Experience

• 

  David Ball Consulting

  • Bournemouth, United Kingdom

  • Owner and consultant

    • Oct 2012 - Present
    • Bournemouth, United Kingdom

    Having taken early retirement from Bournemouth University, I now work as an independent consultant, researcher and interim manager, specialising in aspects of higher education, particularly scholarly communication, e-books and e-journals, procurement, library and related systems, virtual learning environments.Contracts include: research on Open Access publishing for Public Library of Science (PLoS) and the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften; a comprehensive library service review for City University London; training courses for UKeiG; various work for Jisc Collections, SPARC Europe.

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  Bournemouth University

  • United Kingdom
  • Higher Education
  • 700 & Above Employee

  • Head of Academic Development Services

    • Jan 2009 - Oct 2012

    I managed three departments: Academic Partnerships, which administers relationships with partner institutions in the UK and abroad, Educational Development and Quality, which has responsibility for the University’s quality assurance processes and for the development of educational practice, and Library and Learner Support, which combines the University Libraries with responsibility for the virtual learning environment, the languages programmes and support for study skills.

  • University Librarian

    • Jan 1994 - 2009

    As University Librarian, I managed the Library, which has a well deserved reputation for quality, responsiveness and innovation. This was recognised when we won two prestigious national awards: the quinquennial SCONUL Library Design Award 2007 (http://www.sconul.ac.uk/news/libdes_award07) and the Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Award for the Outstanding Library Team 2009.Over the past 9 years I have led the transition to electronic resources, which now claim over 80% of materials expenditure. We provide over 60,000 e-journals and 60,000 e-books. Use of e-resources has trebled over 3 years, and now far outstrips use of hard-copy resources. Major efficiency gains in the past three years have resulted from outsourcing and from automating processes.I have led the successful creation of the University’s institutional repository (http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/), and the tender for, and implementation of, the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

• 

  Glasgow Herald and Evening Times

  • Information Manager

    • 1988 - 1994

    My main achievement was to design and implement a full-text database of the Company's titles, capturing, formatting and enhancing text in the editorial system for export into an Information Dimensions database. The database was networked to all journalists through the editorial system and to offices in Edinburgh, London and Brussels.Subscriptions to commercially available newspaper databases, and reciprocal agreements that I negotiated with other publishing houses, meant that at the start of the 1990s the provision of current information to journalists was almost completely electronic.I also negotiated the publication of the Glasgow Herald database on CD-ROM - the first Scottish title to be so published - and its sale to the major on-line hosts, and increased the volume and value of sales of picture-rights to publishers, advertisers, etc.

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  University of Strathclyde

  • Andersonian Library

  • Sub-Librarian

    • Apr 1979 - Feb 1988
    • Andersonian Library

    Wide range of professional and management activities, including running service departments, staff development, information work, cataloguing and classification, library systems.

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  Glasgow City Council

  • Mitchell Library

  • Assistant Librarian

    • Aug 1975 - Mar 1979
    • Mitchell Library

    Reference work and cataloguing; indexing manuscript collections.