Philippa Benson is currently the Director of Strategic and Business Development at The Charlesworth Group. At Charlesworth she has been helping organizations understand, tailor, and use new electronic publishing tools and workflows, including XML, XMP, and ePub products. She specializes in advising organizations through the transition from traditional print to electronic publishing methods and in helping people understand how their roles and responsibilities in publishing may shift as organizations move into the post-Gutenberg era. She has also been developing training for authors and editors working across languages and cultures. Philippa worked on the editorial side of publishing for more than a decade, and has helped several organizations move from print to electronic publications. She received her Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon and has lived and worked in mainland China.
Julia Blixrud assumed responsibility for supporting ARL's long history of leadership in promoting positive change in the scholarly communication system in April 2009. This ARL strategic direction is currently focused on the assessment and implementation of new scholarly communication models, the development of alliances to advance of new systems of scholarly communication, and the advancement of library outreach efforts that inform the educational and research communities about issues relating to scholarly communication. Julia's 30-year career in the library community has included positions at CAPCON and MINITEX library networks, the Council on Library Resources, and the Library of Congress. Her interests and professional activities have included cooperative programs, serials, technical standards, library assessment, intellectual property, and scholarly communication. She received the 2007 Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award. Julia has a BA in library science and Scandinavian studies from Augsburg College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and an MA in library science from the University of Minnesota.
Maria Bonn is the Associate University Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan, responsible for the Library's growing suite of publishing and scholarly communications initiatives. In addition, she serves as an advisor to the University community on issues surrounding scholarly publishing and communication policy and support innovative projects in those areas both in and out of the Library. She has a PhD in American Literature from SUNY Buffalo and a MILS from the University of Michigan. She spent several years as an academic and instructor at universities including the Sichuan International Studies University in Chongqing, China and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. After receiving her MILS in 1996, she joined the University of Michigan Library first as an interface specialist for the Digital Library Production Service, then in Digital Library Program Development, where she began the work that grew into the Scholarly Publishing Office.
Cindy Clark is a biomedical librarian with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library. She earned her master's degree in Library Science from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and her bachelor's degree in Journalism and Public Communications from the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Her background includes work in the fields of surgery, public relations, marketing, and brand management. Since joining the NIH Library in 2001, she has worked as a reference librarian, instructor, and Communications Team leader. Cindy now leads the NIH Library's Writing Center Team and Editing Service in support of getting NIH researchers published. With her colleagues, Cindy conducts writing-related research and is currently exploring venues for providing interactive training for writers. She is an active member of SLA and the Council of Science Editors.
Rick Clement is Dean of Libraries and Adjunct Professor of History at Utah State University. He is the author of seven books and more than 40 scholarly articles. His most recent book, Books on the Frontier: Print Culture in the American West, 1768-1875, was published in 2003 by the University Press of New England and the Library of Congress. He is the founding president of the Mediterranean Studies Association and is co-editor of the journal Mediterranean Studies published by Manchester University Press. Before coming to USU, he was Head of the Department of Special Collections at the University of Kansas, where he was also Courtesy Professor of English and taught the History of the Book. He edited RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscrips and Cultural Heritage from 2003-2008. He was a Fulbright Educational Partnership Fellow in Peru in 2004 and received the Gretchen and Gene A. Budig Distinguished Librarian Award from the University of Kansas in 2003. He is active in the area of Scholarly Communication and Open Access publication. Currently he is working on creating a program for institutional academic digital publishing at USU.
Rea Devakos coordinates scholarly communication for the University of Toronto Libraries. Her portfolio includes repository, journal and conference hosting service management and development. In addition, she leads the Ontario region of the Synergies project which aims to build a decentralized national infrastructure for Canadian social sciences and humanities digital scholarly communication.Rea has held a variety of public service and management positions in university, community college, public and special libraries. She is currently on sabbatical researching student leaders in open access publishing.
As Director of Columbia University's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS), part of the University Libraries/Information Services, Rebecca Kennison is responsible for developing the programs and services of the Center and for coordinating these efforts with other divisions, including the Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, the Copyright Advisory Office, the Libraries Digital Program Division, the Libraries Information Technology Office, and Preservation and Digital Conversion Division. Her primary objective for the Center is to facilitate scholarly research and the communication of that research through technology solutions, and she and her team work on innovative projects with faculty and researchers to address the issues that affect them. Before coming to Columbia, Kennison worked for a variety of publishers, both commercial and non-profit, including Healthline Networks, Public Library of Science (PLoS), Database Publishing, Blackwell Publishing, SilverPlatter Education, and Cell Press.
Monica McCormick leads the Office for Digital Scholarly Publishing at New York University, reporting jointly to the Libraries and NYU Press. She worked for more than fifteen years at the University of California Press, mainly as an acquiring editor in the humanities. Seeing that scholarship was increasingly being created and distributed in digital form, and that librarians were organizing and managing digital information in new ways, she left California for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving an MSLS in library science in 2006. She hopes to find ways to unite the distinct but compatible skills of publishers with those of libraries, to support sustainable scholarly communication.
Bonnie Mueller is the Director of Library and Information Services for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). As Director, she provides management and leadership in the areas of research, knowledge management, Web 2.0 collaborative initiatives, taxonomies, information architecture, and indexing and access for GAO publications. During her career, she has worked as a cataloger, acquisitions librarian, and reference librarian. At GAO she is responsible for ensuring that all GAO publications are easily accessible to the public through GAO's external website. Bonnie is an active member of ALA and SLA and earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Masters in Library Science at Syracuse University.
Vivian Siegal is Director of the Center for Science Communication and Research Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Disease Models & Mechanisms and Executive Editor of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. She began her editorial career in 1994 as a Senior Editor at Cell, where she rose through the ranks, eventually becoming Editor of Cell and Molecular Cell, as well as the founding Editor of Developmental Cell. She left Cell Press in 2003 to help launch Public Library of Science as its founding Executive Director and one of the launch editors of PLoS Biology. At Vanderbilt University and beyond, she runs workshops and courses on manuscript writing and publication strategy. Dr. Siegel holds a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and mathematics from Bowdoin College and a doctorate in genetics from UCSF.
Barbara Silcox, is the Program Manager for the Electronic Information and Publications Program (EIPP) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. She provides leadership and direction on a range of scholarly communication, digital services, knowledge management, and assessment projects. She is responsible for overseeing the administrative and knowledge management activities of the Washington Editorial Review Board (WERB), the internal body responsible for reviewing and approving all technical manuscripts prepared by NIST authors. As the Managing Editor of the Journal of Research of NIST, she oversees production and contributes to editorial and publishing policies and strategies. Under her joint leadership of the Information Services Office, the organization was awarded the Federal Library of the Year Award in 2003 and 2008. Ms. Silcox earned her undergraduate degree from Washington College (MD) and her Masters in Library Science from the University of Maryland.
Charles Watkinson is Director of Purdue University Press, a unit of Purdue University Libraries. He previously worked as Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies in Princeton, NJ. He has over 15 years experience in various scholarly publishing roles including management jobs in book distribution, marketing, and bookselling. By background an archaeologist, he also has extensive fieldwork experience in the Mediterranean region and has written and published on subjects related to the ancient world and on digital data. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Society for Scholarly Publishing and a member of the Library Relations Committee of the Association of American University Presses. He is currently working on an IMLS-funded research project on strategies for success in library-based publishing, in collaboration with colleagues from Georgia Tech and University of Utah, as well as Purdue.