is also a member of the Publications Board of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), Australia.

Professor Cochrane led the debate within Queensland University of Technology for the compulsory deposit of refereed research literature produced by university researchers in an ePrints repository for open access. This mandate has now been in place for over five years. He was a co-leader of the Creative Commons project for which QUT is the institutional lead for Australia. The University has an institutional commitment to open access initiatives, and seeks to accommodate this general position along side the usual imperatives for successful commercialisation of research and innovation as appropriate. (Professor Cochrane is also a Director on the Board of the University's commercialisation company, QUT bluebox).


Sheila Corrall is Professor of Librarianship & Information Management and Head of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield. She has worked in public, national and university library and information services as an information specialist, library manager and strategic director, most recently as Director of Academic Services at the University of Southampton. She has also served on many national committees and currently chairs the Management Board of MIMAS and the Heads of Schools and Departments Committee of the British Association for Information & Library Education and Research (BAILER). Sheila has lectured and published on a wide range of professional and management topics and provided advice and consultancy to research libraries in the UK and other countries. Her research interests include the strategic management of library, information and knowledge services; the development and implementation of institutional information literacy strategies; the changing roles and competencies of library and information professionals; the evaluation and management of intellectual assets in academic libraries; and leadership development within the library and information sector. She was the first President of CILIP and in 2003 received the International Information Industries Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the information profession.


Professor Donald W. King is Distinguished Research Professor, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Donald King is a statistician who has devoted nearly fifty years to assessing information services including libraries of all types. His recent research includes a study of the Future of Librarians in the Workforce (including a ten-year forecast of academic libraries and librarians in the US); several surveys of the reading patterns of academic faculty and students (with Caro Tenopir); and detailed cost analysis of print and electronic journal precession in eleven academic libraries. He has co-authored eleven books and edited five others, and has authored about 60 journal articles and over 300 other formal publications. He has received a number of honours, including being named Pioneer of Science Information, Chemical Heritage Foundation; being made a Fellow of the American Statistical Association; and receiving the Research Award as well as Award of Merit from the American Society for Information Science and Technology.


Professor Derek Law has worked in several British universities and published and spoken at conferences extensively. Most of his work has been to do with the development of networked resources in higher education and with the creation of national information policy. This has been combined with an active professional life in professional organisations related to librarianship and computing. A committed internationalist he has been involved in projects and research in over forty countries. He was awarded the Barnard prize for contributions to Medical Informatics in 1993, Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1999, an honorary degree by the Sorbonne in 2000, the IFLA medal in 2003, Honorary Fellowship of CILIP in 2004 and was an OCLC Distinguished Scholar in 2006. He is currently Chair of the new JISC Services Management Company and Programme Consultant for the Libraries of the Future Horizon Scan.


Professor Sue McKnight is Director of Libraries and Knowledge Resources at Nottingham Trent University, is responsible for library services across NTU's three campuses and for leading the University's strategic developments in e-learning and knowledge management and has been in this position since 2004.

She is the first 'non-traditional academic' awarded a personal chair in the University in recognition of her international contributions to the profession, to her university community and her research and publication record. Her major research interest is 'customer value discovery', especially as this relates to libraries and eLearning.

She currently chairs IFLA's Academic and Research Libraries Section, and also chairs the JISC eBooks Working Party and is Vice-Chair of the JISC National eBooks Observatory Project. Sue is also a member of the Pearson Education Strategic Advisory Board. She is currently leading the SCONUL Learning & Teaching Task & Finish Group.

She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK), of CILIP and of the Australian Institute of Management. Sue was named a National Teaching Fellow in June 2008 by the Higher Education Academy (UK) and Manager of the Year by the Australian Library & Information Association in 1999.

Before joining Nottingham Trent University, Sue was Executive Director of Learning Services and University Librarian at Deakin University in Australia. Prior to that position she held senior posts at the University of Queensland Libraries. Sue also has special library and public library experience in Australia, as well as international consulting and facilitation experience.


Euan Semple is a leading authority on the use of social media in organisations. He gained unparalleled experience as Director of Knowledge Management at the BBC and subsequently with major organisations such as Nokia, the World Bank, and NATO. His focus on how social media affect businesses and other organisations, how they run themselves, attract new staff and relate to increasingly connected and vocal customers has enabled them to get ahead of the competition in this often bewildering game.

Not many organisations have managed to make social media work internally and Euan is one of the few senior managers in the world who has direct experience of how to make this happen. He offers a host of practical tales about wide ranging situations that cover the following essential aspects of this challenging and risky subject:

• How do you overcome the effect of the old saying "knowledge is power"?
• How do you develop a culture where people take responsibility for what is discussed online?
• How do you encourage people to help each other?
• How do you manage security when nothing is more than a "copy and paste" away from the outside world?
• How do you attract and retain smart people who grew up in a connected world?
• How do you get ready for the shift of expectations that these new employees will undoubtedly bring with them?

Alma Swan obtained a first class honours degree in zoology in 1974 and a PhD in cell biology in 1978 from Southampton University. After research fellowships funded by the Cancer Research Campaign at Southampton General Hospital and St George's Hospital Medical School (London), she took a position as lecturer in zoology at the University of Leicester. Her research was in medical cell biology and she taught a range of courses from vertebrate biology to the biology of cancer. In 1985, she moved into science publishing as managing editor of a Pergamon Press (later Elsevier Science) biomedical research indexing service, published both in print and online. In 1996, she jointly founded Key Perspectives, a consultancy serving the scholarly publishing industry. Though she has worked in the commercial sphere for more than 20 years, she retains links with academic life: for four y ears she was tutor and consultant for the Open University Business School's MBA programme and since 1991 has been tutor for two business strategy courses on Warwick Business School's MBA programme. She is a Visiting Researcher in the School of Electronics & Computer Science at the University of Southampton and Associate Fellow in the Marketing and Strategic Management Group at Warwick Business School. Alma has an MBA from Warwick Business School, is a Member of the Institute of Biology, is an elected member of the Governing Board of Euroscience (the European Association for the Promotion of Science and Technology) and is editor of its magazine, The Euroscientist.