Ms Jan Wilkinson
Head of Higher Education, The British Library

Paper Title: Collaboration With Research Universities And Their Great Libraries - The British Library Perspective.

Biography:Jan Wilkinson is one of the leading academic librarians in the UK, and is widely respected within the profession. She has 16 years of experience at senior management level, in nine different posts, including the University of Leeds and the London School of Economics. In July 2004 she joined the Senior Leadership Team of the British Library in a newly created role of Head of Higher Education. Prior to this she was University Librarian and Keeper of the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds, where she was responsible for the leadership and development of the library, with a particular emphasis on the direction of organisational change and human resource management. From 1996 – 1998 she was Deputy Librarian at the London School of Economics (LSE), where she was involved in strategic planning and policy making for this international research library for the social sciences.

Jan has been involved in library developments at a national level for a number of years. She represents the national libraries on the Funders’ Group of the Research Information Network (RIN), and the British Library on the RIN Advisory Board. She is also a member of the CURL Board. Jan has undertaken a number of board and consultancy roles including external advisor to the universities of Cambridge, Trinity College Dublin, UCL, Kingston, University of the Arts London, Birkbeck College, Nottingham Trent, Robert Gordon’s, Cardiff and SOAS. Jan has also worked on two HEFCE projects ("The DNER and the DNC: the human element" and "Barriers to Resource Sharing in Libraries"); is an assessor for the Wolfson Foundation and Chair of the Wellcome Library Committee. In addition, she has acted as consultant to and been a member of JISC committees and is an editorial board member of the New Review of Academic Librarianship. Jan has been Course Director for the TICER International Summer School on the Digital Library for five years.

Earlier in her career, Jan worked in college and polytechnic libraries, including Hatfield Polytechnic (also as University of Hertfordshire) in two senior management positions.