Leeds Central Library launches new Business & IP Centre

The new service will provide free support and advice to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Following a successful pilot in Newcastle, Leeds is the second city to open its Business and IP Centre.  There are plans to open similar services in Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield over the next year.

Services on offer include access to resources and information on running a business, workshops and advice sessions.

More information:  The British Library

BIR Best Paper Prize - Congratulations to Chris Rivinus

We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Business Information Review Best Paper Prize is Chris Rivinus. 

His article ‘IT project prioritization: A practical application of knowledge management principles’ appeared in our December 2013 issue and was voted the best paper of 2013 by the Editors and members of the Editorial Advisory Board. 

Chris works for Tullow Oil, a London-based independent oil and gas exploration and production company which regularly wins awards for its innovative approach to problem solving. Tullow’s CIO recently challenged his team to develop an approach to devolve control of IT project prioritisation to non-IT leaders within the company.

Chris’s article explains the approach developed and how it is working to keep the business’s IT strategy aligned with Tullow’s entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to collaborative decision making. 

To celebrate the Prize SAGE is making the article freely available – simply follow this link.

An announcement about our Editorial Advisory Board

Veronica Kennard retires; several new members join

Following Veronica’s retirement as Director of Information at Rothschild, she has decided to retire from the Editorial Board.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank her for her involvement with BIR over many years and to wish her well for the future.  Veronica ran the information department at Rothschild from 1991 till the end of 2013 and was acknowledged as a leading information professional in the Finance sector.  Business information has been her focus since her postgraduate diploma in Information Science gained at City University.  Her breadth of experience at the London Business School and in the corporate sector with Bain and Company and Goldman Sachs gave her a unique perspective on the content direction and the range of topics that we cover and we truly appreciate her contribution.     

We are delighted to welcome the following people to our Editorial Advisory Board Team:

• Steve Dale (Collabor8now)
• Ceri Hughes (KPMG)
• Mary Peterson (South Australia Health Library Service
• Stephen Phillips (Morgan Stanley)
• Gillian Ragsdell (Loughborough University)

They join our existing Board members Martin Ainsworth, Anthony Capstick and Penny Leach and our colleague Allan Foster (who writes our regular Initiatives column as well as the annual Survey.

We look forward to working with all of them this year.