BIOGRAPHIES
Dr Malcolm Read
Executive Secretary - Joint Information Systems Commitee
Dr Malcolm Read graduated in 1973 with a degree in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia and went on to do a PhD at the University of Manchester on the hydrometeorology of a glacial catchment. He then worked in the Overseas Development Administration before moving to the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in 1979. He ran the computer department at the Institute of Hydrology before moving into administrative computing to head the Joint Administrative Computing Service of NERC and the, then, Science and Engineering Research Council in 1988.
Since July 1993 Dr Read has worked for the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils as the Executive Secretary to the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). Apart from his overall responsibility for the Executive he has been particularly involved in ICT policy and strategy development in post 16 education and research. He is also heavily involved in international ICT infrastructure activities particularly in Europe and the United States.
Dr Sarah Thomas
Bodley's Librarian and Director, Oxford University Library Services
Sarah Thomas is Bodley's Librarian and Director, Oxford University Library Services. Before joining the University of Oxford in February 2007, she served as the University Librarian at Cornell University from 1996 until 2007. In a career spanning thirty-five years, Dr Thomas has cataloged books in Harvard University's Widener Library, taught German at the Johns Hopkins University, managed Library Coordination at the Research Libraries Group in California, served as the Associate Director for Technical Services at the National Agricultural Library, and directed both the Cataloging Directorate and the Public Service Collections Directorate at the Library of Congress.
Dr Thomas's publications and presentations over the past 25 years have concentrated on the impact of information technology on libraries, innovations in scholarly communications, and developments in library architecture. In 2007 she received the Melvil Dewey Award from the American Library Association.
Thomas earned a Ph.D. in German literature from Johns Hopkins University in 1983, writing her dissertation on the topic of author-publisher relations. She received her bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1970 and a Master of Science in Library Science from Simmons College in 1973.
Chris Batt OBE
Head of Chris Batt Consulting
Chris has had wide ranging experience of work in the public sector. In the early1990s as Director of Leisure Services in the London Borough of Croydon he led the development of the highly successful Croydon Clocktower development while at the same time implementing the first public Internet services in UK public libraries. In 1999 he moved to the Library and Information Commission as Chief Network Adviser to lead the GBP170m People's Network programme, establishing ICT learning centres in every UK public library. In 2003 he was appointed Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council where he led a major programme of organisational change and development.
In 1998 he was awarded the OBE for his groundbreaking work in developing public ICT services and in 2003 he was voted Sunday Times Internet Guru of the Year. Chris is a Life Fellow of CILIP and a Fellow of the RSA. He offers a unique set of skills and experience, blending long-term strategic vision with problem solving and programme management, helping organisations to improve and innovate with confidence:
Santiago de la Mora
European Partnerships Lead, Books - Google UK Ltd
Santiago de la Mora is the Partnerships Lead for Google Book Search in Europe, Middle East and Africa and as such he and his team manage the relationships with Google's llarge and strategic partners in the publishing industry. Prior to Google, Mr. de la Mora spent 6 years in content production and sales on behalf of newspapers and magazines. Most recently, he was founder of a media company, Eko International, that worked with European business magazines to produce sectorial and country reports on Emerging Markets. He also has banking experience having worked at Societe Generale for more than 3 years.
Mr. de la Mora holds an MBA from INSEAD as well as a B.A. in Political Science from Yale and a M.A. in International Policy Studies from Stanford.
Peter Murray-Rust
Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics
Peter Murray-Rust is a contemporary chemist born in Guildford in 1941. He was educated at Bootham School and Balliol College. After obtaining a D.Phil he became lecturer in chemistry at the (new) University of Stirling and was first warden of Andrew Stewart Hall of Residence. In 1982 he moved to Glaxo Group Research at Greenford to head Molecular Graphics, Computational Chemistry and later protein structure determination. He was Professor of Pharmacy in the University of Nottingham from 1996-2000, setting up the Virtual School of Molecular Sciences. He is now Reader in Molecular Informatics at the University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow of Churchill College.
His interests have involved the automated analysis of data in scientific publications, creation of virtual communities e.g. The Virtual School of Natural Sciences in the Globewide Network Academy and the Semantic Web. With Henry Rzepa he has extended this to chemistry through the development of Markup languages, especially Chemical Markup Language. He campaigns for Open Data, particularly in science
Robert Darnton
Harvard University Librarian
Robert Darnton was educated at Harvard University (A.B., 1960) and Oxford University (B.Phil., 1962; D. Phil., 1964), where he was a Rhodes scholar. After a brief stint as a reporter for The New York Times, he became a junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard. He taught at Princeton from 1968 until 2007, when he became Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library at Harvard. He has been a visiting professor or fellow at many universities and institutes for advanced study, and his outside activities include service as a trustee of the New York Public Library and the Oxford University Press (USA) and terms as president of the American Historical Association and the International Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. He has written and edited two dozen books, including The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopedie (1979, an early attempt to develop the history of books as a field of study), The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984, probably his most popular work, which has been translated into 16 languages), Berlin Journal, 1989-1990, (1991, an account of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of East Germany), and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995, a study of the underground book trade). His latest book, The Devil in the Holy Water, or The Art of Slander in France, 1650-1800 will be published in 2009
Vincent Gillespie
J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language
Vincent Gillespie is J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. He is currently a Curator of the Oxford University Libraries Service, and chairman of the university's Committee on Library Provision in English. Much of his recent work has been on the history of the book, the history of reading, and the history of medieval libraries.
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