In the New Year Honours List, Ed King, Head of Newspapers at the British Library (BL) from 1999 to 2012, was awarded an MBE for services to the British Library. Ed, who joined the Library in 1975, was responsible for the newspaper collections of some 750 million pages, with titles dating back to 1700. A long-standing Standing Committee Member, Secretary and Treasurer of the IFLA Newspapers Section, Ed received CILIP's Walford Award in 2012 for his role and commitment to the Newspaper Digitization Programme at the BL, which makes a large number of British newspapers up to 1900 readily accessible online.

Dr Barbara B Tillett retired at the end of November as Chief, Policy and Standards Division at the Library of Congress (LC), following a particularly distinguished career spanning four decades. Barbara served as the LC representative on the Joint Steering Committee for Development of Resource Description and Access (RDA) and on the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) service until the end of last year. She was the chair of the Planning Committee for the series of five regional meetings worldwide known as IME ICC and led the IFLA work that developed the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles (ICP). As Director of the Integrated Library System (ILS) Program, Barbara oversaw the largest single automation project in the Library's history in the installation of a new commercial ILS, for which accomplishment she received the Library's highest honour, the Distinguished Service Award, as well as the Arthur S Flemming Award for outstanding federal service.

At the Department of Work and Pensions, Jonathan Ginn joined the library in January as Serials Librarian, replacing Fiona Tyrrell who is now DWP Legal Subject Librarian. Jonathan was formerly at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

At Research UK libraries, Liane Frydland has been managing the day-to-day running of the AWE library since July last year following the retirement of Librarian Donald Ferguson, who left after 41 years with the library. Liane has been the Customer Services Librarian for the past four years.

Jennifer Maddock's early interest in Akkadian, Arabic and Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs and postgraduate research at SOAS into the Political History of 2nd Millennium BC Syria somehow led, by way of a postgrad. diploma from CLW, through catalogue editorship at Pergamon Press, computing services, database system development as Information Scientist at the Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA) and indexing, to a 21-year career as Librarian of the Babraham Institute. In December, Jennifer opted for voluntary redundancy following the Institute's decision to close the library at the end of last year.

At the beginning of January, Sarah Vincent joined the Natural History Museum as Electronic Resources Librarian. Sarah was previously Learning Resource Specialist at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology.

Lorna Mitchell joined the Library at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) as the new Head of Library Services in January. RBGE's Library is Scotland's national reference collection for specialist botanical and horticultural resources. Lorna was previously the Assistant Director (Academic Support) at Brunel University Library.

In October last year, David Ball took early retirement from Bournemouth University to work as an independent consultant, researcher and interim manager. David was at Bournemouth for over 18 years, as University Librarian for 15 years, during which time the Library won two prestigious national awards: the quinquennial SCONUL Library Design Award 2007 and the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award for the Outstanding Library Team 2009. Four years ago, David became Head of Academic Development Services at Bournemouth, managing Academic Partnerships, Education Development and Quality and Library and Learner Support departments.

In January, Jo Milton joined the University of Cambridge Medical Library, based in Addenbrookes, as Collection Development Manager. For the previous four years, Jo was Librarian at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. Collection Development at the Medical Library was previously managed by Anne Collins, who retired in May after 16 years as Deputy Librarian.

At the end of December, Christine Hayes retired after 26 years at the University of Greenwich. For the past 12 years, Christine was Electronic Resources Administrator at the Dreadnought Library.

After eight years working for Westminster Kingsway College, Stephen Wickens, Learning Centre Manager at the Kings Cross Centre, has moved and now manages the learning centres at Hadlow College in Kent.

At the end of October last year, Gillian Anderson took early retirement as University Librarian at the University of the Highlands and Islands. She joined what was then the UHI Millennium Institute in 2005 with responsibility to develop services across the network of colleges and research centres spread across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Gillian was the first Chair of SHEDL, the Scottish Higher Education Digital Library.

Chrissie Ley joined Jisc Collections in January as a Data Manager for the KB+ project. She also works in the e-resource team at Bangor University.

In February, Wilma Mossink joined JISC Collections as Licensing Specialist. Wilma previously worked as the legal advisor of SURF/SURFmarket in The Netherlands. Her expertise is in copyright management in higher education and the legal aspects of making content and information openly available, including open access. Wilma's main focus at JISC Collections is to deliver high quality licence agreements for digital content for UK higher and further education, developing JISC Collections' model licences, licence terms and conditions negotiations with publishers and providers, content procurements and one-off agreements. Wilma also participates in the IFLA section on Serials and Other Continuing Resources.

In December, Anna Grigson joined the Library at the London School of Economics as Head of Collection Services Group, leading the Bibliographic Services, Serials, Print Collections, and IT teams to procure and make available information resources to support teaching and research, ensure preservation of print and electronic collections, and provide an IT framework to support the work of the Library. Anna was formerly Head of Technical Services, Library Services at Royal Holloway, University of London, which she joined in 2009 as E-Resources Manager. She is currently a member of the UKSG Education Subcommittee.

Kate Price has been appointed Associate Director – Information Resources at King's College London (KCL). From March 2013, Kate's role at KCL will include the management of the Acquisitions & Discovery, Business Support, Digital Assets, Service Development and Subscriptions & Access teams, which together service a number of libraries across five campuses. Kate has been Head of E-Strategy & Resources at the University of Surrey for the last nine years and is currently Honorary Secretary of UKSG.

Nick Woolley is now Head of Academic Library Services at Northumbria University. Nick was previously at King's College London, most recently as Associate Director – Information Resources, Library Services. Nick is a member of the UKSG Publications and Editorial Board.

In January, Alison McNab joined the University of Nottingham library as Faculty Team Librarian (Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine & Science). For the previous three and a half years, Alison was Academic Team Manager at De Montfort University, responsible inter alia for managing the subject team supporting the Faculties of Business & Law and Health & Life Sciences.

In January, Andy Barrow took up the post of Head Librarian at the Military Technological College in Oman. This college, currently under construction on the outskirts of the Omani capital Muscat, will provide engineering training courses for the Omani armed forces. Andy was previously Science Librarian at the University of Portsmouth for 25 years, and before that was Chief Librarian at the Arabian Gulf University College of Medicine (in Bahrain) from 1984 to 1986, where the college library was the first in Bahrain to implement an integrated library management system, one that was designed in-house and programmed (in C) by a local software consultancy. Andy's family think that, as he's now 64, he should retire …

At St Andrews, Aileen McDonald took early retirement in January after 21 years with the University Library. Aileen started out as a library assistant in the reader services team before moving into the world of periodicals and ended her journey as Acquisitions Team Leader, overseeing the purchase of all content for the Library, print and electronic.

After more than 30 years with Westminster University Library, Pat Barclay retired at the beginning of the year. Throughout her career, Pat was involved with serials in one form or another and was well known at UKSG. For many years, Pat was Electronic Resources Manager for the University and, following reorganization four years ago, was E-Services Manager based in Marylebone.

Head of Library and Knowledge Services at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, David Copsey retires at the end of March after over 13 years, which included one year as Acting Head of Knowledge Services Development for Kent, Surrey and Sussex Deanery. Emma Aldrich, currently Knowledge Manager for the Trust, is replacing David as Head of Library and Knowledge Services. Emma has been with the Trust for 14 years.

After over five years as Head of Information Services at the King's Fund, Ray Phillips is now working freelance as an independent information professional helping organizations, their libraries and information services with strategic planning and development. Prior to working at the King's Fund, Ray worked in the NHS library service as Strategic Lead for South West London (i.e. ‘regional librarian’ in old money).

Since December, Kevin Cohn has been Chief Operating Officer at Atypon, responsible for all of the company's client operations, including end-to-end management of Atypon's services and support. Vice President of Operations since 2010, Kevin now is also responsible for business development and administration. He joined the company in 2006 as Product Development Manager.

At Cengage Learning, Kevin Stone is now Executive Vice President and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. Based in Boston, Kevin is responsible for all aspects of sales and marketing across the company. Kevin was previously at Pearson, most recently as Chief Sales Officer of the Higher Education unit.

All who knew him were deeply saddened to hear that James Culling had died in November, just a few days short of his 40th birthday. James was a well-liked and much respected member of the scholarly information community, known for his calm, methodical and intelligent approach to the challenges of library and publishing technologies. Having graduated from the University of Nottingham, James's career started at CatchWord in the mid '90s. Over the next 15 years, James also held roles at Swets, Ex Libris, Scholarly Information Strategies and Oxford University Press; most recently, he was Client Director at DataSalon. He was a regular delegate and speaker at UKSG's Annual Conference, and wrote the ‘Link Resolvers and the Serials Supply Chain’ report that instigated the KBART initiative. James was also a talented guitarist, bassist, pianist and songwriter. He faced leukaemia with his customary stoicism, dignity and good humour, and is survived by Kirsty and their two young sons. James will be much missed by many. (Donations for leukaemia research, in James's memory, are welcome at https://www.justgiving.com/jamesculling)

In November, Ingram Content Group announced the appointment and promotion of two executives. Dan Sheehan was promoted to the role of Vice President & General Manager of Ingram's library services group. Pamela Smith joined Ingram at the beginning of December as the Vice President of Global Sales for the library business. Pamela was most recently a Senior Vice President at Follett Corporation.

In mid-December, Innovative Interfaces announced that Jay Shankar had joined the company as Senior Vice President of Services and Support. Jay has over 20 years of experience in the technology industry, most recently serving as Vice President of Customer Support at BMC Software, which provides enterprise-level technology for IT organizations around the world.

Yann Amouroux (pictured) has joined the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in a new role of Regional Sales Manager EMEA. After 12 years working at IOP and covering some parts of the EMEA region, this is an opportunity for him to deal with existing customers and to meet many new ones too. Yann is based in Bristol.

At the beginning of January, Neil Byrne took up the new role of Senior Regional Corporate Sales Manager for Asia Pacific for IOP Publishing. Based in Sydney, Australia, Neil is responsible for corporate customers based in the Asia Pacific region, maintaining relationships with customers and developing journals sales in these privately funded, for-profit organizations. Neil previously worked at ICE Publishing as Publishing Sales Manager, and at McGraw Hill.

Richard Bennett joined Mendeley as Vice President of Institutional Sales in February to focus on the next phase of commercial growth and oversee the commercial development of Mendeley's offerings into the institutional market following the successful launch of Mendeley Institutional Edition last Spring. Richard has over 15 years of experience in scientific and B2B publishing at companies including Elsevier, Springer and, most recently, Wolters Kluwer Health, where he held the position of VP sales EMEA.

After five years as Director at RMIT Publishing in Melbourne, Heather Crosbie is taking a gap year in Italy. This Spring, Heather will be based in Umbria for a few months to learn Italian before exploring other parts of the country. Heather plans to return to Melbourne sometime in 2014.

Springer has restructured sales functions in the Asia Pacific region in light of the region's rapidly increasing strategic focus. At the beginning of January, Koji Yamashita, Managing Director Springer Japan, took up responsibility for academic, government and trade sales in the Asia Pacific region, and has been named Vice President, Sales Southeast & Northeast Asia/Oceania.

With 30 years in the Asian publishing market, 25 of which at Springer, Maurice Kwong is now Springer's Executive Vice President, Business and Organizational Development, Operations and Human Resources for the Asia Pacific region, focusing on business development opportunities in the region and co-ordinating organizational expansion. Maurice is a member of the UKSG Publications and Editorial Board.

Claire Milburn has joined Swets as Sales Manager with responsibility for the corporate market in the UK and Ireland. Previously Claire worked as a sales manager in publishing, including stints at Amazon, Taylor & Francis and the BFI.

Also at Swets, Deniz Can Kurt has been appointed Sales Manager for the Middle East. Deniz, who has been at Swets for three years, was previously responsible for managing the accounts of customers in Turkey and the Middle East.