Allan Bell
Associate University Librarian, University of Waterloo
Session: ILS Options for Academic Libraries
Allan Bell is the Associate University Librarian for Information Technology Services at the University of Waterloo. He has held management positions with HighWire Press in the Stanford University Libraries and Ovid Technologies as well as academic library roles as a Systems Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington and Computer Services/Reference Librarian for McGill University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

Brian Bell
Director, Alouette Canada, Alouette Canada
Session: Alouette Canada Progress Report
Brian Bell was appointed Executive Director, AlouetteCanada, in October 2006 for a 1-year secondment from the Oakville Public Library where he has been Director of E-Services since 1987. He has served as: Chair of the Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries; Chair of the Canadian Community Information Online Consortium; Member of the Board of Inform Canada (the coordinating body for the roll out of the 211 service for Canada); President of the Ontario Library and Information Technology Association; President of the Ontario Library Association. Brian is currently: on the planning committee for the Canadian Digital Information Strategy (Library and Archives Canada ); Board member and Chair of the Technical Committee for Canadiana.org; and serves on the Technical Committee of Knowledge Ontario, an initiative of the Ontario Library Association.

Peter Binkley
Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian, University of Alberta Libraries
Session: Searching the OPAC: The State of Play
Peter Binkley did his Ph.D. in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 1991, then spent four years as a postdoc at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands working on medieval encyclopedias. He took his MLIS from UWO in 1999 and moved to Edmonton as the first developer for the virtual union catalogue TAL Online. In 2001 he became the Digital Initiatives Technology Librarian at the University of Alberta, where his responsibilities have included deployments of EZProxy and SFX and development of the search interface for Peel’s Prairie Portal.

Jane Burke
Vice President and General Manager, Serials Solutions
Session: Observing Student Researchers in their Native Habitat
Jane Burke is Vice President and General Manager of Serials Solutions, a Seattle-based business unit of ProQuest. Jane was appointed to this position in June, 2005. Prior to joining ProQuest, Jane co-founded and served as President/CEO of Endeavor Information Systems. In addition to working as a librarian at Cook Memorial Library in Libertyville, Illinois early in her career, Jane served as President of NOTIS Systems.

Su Cleyle
Associate University Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Session: ILS Options for Academic Libraries
Susan Cleyle is Associate University Librarian at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Ms. Cleyle is the Past President of the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (2005) and incoming President of the Atlantic Provinces Library Association (2008). She is also one of the founding members of the Canadian Library Association Evidence Based Librarianship Interest Group and the journal Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. Ms. Cleyle serves on the Editorial Board of Library Hi Tech and co-edited the book “Last One Out Turn Off the Lights: Is this the Future of American and Canadian Libraries?”. Prior to her administrative work, Su was involved with library systems. Here she learned that technology has a human factor that needs to be nurtured for any library to have a successful automated service structure.

Luc Declerck
Associate University Librarian, Technology Services, UCSD
Session: Data-Cyberinfrastructure Collaboration at the University of California, San Diego
Luc Declerck is Associate University Librarian, Technology Services at the University of California, San Diego where he is responsible for information technology, digital library activities, the libraries and campus websites, and technology-based sponsored-grant projects. Before moving to the United States in March 2002, his seventeen-plus year career in libraries included positions at the University of Victoria and Trent University where he held a number of progressively responsible positions in technical services, systems, and library administration. While in Canada, Luc was active in consortial activities including the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), the Council of Prairies and Pacific Libraries (COPPUL), and the British Columbia Electronic Library Network (ELN). He currently serves on the University of California Systemwide Operations and Planning Advisory Group, is a past member of the UC Bibliographic Services Task Force, and is an active member of the current UC/OCLC WorldCat Local Pilot Implementation Team.

John Durno
IT Coordinator, University of Victoria
Session: Genius Loci: Libraries in Transition
John Durno co-ordinates systems activities for the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria. Since his arrival in 2006 he has been involved in a diverse range of projects including the reconfiguration of the Library’s Information Commons, an overhaul/upgrade of several key server-side applications, and the integration of Library systems with centrally supported campus IT. Prior to 2006, he was a Project Coordinator and sometime Acting Manager for the BC Electronic Library Network, where he coordinated provincial database licensing initiatives, programmed administrative systems for the consortium office, and oversaw the technical implementation of many BC ELN projects. John also chairs the COPPUL Systems Group, and acts as technical consultant for the Canadian Research Knowledge Network Negotiations Resource Team.

Amanda Etches-Johnson
User Experience Librarian, McMaster University
Session: Forget the Lipstick, This Pig Needs a Complete Makeover
Amanda Etches-Johnson is the User Experience Librarian at McMaster University Library, a role that requires her to explore, evaluate, and implement emerging technologies to ensure the best possible online experience for the library’s users. She is also a Lecturer at the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at The University of Western Ontario, where she teaches grad students about social software literacies & affordances. Understandably, Amanda loves what she does. Named a “Mover & Shaker” by Library Journal in 2007, Amanda frequently writes and presents on emerging technology, web services, and social software and can be found online at blogwithoutalibrary.net.

Declan Fleming
Director, Information Technology Department, University of California, San Diego Libraries
Session: Data-Cyberinfrastructure Collaboration at the University of California, San Diego
Declan Fleming is the Director of the Information Technology Department at the University of California, San Diego Libraries. The UCSD Libraries IT Department provides production support of Libraries services and develops leading edge digital library software. The group works closely with partners at the San Diego Supercomputer Center to leverage off site storage utilizing the SRB infrastructure. Declan started his career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, managing the public computing sites for a number of years. He then escaped Midwestern weather by going corporate at QUALCOMM for several years in San Diego. He is thrilled to be back in academia for the last four years and finds libraries and their challenges to be fascinating.

Joshua Ferraro
President, Technology, LibLime
Session: Open Source Software as a Service
Joshua Ferraro, LibLime’s President, Technology, currently serves as the official Koha Project Release Manager. He has been promoting open source in libraries since 2001, when he oversaw implementation of the Koha open-source library automation system at the Athens County Public Library System in Ohio, USA. ACPLS is the first library in the US to adopt an open-source integrated library system. In response to feedback from libraries on why they weren’t adopting open source solutions, Ferraro co-founded LibLime in early 2005 with the aim of providing commercial support for open source library solutions.

Martin Holmes
Humanities Computing, Research and Development, University of Victoria
Session: Image markup and Web applications
Martin Holmes holds a BA (Hons) in English, an MPhil, and the RSA Dip. TEFLA. He was an ESL teacher for many years, working in Japan, Indonesia, Britain and Saudi Arabia before settling in Canada. He now works as a programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre, where he specializes in Windows programming and Web-based digital humanities projects based on XML/XSLT/JavaScript/CSS. He is one of the creators of the Hot Potatoes and Quandary authoring tools, and is a director of Half-Baked Software, Inc., as well as authoring other commercial teaching tools such as Markin and TexToys.

Ben Hyman
Manager, Policy and Technology, Public Library Services Branch
Session: Open ILS, Web 2.0 and multitype provincial library initiatives in BC
Ben is the Manager of Policy & Technology with the Public Library Services Branch, based in Victoria, BC. Ben was previously a Systems Manager at the Vancouver Island Regional Library, and has held positions in public, academic, government and special libraries.

Beth Jefferson
Founder, Bibliocommons
Session: Open ILS, Web 2.0 and multitype provincial library initiatives in BC
Beth is the founder of BiblioCommons. In past lives, Beth was the founder of The perF!nk Project, an award-winning online youth literacy initiative, and has held a variety of management positions in the private sector, including Director, Information Servies and Analytics at AIR MILES.

Mark Jordan
Head of Library Systems, Simon Fraser University Library
Session: Alouette Canada Progress Report
Mark Jordan is currently on secondment to the Canadian Association of Research Libraries as Project Manager for the AlouetteCanada Metadata Toolkit.

Mark Leggott
University Librarian, University of Prince Edward Island
Session: Repository Redux
Mark Leggott is the University Librarian at Robertson Library, prior to which he was University Librarian and Associate Dean of Education at the University of Winnipeg. Mark has been active in the profession for over 20 years and is a strong supporter of things open, which is reflected in some of the new projects he is spearheading at UPEI, including the Virtual Research Environment. Mark has spent most of his life and professional career in the Maritimes, so it feels good to be back home.

Walter Lewis
Technical Lead, OurOntario
Session: Alouette Canada Progress Report
Currently seconded from the Halton Hills Public Library (where he is Manager of Systems and Technical Services), Walter is working with OurOntario.ca and the larger KnowledgeOntario project, as well as participating in AlouetteCanada. He has presented at a variety of library conferences including ALA, CLA, PLA, Access and is a semi-regular at OLA. On the borders of work he manages the Maritime History of the Great Lakes site, which is full of digital library prototypes, abandonned and otherwise, along with a subset of his personal collection and a variety of datasets.

Slavko Manojlovich
Associate University Librarian (IT), Memorial University of Newfoundland
Session: ILS Options for Academic Libraries
Slavko Manojlovich was born in Tiverton, Devon, England and at the age of two moved to Canada to pursue a carreer in librarianship. Many, many years later Slavko is the Associate University Librarian (IT) at Memorial University where his primary responsibilities include managing the university’s Digital Archives Initiative and the implementation of the Atlantic Scholarly Information Network (ASIN) Portal, a suite of search/retrieve services for a consortium of universities in Atlantic Canada.

Shawn Martin
Text Creation Partnership Project Librarian, University of Michigan
Session: Darth Vader, Open Access, and Digital Libraries: What is the Future of Electronic Collections?
Shawn Martin is project librarian for the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) project at the University of Michigan. He holds a BA in history from Ohio State University and an MA in history from the College of William and Mary. He has worked for several years in digital libraries including the Digital Library Project at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Ohio Memory Project at the Ohio Historical Society, and has served as adjunct faculty at the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University. Shawn is also active in several library and scholarly associations and serves as Executive Director of the American Association for History and Computing.

Brian Owen
Associate University Librarian, Simon Fraser University
Session: ILS Options for Academic Libraries
During the past 20 years Brian Owen has held senior library management positions at various public and academic libraries – Fraser Valley Regional Library, UBC Library and more recently SFU Library as Associate University Librarian for Processing and Systems. He is an Associate with SFU’s Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, SFU’s Master of Publishing Program, and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). His work experience has been primarily associated with the development and operation of library systems and the application of information technology to creating, maintaining, accessing and preserving information resources. The SFU Library has a national reputation for its innovative and technological leadership in the development and support of open source-based library systems such as the reSearcher suite of library modules including GODOT, Citation Manager, dbWIZ, and CUFTS ERM. More recently, the SFU Library has become the home for the coordination of the ongoing development and support of the PKP Suite of open source software in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at the University of British Columbia, the original developers. These systems support scholarly publishing and communication. OJS has been adopted worldwide as an online publishing platform by over one thousand scholarly online journals. PKP Suite components are Open Journal System, Open Conference System and PKP metadata harvester.

Chris Petter
Digital Projects Librarian, University of Victoria
Session: Image markup and Web applications

Benoît Pirenne
Associate Director, IT, Neptune Canada
Session: Archiving the NEPTUNE and VENUS observatories data
Benoît Pirenne is Associate Director, Information Technology, for NEPTUNE Canada. He joined NEPTUNE Canada in October 2004 after having spent about 18 years at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a leading Organization for astronomical research. At ESO Benoît assumed a number of scientific and technical (IT) positions. Most recently, he was Head of the Operations Technical Support Department in this Organization and was responsible for running the Data Management and Archiving system in support for the exponential growth of the data volume produced by both ESO and Hubble Space Telescope observatory data. His responsibilities included the management of a group of 16 people dealing with computer system management, database administration, archive operations and database content management. Other activities of the department included user support and adding values to the data. In developing DMAS for VENUS and NEPTUNE, Benoît will contribute his data flow expertise and mindset to the scientific disciplines that constitute Ocean Science.

Ray Siemens
Canada Research Chair, Humanities Computing, University of Victoria
Session: Scholarly Reading Interface to Renaissance English Knowledgebase
Ray Siemens is Professor of English and Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing at the University of Victoria. He is President (English) of the Society for Digital Humanities Société pour l’étude des médias interactifs, Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King’s College London, and Visiting Research Professor Sheffield Hallam University. Director of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, and founding editor of the electronic scholarly journal Early Modern Literary Studies, he is also author of works chiefly focusing on areas where literary studies and computational methods intersect, is editor of several Renaissance texts, is series co-editor of Topics in the Digital Humanities (U Illinois P) and is co-editor of several book collections on humanities computing topics, among them the Blackwell Companion to Digital Humanities (2004) and Mind Technologies (U Calgary P, 2006).

Roy Tennant
Senior Program Officer, OCLC
Session: Leveraging the Power of the Grid
Roy Tennant is a Senior Program Mangager for OCLC Programs and Research. He is the owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions, and the creator and editor of Current Cites, a current awareness newsletter published every month since 1990. His books include Managing the Digital Library (2004), XML in Libraries (2002), Practical HTML: A Self-Paced Tutorial 1996), and Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook (1993). Roy has written a monthly column on digital libraries for Library Journal since 1997 and has written numerous articles in other professional journals. In 2003, he received the American Library Association’s LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Communication for Continuing Education.

Richard Wallis
Technology Evangelist, Talis
Session: The Talis Platform
Richard’s thirty year plus career in the computer information industry, the last fifteen of which has been with the UK’s leading Library Systems Vendor, Talis, coupled with his passion for and involvement with new and emerging technology trends, gives him a unique perspective of the issues challenging Libraries today. Richard has been ‘in at the birth’ of several major Library System Developments, as architect, research and technical lead. More recently as Technology Evangelist he has been at the forefront in promoting, explaining, and applying new and emerging Web technologies in the library and information domain. Richard is an active blogger on both Panlibus & Talis Developer Network and a regular podcaster in the Talking with Talis series.

Jessamyn West
Community Technologist, librarian.net
Session: Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Librarian 2.0 – solving problems with buzzwords
Jessamyn West is a community technology librarian and a moderator of the massive group blog MetaFilter.com. She lives in a rural area of Central Vermont where she teaches basic computer skills to novices including seniors and people with disabilities. She assists tiny libraries with technology planning and implementation, helping them with wifi and websites and making sense of their systems. She maintains an online presence at jessamyn.com and librarian.net and has had her address and phone number on the Internet for a decade. Her favorite color is orange.

Martha Whitehead
Associate University Librarian, Queen’s University
Session: Genius Loci: Libraries in Transition
Martha Whitehead is an Associate University Librarian at Queen’s University Library, where she is responsible for systems and information technology services and designated public service units. Before joining Queen’s in 2004, Martha was at the University of British Columbia Library, where she held positions in information services, systems, reference, circulation and distance education. In 2003, Martha undertook a study leave at the University of Melbourne, with the Teaching, Learning and Research Support unit of the Information Division. In 2007, Martha was accepted to the 2007-2008 ARL Research Library Leadership Fellows program.

Because of limited space we cannot handle any more than 250 conference participants. So if you know anyone who would like to attend the conference, make sure they register sooner rather than later.