Interview
engagement, has been a huge success for us’
a decade, our international enrolments are down, which has a knock-on effect in terms of rents and other university income (campus shops cafes etc). Expectations are sky-high post-pandemic – the digital is not a ‘nice to have’, it’s an expectation. We all need to work out what the future content model looks like, when the money is not there. That is an overdue discussion. Libraries have, however, been a success
story through the pandemic – our value to our institutions, in terms of digital content and physical space, has never been clearer.
While the pandemic has also driven home the value of research – without universities we wouldn’t be looking at a route out of the pandemic (as hard as things look right now) – open research will only become more prominent. That will impact on how this research is presented. We have the opportunity to go further into partnerships with our academic colleagues, the local stakeholders and our global partners. Potentially we are coming to the most challenging – and most exciting – time of my career.
have had delegates from countries and companies who would never be able to send delegates previously, and our attendance numbers were higher than for the comparable in-person events. There is a place for in-person though, and our conference is an important part of the community calendar, so it would be good to go back to in-person in 2022 – it is certainly our ambition.
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What are the biggest issues for UKSG members over the next few years? The challenges are the same for our members as for everyone else really: uncertainty and trying to guess what the new world will look like. In terms of libraries, our universities are looking at less income from students and, at the same time, higher expectations – fees have stayed at the same level for nearly
Any hobbies or interests you’d like to tell us about? My main interest is probably mid-20th century popular culture. It’s books, records, films and clothes. If you were to ask my family and friends to sum me up in two words, they would probably choose ‘hair’ and ‘records’. Some choice examples: I am a huge Beatles fan, but I also love electronica (analogue synths) and 1950s/1960s jazz (Blue Note Records, Louis and Ella, Miles and Lee Morgan). I am a huge fan of the golden age of Hollywood (any Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, John Ford or Howard Hawks film starring Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur, Stanley Baker, Joel McCrea or Henry Fonda will do me). I am a voracious reader, loving authors like Patrick Hamilton, Elizabeth Taylor, James Baldwin and Anthony Powell. It’s fair to say that my clothes and hair speak to this mid-century love… so I have been told, at least!
Interview by Tim Gillett
April/May 2021 Research Information 13
‘Going digital, in terms of
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