Grampian Information

Robin Armstrong Viner

Having spent my entire school career wanting to be an architect I discovered at University that I wasn’t very good at it. Determined to not add more bad buildings to the landscape I left the University of Wales Cardiff with a BSc (Hons) in Architectural Studies.  Fortunately enough I was offered a job at the Royal Institute of British Architects’ British Architectural Library.  I left University College London with an MA in Library and Information Studies in 2000 wondering why anyone would want to be a cataloguer.  A year later I took on my first cataloguing role and for a while rejoiced under the fabulous job title, Manager -  Content & Information Architectrue at the Royal Institution of chartered Surveryors.   I settled for the much more prosaic title of Cataloguing Manager on joinging the University of Aberdeen in January 2008.  I’m on the committee of the CILIP Cataloguing &Indexing Group and a mentor to three Chartership candidates.  I really must get around to completing my revalidation…

Wendy Ball

Wendy graduated from the University of Durham in BA Honours Geography with Archeology and Geology.  Experience and interest in Archaeology took her to Afghanistan, where she then got a job with the British Council teaching English as a Foreign Language.  She then followed a career in TEFL, authoring seven text books and gaining three teaching qualifications. Returning to the UK and prompted by a wish to return to heritage work, Wendy developed the Scottish Borders Memory Bank which was adopted in 1998 by the Scottish Borders Council. This project proved to be a trail blazer in creating a digital archive based on community archiving principles.  Funding for this finished in 2002 and after a year in the CommunityEducation starting the Borders Adult Learners’ Forum, Wendy decided to retrain and took a Masters in Information Management graduating with distinction in 2004.  She took up the ELISA Development Office post in January 2005.

Yvonne Barclay

Yvonne Barclay is currently Team Librarian for the Europe Direct Information Service, based in Aberdeen Central Library’s Information Centre.  She has worked for Aberdeen City Libraries for over 25 years in various departments and branches.  She joined the Europe Direct team in February 2008 shortly after the official launch of the service in the previous December.  The Europe Direct centre is part of a wider network of over 500 Europe Direct Information Centres throughout the European Union.

Margaret Forrest

Margaret Forrest is CILIPS President for 2009.  Key themes for her Presidential year are accessibility, professional development through publishing, and networking. Margaret has spent over 25 years working health and education libraries.  She was Library Services Manager of NHS Health Scotland until 2003 when she moved to the University of Dundee as Fife Campus Librarian.  In 2007 Margaret took up her current post as Academic Liason Librarian at the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archeology. She has been active in several CILIP groups, especailly the Health Libraries Group, where she was Newsletter Editor for 11 years. Margaret is currently Associate Editor of the New REview of Academic Librarianship.

Mick Fortune

In a career spanning over 30 years I have worked on all sides of the library industry beginning at what was then the British Library’s Lending Division where I was responsible for the automation of interlending processes in support of the nations’s libraries.  Since leaving there in the 1980s I have maintained contact with UK libraries whilst at the same time developing a deeper understanding of service delivery in libraries worldwide through my work with IBM Europe and Australia and as European MD of Dynix. For five years I worked for the Nielsen Coporation latterly heading up their BookNet division running supply chain services for companies like Amazon, Gardners, Waterstones and Random House. Most recently I have been working with CILIP and BIC (the UK book supply chain’s “policeman”) to develop common standards for FRID and now new protocols for service integration.

Ruth MacDonald

Ruth MacDonald is currently a member of the Aberdeenshire Glow Team.  She has worked as a Primary teacher for 28 years in various schools in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire.  Before joining the Glow Team, she was involved in taking learning and teaching forward through the use of  games based learning in her classroom and, following on from an HMIe school inspection in 2007, shared her classroom practice with teaching staff in Aberdeenshire and through the Aberdeen Branch of Early Education.

Mike Miller

A business analyst with Aberdeenshire Council ICT Service with a long standing interest in information and records management.  He worked closely with the Project Manager for the EDRMS project in terms of faciliating the project, choosing the technology that was the “best fit” for the Council and examining processes associate dwith the information and records management of the implementing service. He continues to be involved in information and records management projects in Aberdeenshire Council.