Board profiles

Kate Arnold was until recently Director of Patient Information at Cancer Research UK with responsibility for the charity’s information services to people affected by cancer. These included a telephone helpline, an award winning website (www.cancerhelp.org.uk) – both of which are staffed by experienced cancer nurses, plus an online forum, Cancer Chat (www.cancerchat.org.uk). Before moving to Cancer Research UK in April 2008 Kate was Head of Health Information at NHS Direct Online, where she managed a variety of teams providing health information via the telephone, online at www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk and via digital television service. From 1989-2003 Kate worked for the BBC in a variety of information roles, including managing the development of a virtual research intranet site.

Sara Batts is Library Services Co-ordinator for the London office of Kirkland & Ellis International LLP. Sara graduated from City University in 2006. Prior to undertaking this career-changing MSc Information Science, Sara held a number of challenging posts including organising conferences for a professional organisation and marketing the University of Nottingham’s undergraduate degrees. Her current role involves all aspects of delivering an efficient library service to a growing and busy office.

Sara is an active member of the profession. She has held committee posts with BIALL and the City Legal Information Group and has written for a number of professional newsletters and publications. She is four years into a five year part-time PhD project.

Liz Blankson-Hemans joined Dialog in December 2001 as Manager, Information Professional Development for the EMEA/AP region, and is now Director, Market Development, with oversight for strategic planning and implementation of marketing activities outside North America.

Included in this role is the responsibility for driving customer-facing market relationships such as the Dialog Advisory Board, conference and professional association sponsorship, event planning and information professional market programmes and promotions including the Quantum2 Leadership Development and the Graduate Education Programmes in the region. She regularly presents workshops and seminars at a variety of industry conferences.

Prior to Dialog, she was manager of the Central Information Services at Clifford Chance, the international law firm, where she was responsible for providing a wide range of resources and services, including managing vendor supply relationships and contract negotiation, as well as research and reference services.

Liz is currently serving a directorship term on the SLA Board as Chapter Cabinet Chair Elect for 2010.  From January 2011, she will assume the role of Chapter Cabinet Chair.

Darron Chapman has worked with TFPL since January 1990.  During this time he ensured that TFPL’s recruitment business was part of a fully integrated portfolio of services provided by TFPL for all sectors of the knowledge and information world in the UK and overseas. This has given him a broad and unique view of developments in the information and business world. As an established member of the executive team his extensive knowledge of the information world and his management responsibilities has helped determine the direction of the company.

Darron has played an active role in TFPL’s thought leadership programmes such as ebic and tfpl connect. He has championed and directed a variety of research projects focusing on skills and emerging knowledge and information roles.  He launched the first recruitment service dedicated to knowledge management.   Post acquisition by the the IDOX Group he became Managing Director of TFPL Ltd and over saw the merger in 2009 of Intelligent Resources into TFPL Recruitment now known as TFPL Intelligent Resources.   Darron has been formally involved with SLA Europe for one year as Events Chair and plans many exciting new events for the rest of 2010 and 2011.

Andrew Clark is currently Head of Libraries & Information at UCB, a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

An active member of the PDR (Pharma Documentation Ring) Andrew has been a member of SLA for two years and is part of the Pharmaceutical and Health Technology Division and the Biomedical and Life Sciences Division.

Passionate about library innovation and making a difference in the profession Andrew really wants to inspire others no matter what challenges they are facing to really go for it and make a difference. Andrew has been with UCB for 5 years and has a particular interest in knowledge & information management, education & training, publishing & licensing and strategic business development. He is currently responsible for managing a multi-site library team that has a clear commitment to meeting the externally published information needs of some 10,000 users globally and ensuring that these needs are aligned with the strategic direction of the library.

Géraldine Clément-Stoneham grew up in Switzerland. After she obtained her MA in Musicology and English from the University of Geneva, she decided to move to London to pursue her studies at UCL where she completed an MA in Library and Information Studies. She finally set her mind on a career in the City. After 11 years spent between investment banks and a large international law firm, Geraldine is currently the Corporate Knowledge and Information Manager at the Medical Research Council.

Her experience covers a wide range of activities including knowledge and information management, competitive intelligence, legal and commercial research, information systems architecture, information governance, open access publishing, team coaching and training.

Geraldine speaks regularly at conferences and is a strong advocate of continuous professional development. She writes about her experience in her blog, Knowledge Ready and shares via Twitter @geraldinecs.

In her spare time, she likes to go back to her first love, music, and performs regularly in concerts around London.

Wendy Foster has worked in special libraries since leaving library school in 1977.  She has been employed in a variety of different sectors including finance and the oil industry, managing departments providing library and information services and archiving facilities across wide geographic areas.  In 2001 she ran away from the London rat race to live the good life in West Wales where she now finds herself working as a Library & Knowledge Services Manager for the local NHS.

For many years she was a committee member of the Library Association Industrial Group in various roles, including Secretary and Chair, and she served several terms as a Council Member of both The Library Association  and The Institute of Information Scientists (both now combined to form CILIP). As a council member of the lIS she was appointed to the Small Business Group and was also the Chair of the panel for vetting membership applications.

She was a founder member of the City Information Group and for 10 years sat on the Information for Energy Group at the Institute of Petroleum, spending three years as Chair.  In 1997 she was appointed to the Board of the Institute of Petroleum.

She served as a Board member of the European Chapter of the Special Libraries Association for ten years before moving to Wales and is now rejoining the Board thanks to the wonders of modern technology.

She is also a member of the SLA Student and Academic Affairs Advisory Council.

In her spare time she now keeps chickens and grows her own fruit and vegetables.

Dennie Heye is the global knowledge manager for the HR IT department at  Shell International B.V. in the Netherlands, where he is responsible for developing and implementing a strategy for knowledge and information management.

Prior to his current role, Dennie worked in different information management roles at Shell, including the development of a virtual global library for the upstream sector of the company. He was awarded the Quantum2 award and the SLA Europe Information Professional of the Year award in 2008.
He likes to write and present about topics and issues in the field of information and knowledge management. In 2006 he published a book about how to become a succesfull information professional.

Dennie is the international relations chair for the division of Petroleum and Energy Resources, a founding member of the Dutch KMRT (Knowledge Management Round Table) and a past board member of the Dutch NIC foundation (a group of senior library and information professionals).

Neil Infield is Manager of the Business & IP Centre at the British Library. He manages a team of 12 business and intellectual property reference experts, providing information and advice to inventors, business start-ups and entrepreneurs. In his three years at The British Library Neil has introduced a number of innovations, including a range of workshops and one-to-one business advice sessions, as well as free downloading to memory sticks. He has spoken widely on innovation in business information, including at Online Information 2007 in Sydney, and Online Information 2008 in London.

Prior to The British Library Neil was manager of Business Information Services at Hermes Pensions Management in the City of London. He was responsible for market data services, creating their website and intranet, as well as creating and editing their staff newsletter.

He has been active in SLA for nearly 20 years, including President of SLA Europe in 2003, In 2006 he was made a fellow of the association.

In the few hours of spare time that his commuting and two teenage children allow Neil enjoys gardening and tennis. He recently succumbed to a mid-life crisis and bought a Kawasaki KR1-S motorbike.

Sylvia James has been working as an independent management and research consultant since 1988. Before this she worked for 20 years in various positions in research for financial service companies and multinational companies including eight years as Head of Research & Information at Credit Suisse First Boston, the international investment bank, in London.

Her speciality is business research, especially researching and analysing all aspects of European companies, preparing individual research projects for clients. She also speaks and writes widely on the sector in all kinds of training courses and business journals.

John Latham was Director of the Information Center at the Special Libraries Association from 1995 to 2009. John graduated from The Catholic University of America with a Masters in Library and Information Science and MA in History in May 1995 and taught courses on Financial Management of Information Services for the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland Masters in Information Management degree.  Worked as a Chartered Accountant in UK for 27 years ending up as a Managing Partner of a large provincial firm of Chartered Accountants in Norfolk, England.

Penny Leach is an information services procurement specialist.  A qualified librarian, Pennny started her career in academic libraries but at an early stage transitioned in to commercial legal and banking information services, and most recently the media intelligence sector. Penny is active in various professional groups, contributes to different industry publications, and has also presented at several information industry conferences.

Jane Macoustra has twenty-eight years experience as an Information Professional, working in many varied environments including oil and gas, investment banking and law. She runs her own consultancy, Tai-Pan Research , and during her varied career has covered every aspect of librarianship. Her current assignments include research, training, various projects and writing a book. She has presented at conferences and taught master classes on business research.

Jane is a member of CILIP (The Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), the AIIP (The Association of Independent Information Professionals) and the SLA (Special Libraries Association) where she is currently serving as a Director on the Boards of SLA Europe and the SLA Asian Chapter. Prior to this Jane also served as Past-President of the SLA Asian Chapter and in 2007 was awarded the SLA Presidential Citation award for her work with them.

Jane spent two and a half years working in Hong Kong, and gained extensive knowledge of the Asian markets during her time there.

Lyndsay Rees-Jones is a ‘special’ librarian by experience, spending much of her practitioner career as a solo.  She worked in engineering and utilities before joining CILIP as an Advisor initially focused on support for workplace librarians.  Her current role is running the Membership Support Unit with two colleagues, including support for Branch and Group activists, and tools to help members in their careers and to self-advocate.

She began her networking ‘career’ as a student in Manchester, becoming the student representative on CILIP’s (then the Library Association) regional branch.   Realising that professional networking was a powerful way of adding personal and professional value, Lyndsay has been an active contributor inside and outside the information profession.  Including UKSG (1990 to 2010); WiM (a special interest group of the Chartered Management Institute); and SLA (which she joined in 1989). There is always so much to learn and cross-collaboration within and without professional domains can be mutually beneficial.

Bethan Ruddock graduated from MMU with an MA in Library and Information Management in September 2008, following a Graduate Traineeship at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester. She is currently Content Development Officer, Library and Archival Services at Mimas at the University of Manchester.

Bethan writes for the Copac Development blog and the Archives Hub blog, and has recently started her own professional blog. She has also co-authored a number of articles about Copac, and a journal article based on her dissertation (How UK academic libraries choose federated search engines) will be appearing in the near future.

Her association with SLA began in 2009, when she was one of the Early Career Award winners, selected to attend the conference in Washington. She now looks forward to the chance to engage with other new professionals, and encourage them to get involved with the work of SLA and SLA Europe. She is also a member of CILIP, and has recently completed her Chartership.

Marie-Madeleine Salmon is Head of Information at Publicis in Paris, in France. She is a specialist of marketing and communications devoted to libraries. She is involved in different librarians associations: SLA and ADBS in France, with an interest in promoting international exchanges between colleagues, shared experience and promotion of library careers.

For that purpose, at SLA  she initiated and coordinated the ELT (European librarians Theater) at Online Information Exhibition in London, connecting participants from different countries. The objectives are to transform the ELT in a dedicated welcoming place for international and european networking, share and exchange contacts and experiences between different countries concerning libraries, librarians in Europe and outside and share about  future of this profession.

Marie-Madeleine has a Masters in Marketing at Dauphine Paris University, and degree in Information Sciences. Her career began in the public sector at the French Ministry of Culture and Development, followed by a number of roles as Head of Information in different advertising agencies. The major themes of her research are: marketing libraries, communication tools for libraries and librarians, techniques of promotion for libraries and social media marketing for libraries. In 2006, Marie-Madeleine received the European Information Professional of the year award from SLA Europe.

Laura Woods graduated from City University London with an MSc in Library and Information Studies in January 2010, and is currently working as an Information Services Adviser at Addleshaw Goddard LLP. She has been involved with SLA Europe since winning one of the Early Career Conference Awards in 2009, and attending the 2009 Annual Conference in Washington DC.

Laura blogs about her professional development activities at Organising Chaos, and you can find her on Twitter as @WoodsieGirl. She is interested in networking with her peers, particularly fellow new professionals, and in innovative ways to promote library services and the information profession.

Stephen Phillips studied Librarianship and History at the College of Librarianship Wales, joining the Information Profession in 1987. Stephen has held a number of positions at various organisations, including Charter plc, Merck Inc, Grant Thornton and KPMG. In 1994, he joined Morgan Stanley as a senior researcher; in 2000, he was appointed Global Head of Business Information Services (BIS). Since then, he has restructured the group and engaged in a range of strategies to develop the BIS operation and raise its profile within Morgan Stanley.

He has led or supported a number of high profile initiatives: empowering end users with a range of information products and tools; deploying sector specialisation within the BIS teams; embedding specialist research staff into the business; offshoring and outsourcing aspects of the function; improving the transparency and accountability of the function; leveraging a range of technologies to develop or improve service provision.  Stephen has written, or contributed to several articles in the professional press. He has given a number of presentations and facilitated workshops at many conferences and events, including Online Information 2008 and 2009 and the 2009 and 2011 Perfect Information conferences.

John Coll is Head of Access and Enquiries at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. He manages all aspects of access including reading room services and enquiries as well as remote access to the Library’s innovative  licensed digital content. He also has responsibility for the Visitor centre and SCOTBIS (the Scottish Business Information Service).John graduated from University College Dublin with a degree in history and politics and a post-graduate diploma in Library and Information Studies from the College of Librarianship Wales. He has over 25 years experience in information provision and has worked in a variety of other organisations including legal libraries and an investment bank. He has a strong interest in resource discovery and the application of technology to improve customer service.