Reader in Library & Information Science. Head of Library & Information Science, CityLIS, at City, University of London. Established and direct City’s Library School; co-director of the Centre for Information Science research group, alongside David Bawden.

Interested in the documentation and record of humankind. Specifically, the impact of technology, economics, and socio-cultural behaviour on the processes of information communication, and the interactions between these processes. My aim is to contribute to a fair and prosperous open society by promoting understanding of how we create, use, and benefit from knowledge.

I have published on: the nature of information; documents and the processes of documentation; information behaviour; information literacy; LIS as an academic and vocational discipline. Current focus is on the the nature of new media documents and their impact on library and information services.

My broader, scholarly and teaching interests encompass science, technology, history, philosophy and information ethics, as they relate to LIS.

I have a formal, academic background in science, computing, and information science. I studied for my PhD at UCL SLAIS (now Dept. Information Studies), looking at scholarly communication within the discipline of toxicology. I have professional experience in research, research methods, research supervision, project management, learning and teaching, curriculum design and academic leadership.

Before joining City, University of London in 2004, I travelled extensively within Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, whilst working for the Open Society Institute. My role was to promote open culture by working on projects relating to publishing and information literacy.

I worked for many years with ASLIB, the Association for Information Management, developing and presenting CPD courses on information technologies, including: the internet, finding and evaluating information resources, online searching, internet search tools and social media.

In even earlier times, I worked at University College London as a laboratory assistant, and as a programmer, and at the British Postgraduate Medical Federation as information manager. Before that, I was employed by Derwent Publications as an editor.

I am co-author of Facet’s best selling text “Introduction to Information Science“, the author of “Understanding Healthcare Information“, a member of the Stationers’ Company, a Freeman of the City of London, and a member of CILIP.