Leona Carpenter's personal home page

Interests

As a Technical Research & Development Officer, I work with colleagues in UKOLN's Research and Development Team on distributed library systems, metadata and web-based environments. Most of my time is devoted to the Renardus project and the Open Archives Forum (OA-Forum), but I am also looking more broadly at MODELS and at human-computer interaction in the context of the subject approach to online resource discovery. Membership of professional bodies: ACM SIGCHI (Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group for Computer-Human Interaction); IEEE Computing group; Classification Research Group.

My interests outside the profession are wide-ranging, including: poetry and other imaginative literature; performing arts; 17th Century culture and history; philosophy; natural history, country and urban walking. As Leona Esther Medlin, I write and publish (primarily) poems; and am a founder member of The Poetry Workshop. which obtained A4E Lottery-funding for the prototype hypertextPoetryWorkshop project. I am a member of the London Natural History Society.

Qualifications and training

Qualifications (academic and professional):
NCC Certificate Systems Analysis and Design, BA(Hons) Librarianship and Information Studies

I studied Humanities in the USA in the 1970s, Librarianship and Information Studies at the Polytechnic of North London in the 1980s, and User-Interface Design at London Guildhall Universit in the 1990s. Professional or other training includes short courses at the Civil Service College: Structured Systems Analysis and Design (February­March 1991); Management Development (April 1994); SSADM for Rapid Systems Development (October 1994); Negotiation Skills (April 1998); Business Case Analysis (June 1998); Hoskyns (now Cap Gemini): Training Skills and Practice (1992); Comtec: Object Oriented Analysis and Design (1996); British Library internal training courses: cataloguing, presentation skills, GUI development, and various aspects of management, including participation in the middle-management development programme; ACM SIGCHI pre-conference tutorials: various subjects related to computer-human interaction and aspects of web-site design (2 days per year, 1993-1998)

Previous employment

Immediately prior to joining UKOLN, I worked as a part-time Technical Officer on the eLib Pase 3 M25 Link Project (based at the library of The London School of Economics and Political Science). During this period, I was also contracted by the British Library as a consultant on end-user access and metadata requirements for digital collections. This work was based on business analysis using UML (Unified Modelling Language) to produce business requirements for procurement of a digital storage system with associated discovery and retrieval application, and involved Process Hierarchy, Process Thread, and Use Case Modelling.

From 1988­1999, I worked for the British Library, most recently as IT Project Manager on the Digital Library Programme. In that post I acted as an internal consultant on the development of the service requirement, business case, and negotiating brief of the Digital Library Programme PFI; participating in evaluation of bidders' proposals; undertaking BL-wide communication and requirements analysis; and liaising with the BL Information Systems directorate.

I began at the BL as a Cataloguer, doing both subject and descriptive cataloguing. Then as a Systems Analyst, I gained experience of systems analysis, documentation, testing and user training; with specialisations in OPAC development and implementation and multimedia investigation.. As a Senior Systems Analyst, I practiced systems analysis and project management, with specialities in requirements analysis and digital library applications. I also participated in internal and external liaison, wrote and presented papers in the UK and abroad, some of which were published (see publications list above); managed and developed staff. As Special Projects and Business Analyst, Office of the Director of Information Systems (IS), I carried out investigations, wrote reports, and drafted policy and strategy; liaised with IS senior management, represented the Director of IS at Extension of Legal Deposit meetings with representatives from BL and other current or potential deposit-receiving institutions; facilitated cross-Library senior management meetings.

Prior to professional qualification, I worked on placement while taking my degree in library and information studies, and then in part-time and/or temporary posts in the libraries of the John Lewis Partnership and the Industrial Society. As a student in the US, I worked part time at the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped at the Library of the State of Michigan. From 1977 to 1985, I worked as a bookbinder and paper restorer in London, first for The Book Ends Bindery, and then WT Morrell; and then as sole proprietor of my own fine bookbinding business.