Congratulations to UKSG members Christine Fyfe and Diana Leitch who have been awarded MBEs in this year's Queen's Birthday Honours.

Christine Fyfe, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Students) at the University of Leicester, has been honoured for services to Higher Education. Christine is retiring at the end of July. Starting her professional career as an academic librarian at Keele University, Christine went on to become Deputy Librarian at Warwick and, from 2002, University Librarian at the University of Leicester. Always keenly interested in nurturing better understanding between publishers, librarians and end users, she joined the UKSG committee in the later 1990s, serving as Conference Officer from 1998 – 2000 and as Chair from 2000 to 2003. As Chair, she oversaw significant changes to UKSG's formal constitution, the continued growth of the conference and the expansion of activity including the professional skills seminars. Christine is looking forward to spending more time on her interests and finally reading the many books she has collected over the years!

Dr Diana Mary Leitch, Trustee of the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre, has been honoured for services to Chemistry. Diana took early retirement from The University of Manchester in July 2008 after 35 years in the library. She joined the Science Library as a chemist in 1973 and became Deputy Librarian of the University Library in 1991. Diana's career was packed full – she was involved with Jisc, with UKSG and served on the library advisory boards of Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Chemical Society, CAS and OUP. Since ‘retirement’, Diana has been involved with the RSC as Treasurer of the Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (CICAG) and the Catalyst Science Discovery Centre and Museum in Widnes. It is the oldest and longest surviving of the UK Science Discovery Centres and specializes in promoting chemistry and the chemical industry to young people, in particular, as part of the public understanding of science campaign. As the Centre receives no governmental or public funding Diana leads the Trustees Fund Raising Team to maintain and further the valuable work of the centre (www.catalyst.org.uk)

Dr Gaëlle Béquet became the Director of the ISSN International Centre at the beginning of March, replacing Françoise Pellé, who retired as Director at the end of February after 16 years with the ISSN Network and international bibliographic standards community. Dr Béquet has extensive experience in library management, technological innovation, collection development and digitization projects, most recently as the Head Librarian at the École Nationale des Chartes in Paris (France), part of the Sorbonne.

In April, a number of changes took place at IReL, the Irish Research eLibrary which is managed by IRIS Electronic Information Services Ltd, a company owned by the universities. IReL Manager Fiona McGoldrick retired in April. Fiona joined the IRIS project more than 10 years ago having formerly been Acquisitions Librarian at the University of Limerick. Rita Pinhasi, previously Assistant Librarian at IReL, is now IReL Manager.

At the end of July, Dr Angela Conyers retires from her role at Evidence Base and as part of the JUSP team. Evidence Base provides research, evaluation, consultancy and training services to organizations and library and education institutes. In 2005, at Evidence Base, Angela worked with COUNTER and with Cranfield University on a study and analysis for Jisc Collections on the value and usage of NESLi2 deals – work which led to setting up the Journal Usage Statistics Portal (JUSP), which is now used by academic libraries in the UK to support cost-effective and efficient e-resource usage analysis. At JUSP, Jo Alcock and Pete Dalton will take on responsibility for the work that Angela was involved in. Angela has retired before, as Library Director at Canterbury Christ Church over ten years ago.

At the beginning of May, Alma Swan and Paul Ayris reported in UKSG eNews the sad news that Fred Friend had died. Fred was a key figure in the UK academic library world. He started his library career at the University of Manchester library, and by way of Leeds, Nottingham and Essex university libraries, Fred became Librarian at University College London in 1982 – the year before he was ordained an Anglican priest. He was Secretary of SCONUL from 2000 to 2004 and a consultant to Jisc for many years. He is best known as a passionate champion of open access (OA), which he advocated for nearly 20 years. Fred was one of the authors of the 2001 Budapest Open Access Initiative, where open access was effectively defined, and was still working on OA policies at the time of his death on 23 April, aged 73. A full obituary by Matthew Reisz was published in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 29 May 2014.

Anselm Nye, Resources & Collections Manager at Queen Mary University of London has written the following obituary on his friend and colleague Neil Entwistle, who died in March.

Neil Entwistle was born in South London in 1949, the son of a dentist from Lancashire and a nurse from an Irish family but who was born in Shanghai. Neil was fond of saying that his mother's birth in such exotic regions meant that he was eligible to play football for the Chinese national team; however, by some oversight, he was never called up. At school, apart from doing well academically, Neil developed a passion for sports and for outdoor activities and there were long and frequent holidays with his mother's family in County Tyrone.

After reading English at the University of Reading, Neil worked for a year in the university library there before going on to Sheffield, where he completed the MA in Librarianship and Information Science. In 1972, he took up his first library post at King's College London but, within two years, moved to Queen Mary College. This was a mixed post with responsibility for cataloguing and subject liaison in English. Over the years, through several mutations and restructures, Neil's brief expanded into acquisitions and subscriptions management and his job title changed to Technical Services Librarian and eventually, after the merger with the Medical Schools of Bart's and the London, he became Main Library Manager.

Neil had a great enthusiasm for anything to do with journals, whether it was working out elaborate funding formulae or rationalizing holdings between sites. From the beginning, he was a keen member of UKSG and in the 1990s also founded ISSN, an informal group of serials librarians in London which continues to meet regularly.

A man of broad culture with an endearing sense of humour, Neil was an excellent listener who had a real concern for his staff and was a convivial fellow at staff functions and outings. After retiring in 2009, Neil's passion for learning more continued when he took an MA in Medieval History at Birkbeck College. With his wife Juliet he indulged a passion for travelling, walking, Greek dancing and cooking. He was the heart of the Forest Hill Quaker Meeting and was a much appreciated member of the Samaritans, engaged at the time of his death in setting up a training programme at Belmarsh Prison. At the end of March, Neil was walking on his own on Blencathra in the Lake District, a terrain with which he was familiar, when he fell and was killed. His memorial service was a real celebration of his life and affirmation of how much he will be missed by his family and many friends.

At the University of Warwick Library, Finola Osborn retired as Resource Acquisitions Manager at the end of April. Finola had worked at the Library since 1978, being responsible for the serials and e-resource acquisitions for a considerable part of her time at Warwick. She was a supporter and regular delegate at the UKSG conferences. Finola (and her knowledge and expertise in serials acquisitions) will be sorely missed by not only her immediate team but also the wider library and serials community.

In January, Paul Butler was appointed Director of Information & Library Services at the University of Greenwich. Paul was previously Head of Information Systems at Greenwich.

In February, Richard Ovenden was appointed as Bodley's Librarian at the University of Oxford, succeeding Dr Sarah Thomas. Following appointments in libraries in the House of Lords, the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, Richard joined the Bodleian in 2003 and has been Interim Bodley's Librarian since August.

At the beginning of April, Jason Harper joined the Charles Seale-Hayne Library at Plymouth University, in the newly created role of Library and Digital Support Services Manager, with responsibility for leading the delivery and strategic development of Content Lifecycle services. He had previously worked at the University of Kent for 13 years, as a liaison librarian covering multiple disciplines, variously supporting research skills, information literacy, academic referencing, open access and bibliometrics and, more recently, as Digital Resources and Serials Librarian.

In April, Robert Darby took up the post of Research Data Management Project Manager at the University of Reading. Robert was previously Systems Librarian at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, where he worked for over six years. Providing services to support the management of research data in higher education institutions is an exciting growth area, in which information professionals are well qualified to make a positive contribution. Robert is looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Louise Penn (formerly Cole) has moved from Kingston University to the University of West London, where she has taken up the new post of Resources Manager within Library Services. Her remit covers print and e-resources of all types, cataloguing, the institutional repository and budget management. She retains her membership of the Jisc Collections Electronic Information Resources Working Group (EIRWG) and continues to co-edit The Serials Librarian journal. Louise's background ranges from e-resources management, licensing and procurement to old-style cataloguing. She previously held the posts of Senior Information Advisor at Kingston, and E-resources Team Leader at the University of Leeds.

Ryan Merkley has been appointed CEO of Creative Commons. Ryan was formerly COO of the Mozilla Foundation and managing director of market research firm Vision Critical.

Cathy Casserly stepped down as Creative Commons' first full-time CEO earlier this year after a three-year tenure in which she focused on open education policies.

Ian Best is joining the Subscription Services Division of EBSCO as Vice President of Subscription Workflow Solutions. Ian will be managing EBSCO products aimed at enhancing, streamlining and simplifying the renewal, ordering and invoicing process for EBSCO's customers. He will also be leading efforts to expand EBSCO's EDI capabilities. Most recently, Ian was General Manager and Vice President at WT Cox and has previously held positions including Development Manager, General Manager and Vice President at EBSCO.

In May, Jeff Jacobs was named OCLC's Chief Information Officer, joining the company from JPMorgan Chase & Co, where he served as Chief Technology Officer for the digital consumer businesses. He also held the titles of Managing Director and Senior Vice President.

In January, Chris Jones joined OCLC UK Sales team focusing on the English academic sector. Chris will be well known to many UKSG members from his work with the e-book supplier Ebrary, through his company 2 Info and, before that, through a number of management positions at Swets and Blackwells. Chris joins an expanding UK and Ireland sales organization led by Andrew Hall, who joined OCLC in September. Chris is also currently a student of the University of Manchester, studying for an MA is business administration.

Jim Wilson has joined Innovative as Director of Strategic Accounts and is working closely with major clients. Jim, who was co-founder of Dynix in 1983, has experience with both public and academic libraries, developing automation solutions to meet their needs.

In May, Jane Wright joined Taylor & Francis as the Journals Sales Manager for UK, Ireland and South Africa. For the previous eight years, Jane was with Swets, initially as a Sales Development Manager before becoming Team Leader in 2007, overseeing the whole of the UK & Ireland Academic, Government and Medical sales markets.