Speakers

Dr Connie Bitso

Dr Connie Bitso is the Director of the University of Fort Hare Libraries. Previously she held a senior lectureship at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She graduated with a PhD in Information Science from the University of Pretoria and holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from UCT. Connie has a wealth of research, teaching and learning experience in the library and information science discipline and is the past chair (2016-2018) of LIASA’S Research and Training Interest Group. She has also served as the Trustee of The Bookery in 2016-2020 and is currently Deputy Chair of South East Academic Library Systems’ (SEALS) Trustees. She has published book chapters and articles in reputable journals and is also a regular speaker at national and international conferences.

Wesley Barry

04 August 2021 | Topic: Intembeko, building trusted relationships with ORCID

Wesley Barry is the ORCID technical specialist at TENET. Wesley started his career building and supporting library systems at the University of Cape Town before moving into more general IT. At TENET he re-embraced his library roots, and enthusiastically supports South African ORCID Consortium members. When he’s not knee deep in persistent identifiers, he finds himself involved in other aspects of TENET’s trust & identity service suite.

Musa Baloyi-Sekese

04 August 2021 | Topic: Strategic partnerships and collaborations in the advent of COVID-19

Musa Baloyi-Sekese is a Content Development Manager at the National Library of South Africa. She holds an Honours Degree in Development Studies and was recently published in the journal Alexandria. Her research specialty and interests include political economy, decoloniality, gender and inequality. Throughout her career in the public sector, Musa has learnt the value of partnerships, integration, identification of strategic partnerships and how to harness existing relations with diverse stakeholders.

Samantha Bennett

03 August 2021 | Topic: Adapting librarians skills and workflows to survive in a ‘new normal’ world

Samantha Bennett holds a Bachelor in Information Science from Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg) an Honors in Knowledge Management from University of South Africa and a Master in Information Technology from University of Pretoria and is currently a PhD candidate. Prior to joining ProQuest as a Training & Consulting Partner Samantha was Library Technical Services Senior Specialist at Higher College of Technology in Abu Dhabi and prior to that she has worked at Legado Learning Consulting as a Library Management Facilitator and also holds prior experience as an electronic resources librarian at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Library Manager at the National Research Foundation working at the South African Astronomical Observatory library. Samantha has more than 18 years’ experience as a librarian particularly in eResources its workflows and processes.

Phumlani Biyela

04 August 2021 | Topic: The usage pattens of library’s E-resources in the year 2020 at the University of Zululands

E-resources Librarian
Joined the University in 2014 as Senior Library Assistance after working as Audio Visual Archivist at ENCA, and as an Assistant Librarian in other private education institution. In possession of ND: LIS (DUT), Post-Grad Diploma and Honors Bachelor in Information Science (UNISA) and in pursuit of Master’s Degree in Information Science (UNIZULU). I have a great interest in process of providing relevant information to the relevant client at the best possible solution. Hence my study aims to investigates the relationship between locally produced knowledge and the international solutions and models that are currently utilized in the academic library domain.

Tamir Borensztajn

05 August 2021 | Topic: From Silos to Intersection: Considering the Open Continuum

Tamir Borensztajn has served as EBSCO’s Vice President of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Open Strategy since 2014. In this role, Tamir helps inform and present EBSCO’s software strategy while working with libraries worldwide to understand their systems and software needs. Prior to joining EBSCO, Tamir served as Executive Director, Public Sector Innovation EMEA at Infor. He is a graduate of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds a master’s degree in Library Science from Simmons University in Boston.

Nora Buchanan

04 August 2021 | Topic: Using Web of Science to prepare for transformational agreements for South Africa

04 August 2021 | Topic: Data analysis as a key step in preparing South Africa for transformational agreements

Since 2014 Nora Buchanan has been working from home in Durban as the SANLiC Licensing Manager. A graduate of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Nora completed a PhD in Information studies in 2009. She has worked at Johannesburg Public Library, in the library at the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, and for 32 years in various positions in the library of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, retiring from the position of director of Library Services in 2014.

Colleen Campbell

04 August 2021 | Topic: What the ESAC Market Watch and Registry has to offer libraries

Colleen Campbell leads external engagement in the OA transition at the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), focusing on capacity-building activities to empower librarians and other stakeholders with strategic insights and essential skills as they work to enable an open, sustainable and equitable scholarly publishing environment. She coordinates the Open Access 2020 Initiative, an international effort that aims to transition today’s scholarly journals to open access publishing models, and the ESAC Initiative, a global community of practice of libraries and consortia promoting efficiencies and standards around the negotiation and implementation of transformative and open access publishing agreements.

Dr. Elisha Chiware

04 August 2021 | Topic: The use metrics to show the value of electronic resources and for decision making in South African academic libraries

Dr. Elisha Chiware:  is the Director of Cape Peninsula University of Technology Libraries in Cape Town, South Africa. Elisha has also served as the Secretary of IATUL (International Association of University Libraries Board).  Dr. Chiware has worked in libraries and library and information science schools in Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. He has published over 30 articles, two books and made several conference presentations. He has also worked as an international information management consultant – establishing trade information centres in the East, South and Central African region.

Jillian Clark

03 August 2021 | Topic: Two years, two disasters

Jillian Clark is the Subscriptions Librarian at the University of Cape Town Libraries. Her role at the UCT Libraries is to manage print and electronic resource subscriptions, along with all the usual tasks undertaken by an electronic resources librarian. She started in the Acquisitions department in May 2018 and progressed to the role of Subscriptions Librarian in January 2019. Her library career started out in the University of Natal and she has over 22 years of experience in various roles in the library sector. She holds a BSocSci Hons and a PGDIP RAM from University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Caroline Dean

03 August 2021 | Topic: Two years, two disasters

Caroline Dean is Principal Librarian in the Acquisitions Department at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Libraries, a position she has held since July 2013. Prior roles include Electronic Resources Librarian (June 2000 to September 2013) and manager of the Commerce Information Services Section (August 2007 to July 2011). Her library career started out in the UCT Health Sciences Library where she occupied various roles between December 1991 and mid-2000. She holds a BSc from Stellenbosch University and a MBibl from UCT.

Adam Der

04 August 2021 | Topic: What the ESAC Market Watch and Registry has to offer libraries

Adam Der is a member of the licence management team of the Max Planck Digital Library, where his main responsibilities are in publisher negotiations to advance the open access transition in scholarly publishing. In this role he is involved in a broad range of strategic activities, including data analyses and financial modelling. He is an expert advisor on data analytics and workflows in the ESAC Initiative, a global community of practice of libraries and consortia promoting efficiencies and standards around the negotiation and implementation of transformative and open access publishing agreements, and contributes to a variety of community and industry efforts such as the OA Switchboard. Prior to his role at MPDL, he served as Head of Development of the Hungarian EISZ Consortium.

Helen Dobson

04 August 2021 | Topic: Communicating with institutional stakeholders about transitional open access agreements

Helen is the Licensing portfolio specialist for research content at Jisc. She leads a team working to deliver agreements that meet the requirements of UK universities, achieve savings and support research funder open access policy objectives. Helen’s background is in academic libraries and in previous roles she oversaw services providing Open Access and Research Data Management support and publishing advice.

Lorraine Estelle

04 August 2021 | Topic: COUNTER 5 – how to make it work for libraries and consortia

05 August 2021 | Topic: SPA-OPS follow-up Project

Lorraine Estelle is the COUNTER Project Director. Launched in March 2002, COUNTER is an international initiative serving librarians, publishers and intermediaries by setting standards that facilitate the recording and reporting of online usage statistics in a consistent, credible and compatible way. She is also a Director of Information Power Limited, a consultancy providing services to funders, publishers and libraries.

Lorraine is experienced in the information industry with a background in libraries, consortia, shared services, vendors and publishers. She has managed and conducted a wide range of projects, with a particular interest in new business models for electronic information resources and directed the development of several national shared services including Jisc Collections and the Journals Usage Statistics Portal.

Adriana Filip

Adriana Filip is a Solutions Consultant for Clarivate. Her main role is to provide support for research analytical and discovery tools such as Web of Science, InCites or Journal Citation Reports, also share an understanding, and promote bibliometrics. She works with researchers, academics and librarians at all levels and cooperates with governmental and corporate institutions offering consultancy services.

Ellen Finnie

04 August 2021 | Topic: The value and process of establishing and nurturing partnerships between librarians and researchers to advance open access – a fishbowl conversation

In her role as Director of Shared Collections at California Digital Library, Ellen oversees systemwide licensing, open access publisher agreements, and shared print initiatives and is responsible for both the systemwide negotiation, licensing, and management of shared digital materials for the UC Libraries, and for the university’s efforts to transition its systemwide online journal licenses to open access. Prior to taking on this role in July, Ellen was the Open Access Publisher Agreements manager at CDL. Before joining CDL in 2020, Ellen held several roles in the MIT Libraries related to advancing open access in the scholarly communications system, including implementing open access policies and transformative agreements, and engaging broadly with the MIT community of faculty, researchers, and students, about open access.

Prof Maria Frahm-Arp

04 August 2021 | Topic: The value and process of establishing and nurturing partnerships between librarians and researchers to advance open access – a fishbowl conversation

Prof Maria Frahm-Arp obtained her PhD in the Sociology of Religion from Warwick University (UK) at the end of 2006.  She in an NRF rated scholar and the author of over twenty book chapters and journal articles on Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in South Africa.  In 2010 she published ‘Professional Women in Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in South Africa’ and in 2015 the book ‘Into the Deep: Finding God in the Midst of Suffering’.  She is the winner of the UJ Humanities Teaching and Learning Award (2014) and the Vice Chancellors Distinguished Teaching and Learning Award (2016).  In 2017 she worked as the Vice Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and in 2018 she became the Executive Director of the Library and Information Centre at UJ. 

Dr Arianna Becerril García

05 August 2021 | Topic: The role of libraries to achieve structural Openness and epistemic justice

Full-time professor-researcher at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM). Member of the National System of Researchers (SNI) of Mexico. She holds a PhD and MSc in Computer Science, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. And she holds a BA in Computer Engineering, UAEM. She’s part of the founding team of the Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America and the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (Redalyc.org) where she is the current Executive Director. Dr Becerril is founder and president of AmeliCA Conocimiento Abierto S.C. She’s co-founder of the Mexican Network of Institutional Repositories. She’s member of the steering committee of InvestInOpenInfrastructure, and board member in SCOSS, she is also part of the council of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Pernille Hammelsø

05 August 2021 | Topic: Denmark’s first transformative agreement secured with Elsevier 2021-2024

I am currently special adviser at the Royal Danish Library, National License Consortium, where I negotiate national deals for all universities and number of other higher education institutions in Denmark. Prior to joining the National License Consortium I have had senior positions with a number of STM publishers, e.g. the Institute of Physics Publishing in Bristol (UK) as well as John Wiley & Sons (Japan and Denmark).

Laura Hanscom

05 August 2021 | Topic: Using the MIT Framework in Library/Publisher Negotiations: Our Experience so far

Laura Hanscom was named the department head for Scholarly Communications and Collections Strategy in the MIT Libraries in April 2021, and is the leader of their Negotiations Team. Prior to that, she was their Scholarly Communications and Licensing Librarian from 2016. She started her library career in interlibrary loan at the London School of Economics and was Digital Repository Administrator at City University London Library. Prior to coming to MIT, she served as Scholarly Communications Librarian at Salisbury University in Maryland, USA.

Prof Ruth Hoskins

03 August 2021 | Topic: The influence of COVID19 in meeting academic library users’ online information needs: the case of a South African university library

Prof Ruth Hoskins is the Dean of Teaching and Learning in the College of Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is a Professor of Information Studies and has supervised many masters and doctoral studies. Her research areas of interest include the academic library, open access and institutional repositories.

Professor Tawana Kupe

03 August 2021 | Topic: Keynote speaker “Sustainability in the higher education sector”

Professor Tawana Kupe is the Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Pretoria. He holds a BA Honours and Masters degree in English from the University of Zimbabwe, and a DPhil in Media Studies from University of Oslo, Norway. Prof Kupe is the Africa Co-Chair of the Australia Africa Universities Network (AAUN) since 2019 and an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities was bestowed on him by Michigan State University in December 2019.

Prof Kupe has a notable publication record, having authored journal articles, books and book chapters in his main discipline, Media Studies and Journalism. He is the Managing Editor of the African Journal for Communication and Information. He has played a key role in the establishment of select new innovative initiatives at Wits, of which the latest in 2018 the Africa Centre for the Study of the United States. He is an active member of several Civil Society Organisations, including the AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism and is Chairman of the Board of Media Monitoring Africa since 2005. He has been a judge and convenor of multiple major journalism awards in South Africa and is a member of the Council of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

He has recently been appointed as a Council Member and Trustee of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Council in the United Kingdom, as well as a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) in South Africa. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the South African Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Policy Support Initiative, a tripartite partnership between the Government of South Africa, led by the Presidency, the German Government (assisted by Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) and the South African SDG Hub hosted at the University of Pretoria.

Professor Kupe is a popular invited speaker, academic expert and regular commentator on issues of media performance on radio, television and the print media in South Africa for local and international media.

Kirstin Krauss

05 August 2021 | Topic: Citation Pollution

Since 2000, Kirstin Krauss has worked at five different South African universities. He has over 40 publications, focused mostly on research in the areas of ICT for Development, Critical Ethnography, and Higher Education. Kirstin holds a PhD in Informatics from the University Pretoria. He has done editorial work for a number of journals and conferences, including Information Technology for Development, the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, the South African Computer Journal, the European Conference on Information Systems, and the International Development Informatics Association Conference (IDIA2018). In his most recent roles as Associate Professor at Rhodes University (2012 – 2016) and Professor in the School of Computing at the University of South Africa (UNISA) (2017+) he focused predominantly on postgraduate student development and supervision capacity building.

Kirstin has been invited and acknowledged by a number of associations and universities to do guest lectures on a variety of Information Systems trends, teaching, and methodology related topics, including the University of Cape Town, Ghana Technology University College, Uganda Martyrs University, and the Southern African Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AISSAC). One of his Doctoral Graduates, Dr Nompilo Tshuma, was selected as a Highly Commended winner of the 2020 Emerald/HETL Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. Kirstin held a South African National Research Foundation Y2-Rating, in the Information Systems sub-areas of Critical Social Theory and ICT for Development (2014 – 2020). He is a member of the Association of Information Systems (AIS), he is Advisory Board Member (Research) for Fidelior – a scholarly services organisation focussed on promoting quality scholarly communications, he is a member of the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research (SIETAR) Europa – Special Interest Group on Africa, and he served as Education Chair for the AIS Special Interest Group on Global Development (2015-17).

Zanele Mathe

05 August 2021 | Session 5: Chair

Dr Gcina Mhlophe

05 August 2021 | Topic: Inspirational Storytelling

Gcina Mhlophe, born in 1959 in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu-Natal, has been writing and performing on stage and screen for over 20 years. She has written many children’s books as well as adult audience poetry, short stories and plays. She produced and performed on a CD for children with Ladysmith Black Mambazo. She has written music for the SABC TV series Gcina & Friends where she performed her own stories for television audiences.

Mathew Moyo

05 August 2021 | Topic: Reflections on relevance, over to you – a Library Directors’ Panel discussion

Mathew Moyo is currently Chief Director: Library and Information Service at the North-West University, South Africa. His experience in the LIS field spans more than 25 years. Dr Moyo has also lectured in the Information Science field for more than 5 years. He holds a Doctoral Degree in Library and Information Science. He has read papers at national and international conferences, as well as serving as a reviewer for various journals and examiner for a number of universities. Mathew’s research interests are in the areas of information literacy, Open Science, user behavior, and governance/management, among others. He is also passionate about mentorship and capacity building.

Paiki Muswazi

04 August 2021 | Session 3: Chair

Dr Shirlene Neerputh

05 August 2021 | Topic: Reflections on relevance, over to you – a Library Directors’ Panel discussion

Dr Shirlene Neerputh is the Director of Library Services at the University of the Western Cape. Her professional experience in higher education libraries spans 30 years. An active member of several professional bodies, she currently chairs the Committee of Higher Education Libraries South Africa, has participated in the European Erasmus Mundus Staff Mobility Scholarship, and completed the Nuffic Doctoral Supervision and University Leadership programmes. Shirlene’s vision is to lead and enrich the university library through embedded librarianship principles that are responsive to the disruption and transformation of our time.

Miss Constance Ndumela

04 August 2021 | Topic: The value and process of establishing and nurturing partnerships between librarians and researchers to advance open access – a fishbowl conversation

Faculty Librarian Humanities UJ
My position is to support Research & Teaching and Learning at the University. I joined UJ Libraries as a Learning Commons Librarian in 2013. By 2015 I joined the Faculty of Engineering & Built as an Information Librarian. I have experience in Digital marketing for the Library. I am involved in Library Community Engagement. I led an Online Learning Task Team in 2019 and I am now a Coach of other Task Team leaders.

Patrick Peiffer

05 August 2021 | Topic: ReadMetrics: deep dive into article-level usage statistics with the National Library of Luxembourg

Patrick Peiffer works at the National Library of Luxembourg since 2004. He is responsible for the national digital consortium. It provides licence lifecycle and and access services for national, academic and public libraries, research centers, schools and governmental organisations. More at www.consortium.lu/about.

Patrick also works on rights clearance, licensing and copyright.

– Current focus: Transforming consortial services, infrastructure and analytics to support Open Access, especially readmetrics.org

Thomas Porquet

05 August 2021 | Topic: ReadMetrics, a comprehensive Free and Open Source usage statistics toolkit

Thomas Porquet works as a project manager for the Services & Prospective department of the Couperin.org french consortium since 2011.

He is involved in usage statistics gathering and processing through various software projects:
Mesure (now discontinued) based on the JUSP portal, where COUNTER reports from publishers were harvested and put online for Couperin’s member institutions and the CC-Plus ICOLC pilot,
ezPAARSE to let institutions generate usage statistics based on their logs
ezMESURE where ezPAARSE data is gathered and Couperin members are provided with an advanced dashboard tool built upon Elastic and Kibana
ReadMetrics which aims to disseminate the ezPAARSE + ezMESURE layers as an integrated software suite to the community

Lindsay Reid

05 August 2021 | Session 6: Chair

Tyler Shores

03 August 2021 | Topic: Distraction or engagement? Social Media, Libraries, and Digital Reading Behavior

Tyler Shores is the Manager of the ThinkLab Program, within the Strategic Partnership Office at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses upon reading in print, reading on screens, and digital distraction and attention spans. Tyler’s current projects are focused on digital wellbeing, social media, and the role of digital technology in our everyday lives.

Prior to Cambridge, Tyler worked at Google in Mountain View, CA as part of Authors@Google, one of the world’s largest online lecture series. In addition he has worked as a director of digital textbooks in the field of nonprofit education, and most recently worked as a manager in online education at Stanford University.

Brenda Stoltz

03 August 2021 | Topic: What e-resource librarians wish client services librarians knew

Brenda Stoltz obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree and Higher Diploma in Education from Rhodes University in 1992. She started her career in libraries at the Cape Provincial Library Services and thereafter, moved to Rhodes University Library in 1995. While working at Rhodes, she obtained a Bachelor of Information Science Degree Cum Laude(UNISA) and Honours Summa Cum Laude (UKZN). Brenda has worked in various positions at the Rhodes University Library, including Circulation and Periodicals and for the last 10 years, she has been working as the ERM Librarian.

Lindiwe Soyizwapi

03 August 2021 | Topic: Renewed mission for engagement to enhance discovery of information resources: a case of UP library

Currently serves as Director of the Department of Library Services at the University of Pretoria, a position she has held since January 2020. Lindiwe is passionate about libraries and opportunities presented which allows libraries to re-imagine their role in Higher Education. She previously worked at University of KwaZulu-Natal library and has over 20 year of contributing to the academic project.

Glenn Truran

04 August 2021 | Topic: Using Web of Science to prepare for transformational agreements for South Africa

04 August 2021 | Topic: Data analysis as a key step in preparing South Africa for transformational agreements

Glenn Truran has been the director of SANLiC since 2014 and works from home in Cape Town. After graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand with a BA and HDipEd (PG), he worked briefly as an educator in South Africa and England. Subsequently he completed a diploma in public policy and development administration at the University of the Witwatersrand and in 2003 received his MBA from the University of Cape Town. Before joining SANLiC Glenn worked in several educational and poverty alleviation non-profit organizations in Gauteng and Cape Town.

Ms Laila Vahed

03 August 2021 | Topic: Opening / Welcome

03 August 2021 | Session 1: Chair

Ms Laila Vahed is the Director of Library and Information Services at the University of Zululand, a position she has held since 2003. She holds a Master’s Degree in Information Studies from the University of Natal. Laila has held portfolios in various national library structures over the years, including the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA) and the National Council for Library and Information Services. She also co-chaired the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions World Library and Information Congress National Committee for the 2007 congress. In 2016 Laila was named LIASA Librarian of the Year for her services to librarianship in South Africa.

Abdullah Verachia

03 August 2021 | Topic: The Post Pandemic Boom

Abdullah Verachia is a sought-after global speaker, advisor, practice strategist and innovator. He is adept at fusing practice, education, insight, empathy and experience together to add significant value at all levels. Abdullah has served in senior executive and board roles, crafted competitive strategies for leading companies and governments around the world, lectured at some of the top-ranked business schools globally and also built and run a number of successful companies.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

• Selected for the Brightest Young Minds in South Africa
• Awarded Harvard Business School Dean’s Scholarship for leadership and innovation
• Recipient of the 2019, 2020 and 2021 GIBS Excellence in Teaching Award for executive education and academic programmes, as voted by staff and students
• Presented with the 15-year Excellence Award for contributions made towards and development of the Model United Nations
• Made an honorary member of the Golden Key International Honour Society

Sponsored by

Wynand van der Walt

03 August 2021 | Topic: What e-resource librarians wish client services librarians knew

Wynand van der Walt is Head Librarian: Technical Services at Rhodes University Library. He holds a Masters in IT from the University of Pretoria, and is currently enrolled for a PhD at KU Leuven. His areas of interest are: leadership for innovation; digitisation and digital curation, scholarly communication, and the semantic web and how it affects library-related technologies.

Madelein Van Heerden

04 August 2021 | Session 4: Chair

Lucille Webster

03 August 2021 | Session 2: Chair