Roly Keating has been appointed as the British Library's new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), taking up the post in September. Roly is currently Director of Archive Content at the BBC, where he acts as overall editorial leader for the BBC's online services, including BBC iPlayer, and has played a key role in opening up the archive to audiences across the world. Roly's rich 29-year career at the BBC has included his making films for Omnibus, Bookmark and Arena, being a founder producer and later editor of The Late Show, Controller of Digital Channels, Controller of BBC Four, Controller of BBC Two (overseeing the launch of Dragons' Den, Coast, The Choir, Springwatch and The Apprentice), as well as being Acting Controller of BBC One. Roly takes over from Dame Lynne Brindley, who leaves the Library at the end of July after 12 years as Chief Executive.
Dr Audrey McCulloch was appointed Chief Executive of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) in March this year. Audrey, who has 10 years' experience working in scholarly and professional publishing, joined ALPSP in October 2010 in the newly created position of Executive Director, UK, having previously been Projects Manager at Portland Press. As Chief Executive, Audrey is responsible for the support of UK-based members and for representing the interests of scholarly and professional publishers to UK bodies, including government, library groups and collective rights organizations.
At SPARC, Lars Bjørnshauge was appointed Director of European Library Relations in February. Lars, a long-standing member of the SPARC Europe Board, had been serving as SPARC's Interim European Director since October.
Alma Swan is now Director of European Advocacy at SPARC. Alma has spent more than two decades in medical cell biology research and scholarly publishing, having co-founded Key Perspectives and been senior managing editor for Pergamon Press/Elsevier Science. Alma is responsible for leading SPARC's advocacy programmes throughout Europe, with a particular focus on the European Commission and European Parliament.
In December last year, Sue Hodges joined Bangor University as University Librarian/Llyfrgellydd y Brifysgol. She is responsible for operational and strategic management of the Library and Archives services. Sue was previously Head of Learning and Research Support at the University of Salford where, as part of the Leadership Team, she was responsible for Academic Support, the Training Team, Digital Developments, and Collections and Archives.
In May, Sally Wilkinson became Head of Barrington Library at Cranfield Defence and Security, Cranfield University. Sally was previously Head of Learning Resources at the University of Wales Trinity St David, where she worked for 19 years.
There have been a number of major changes in Scottish university libraries.
Sheila Cannell, who retires in July, has been Director of Library Services at the University of Edinburgh since 2002. Before that, she was Head of Information Systems and Medical Librarian at Edinburgh. Under Sheila's direction over the past decade, the main library has undergone major development (doubling the number of users), and Edinburgh's Digital Library has grown enormously, encompassing content, resource discovery, digital repositories for research outputs and the digitization of collections from the University's iconic Special Collections. Sheila has pursued the open access agenda both in Edinburgh and through a variety of JISC projects and is now working on the role that libraries should take in research data management.
Always an advocate for collaborative working, Sheila chairs the Scottish Digital Library Consortium and has been closely associated with the development of the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library (SHEDL), improving the availability of e-journals to Scottish researchers. She has served on the boards or committees of Research Libraries UK, the Scottish Confederation of University Libraries and SCONUL. Sheila sees a great future for libraries, provided that librarians are adaptable and listen to the changing needs of users.
In April, Robert Ruthven became Director of Library Services at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU). He was previously Library and Archives Service Manager for Stirling Council where he established the SEDAR consortium, the first shared service open source LMS implementation in the UK. Robert began his career at GCU and returns after 17 years during which time he has held a series of management roles in the school, archives and public library sectors.
At the end of July, former UKSG Chair Tony Kidd retires as Assistant Director, Information & Financial Resources at the University of Glasgow where he is responsible for the library's finances and budgets. Tony has worked in university libraries since 1974, at Southampton, Aston, and for the last 25 years, at Glasgow. He has been a major player in the library and scholarly information community, serving on boards such as COUNTER and the JISC Collections Journals Working Group, now the Electronic Information Resources Working Group. Tony has just completed a three-year term as UKSG Chair, having been on the UKSG Committee from 1998 until this year. [See Tony's farewell words in this issue.]
Within Scotland, Tony initiated consortial purchase of journals, setting up the SHERAL/SNIPES consortium in 1997, chairing its Steering Group for ten years through its first two serials agent agreements. He has played a leading role in setting up the SHEDL consortium, reaching agreements with a number of publishers for access to all their current journal content for all higher education institutions in Scotland.
Although retiring in July, Tony continues to maintain his interests in consortia purchasing and business models including open access, and will keep an eye on developments, alongside traditional retirement pursuits of hillwalking (140 out of 290 Munros completed so far), travel, and getting to know people in the community in Devon, where he and his wife are moving, with continuing visits back to Scotland.
Michael Roberts retires at the end of September as Librarian and Assistant Director of Information Services at the University of Strathclyde. After studying history at Oxford, spending a year as a graduate trainee librarian at Lancaster University and attending library school in Sheffield, he crossed the border and worked for nearly ten years as an Assistant Librarian at the University of Dundee, with responsibility for acquisitions and finance. In 1985, he moved to Strathclyde as Sub-Librarian in charge of serials and began a long association with UKSG. Subsequently, Michael became Head of the Acquisitions Division, Deputy Director of Library Services and then Acting Director, before taking on his current role in a converged service in 2010. He will be succeeded at Strathclyde by Dilys Young, currently Head of Academic Library Services at Northumbria University.
Following the formation of the James Hutton Institute in April last year from the Scottish Crop Research Institute (SCRI) in Invergowrie and Aberdeen's Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Lorraine Robertson was appointed Head of Libraries and Information Services of the new ‘super research institute’. Lorraine had been Head of Library at the Macaulay since 1992. Assistant Librarians Ursula McKean and Elaine Mackenzie are based at Invergowrie near Dundee and Aberdeen, respectively.
Sarah Collier retired from The James Hutton Institute at the end of March. After working in various libraries including the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food, the National Institute for Medical Research and the Postgraduate Medical Library at Hope Hospital in Salford, Sarah became Librarian at SCRI in 1993. Since 2003, Sarah had been Information Services Manager in Communications and Information Services with strategic control of the Information Centre. She had a particular interest in the provision of electronic information for the scientific staff of the Institute.
In March, Tom Hyland joined the University of Teesside as Library Systems Manager. Tom began his professional career as Information Librarian (Technical Services) at the University of Bath before becoming Deputy Librarian at the Royal Agricultural College. Before taking up his post at Teesside, Tom spent the previously year as Assistant Librarian (E-Resources) at University of Sunderland.
At the beginning of January, Kathy Law joined HighWire Press the newest member of their United Kingdom-based staff, working as a Publication Manager, to support and work with the increasing number of British and European clients joining the HighWire platform. Kathy knows the global publishing marketplace well, where she has been networking and selling within the Academic and STM community for book, journal and electronic product services for many years. Kathy joined HighWire from Macmillan Publishing Solutions, where her role as Business Development Manager for the UK and EU territories covered sales, product development and efficiency solutions. Prior to that, she spent ten years as Sales Manager with Turpin Distribution Services.
In May, Skip Prichard, the president and chief executive officer of Ingram Content Group, announced his departure from the company in June. Ingram Content Group's Chairman John R Ingram takes on the CEO duties. Skip joined Ingram in 2007 and reorganized the Ingram businesses into a fully integrated new company called Ingram Content Group Inc.
Richard Wallis has joined the OCLC staff as Technology Evangelist and is based in Birmingham, UK. A consultant and thought leader in semantic web and linked data technology, Richard has joined OCLC after 20 years with Talis.
It was truly sad of hear of Phil Coles' death from a brain aneurism in February. Phil's career spanned 35 years in the industry, mainly in sales and marketing in the academic and special libraries sector. He spent 31 years at B H Blackwell in the library bookselling and subscription agency divisions. Phil then worked with BookData (subsequently Nielsen BookData) and Dynix before joining OCLC in 2007, firstly as Regional Account Manager and latterly as UKI Sales Manager. Phil's career was distinguished, he was well regarded and liked – a real professional. He leaves behind Wendi, his wife, and sons Peter and Matthew. Phil was committed to Thomley Activity Centre, the recreational facility for disabled children, their families, friends, schools and groups, where as a trustee, Wendi has been involved in supporting parents of children and young adults with learning disabilities (http://thomleyactivitycentre.org).
Tony O'Rourke set up his own independent Publishing Consultancy in April. Tony had been a Senior Manager at IOP Publishing since 2000, where he had responsibility for Sales, Marketing and Customer Services. Before that, Tony worked in middle and senior level sales/marketing roles at Chadwyck-Healey, now part of ProQuest.
In February, Kevin Haskins joined Publishing Technology plc as Senior Business Development Executive. Kevin works from the company's North American offices in Somerset, New Jersey and Cambridge, Massachusetts, alongside Director of Business Development, Linda Reiss, on sales of the company's enterprise applications suite advance in the United States and Canada.
At Serials Solutions, Paul Brennan joined the company as Senior Director, Content Operations, at the end of May. In this new role, he will develop the vision and drive content operational excellence for Serials Solutions and Bowker, an affiliated business of ProQuest. Paul previously worked to improve content integrity and operational efficiency at Gracenote, a global leader in embedded technology, enriched content and data services for digital entertainment solutions.
In February, Serials Solutions appointed Pam Cory as Vice President of Marketing and Global Market Development. As a member of the senior leadership team, she will be driving the growth strategy for the business, as well as increasing brand awareness. Prior to joining Serials Solutions, Pam served as vice president of marketing for NetMotion Wireless, a mobility software provider, where she led global marketing.
At the end of October last year, Jayne Marks joined Wolters Kluwer Health as Vice President of Publishing at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Journals, part of its Medical Research business unit. Jayne has been in STM publishing for 30 years, most recently as president and editorial director for the Library Information Group at SAGE Publications. Jayne is on the STM Association board and has chaired the Serials Publishers' Executive of the Publishers Association.
In June, Richard Bennett moved to Wolters Kluwer Health Medical Research as VP Sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Richard had been with Springer since 2005, first as Vice President Library Sales – Americas and, since May 2008, as Vice President Sales, Northwestern and Eastern Europe, Springer Science+Business Media.
Janet Broome has moved from her position of Regional Sales Manager – Ovid Technologies – Wolters Kluwer Health to take up a new position of Senior Sales Account Manager Southern UK and Ireland at UpToDate, another Wolters Kluwer business. UpToDate is an evidence-based clinical decision support tool developed by physicians for clinicians and healthcare professionals. Before moving into Medical Online Publishing, Janet worked in the library automation sector for a number of LMS companies and automated many prestigious national and international libraries.