A distinguished librarian, Mr. Trzeciak has spent his entire career in urban library settings. Prior to his position as Director of the Newark Public Library in Newark, he served as University Librarian at Washington University in St. Louis.

Over the course of his 30-year career, marked by innovation and collaboration, Jeffrey has been a champion of civil rights and social justice, particularly in the African American, Hispanic and LGBTQ communities. While at Washington University, he initiated the award-winning ‘Documenting Ferguson’ initiative, which began after the killing of Michael Brown and documented the protests that followed. It sought to preserve and provide access to “born digital” media captured and created by community members. Mr. Trzeciak has also created enduring partnerships; cultivated diverse, high performing staffs; acquired significant library collections; and raised millions of dollars for the libraries he has served.

Since 1888, the Newark Public Library has been an anchor institution in Newark. It is New Jersey’s most comprehensive public library, serving some 10,000 patrons per week and providing equal access for all to vast educational, cultural, literary, historical and digital resources. Through its Main Library and seven branches, the Newark Public Library provides residents of Newark with reference help for job searches and accessing social services, ESL and computer classes, and family literacy programs. It also contains the Hispanic Research Information Center, James Brown African American Room and the Charles F. Cummings New Jersey Information Center.

Dianne Cmor has enjoyed an international career in academic libraries over the past 20 years, working in Canada, Qatar, Hong Kong, Singapore, and has recently returned to Canada once again. She thinks she is still tough enough to weather a Montreal winter, but time will tell …

Dianne is currently Associate University Librarian, Teaching and Learning, at Concordia University in Montreal. In this position, she is responsible for ensuring the high quality and high impact participation of the Library across the teaching and learning endeavours of the University. She oversees various public services as well as cross-unit committees and working groups devoted to teaching and learning, user experience, etc. Prior to this position, she was Deputy University Librarian at Nanyang Technological University (2012-2017), Head of Information Services at Hong Kong Baptist University Library (2007-2012), Information Services Librarian at Weill-Cornell Medical College in Qatar (2003-2007), and Information Services Librarian at Memorial University of Newfoundland (1998-2003) and at Trent University (1996-1998). She has an MLIS from McGill University (1995) and an MA (English Literature) from York University (1996).

Dianne’s interests and expertise lie in information and digital literacy, teaching and learning support, research support, user behavior and user experience, staff development, and library management and leadership. She has experience in a wide range of library projects including building curriculum-integrated information literacy programmes, adopting technologies to improve access and user experience (linking tools, discovery tools, bookmarklets, apps, etc.), implementing open access publications and data repositories, offering OER and copyright clearance services, offering metrics services, developing learning and research commons, and coordinating a regular professional development series. She has published and presented on many of these topics as well as on library space, assessment, liaison services, digital reading, and others. Current projects/interests include assessing and building digital literacy for staff across the university, and developing an online tool to aid in effective reading and researching across disciplines. Still having fun …

Peter Sidorko (http://hub.hku.hk/cris/rp/rp01299) has enjoyed a career in academic libraries spanning thirty years and is currently the University Librarian at The University of Hong Kong (HKU).  In this position he has full responsibility for leading and directing all aspects of the HKU Libraries network of 6 libraries.  Peter is a past Chair of JULAC (the Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee http://www.julac.org/), a forum to discuss, coordinate, and collaborate on library information resources and services among the libraries of the eight tertiary education institutions funded by the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong.  He is also the Chair of the Board of Directors of the JULAC Joint Universities Research Archive, the company established to govern JURA, a collaborative print storage repository.

Peter is also a past President-elect of the Hong Kong Library Association, serving from 2011-2012.  He holds several honorary international positions: he is a member of the Board of Directors of CLOCKSS; a past Chair of the Asia Pacific Regional Council Executive Committee of OCLC (2013-2014); a member of the OCLC Global Council (2011-2015); Vice-President/President Elect of the OCLC Global Council (2015-2018); a former Board member of the NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations); a member of the Elsevier Asia-Pacific Library Advisory Board (ALAB) (2014-), the Proquest Asian Regional Advisory Board, (February 2016-), the Wiley Publishing Asia Pacific Library Advisory Board, (May 2016-) and a member pf the Steering Committee of the Pacific Rim Research (formerly Digital) Library Alliance (PRRLA, formerly PRDLA).  His research interests include library management and leadership, user behaviours, information literacy and learning spaces and he has published in these areas.  His most recent publication is the co-authored “Leadership Development of Asian Librarians: The Longitudinal Impact of HKU Annual Library Leadership Institute”.  He has also presented at almost 100 conferences and seminars, several of which have been published as proceedings. Peter's interest in effective management and leadership in libraries led to the establishment of the University of Hong Kong's Annual Library Leadership Institute in 2003, aimed at developing leadership qualities in Asian librarians, and now in its 15th year of operation. Peter was also a Faculty member of the Educause Australasian Leadership Institute between 2001 and 2003.

Louise has spent over thirty years working in libraries, starting as a library assistant at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Her career has spanned special libraries, local government libraries, medical librarianship and library technical services. In January 2013 she became adventurous and moved from the UK to Hong Kong as University Librarian at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library, a leading research library in East Asia. She had previously been Director of Library Services at the University of Leicester in the UK from 2007. At Leicester under her leadership the Library was named Outstanding Library Team of the Year 2012 in the prestigious Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards, and in 2010 the Library gained the UK government’s Customer Service Excellence Award. Louise has a keen interest in library management and in the UK was Chair of the SCONUL Strategy Group on Library Performance and Improvement from 2009 to 2012.

Louise also has extensive experience of library space planning and design, having opened the multi-award winning David Wilson Library at Leicester in 2008. The Library won the premier academic Library design award in the UK from SCONUL in 2010. One of her recent publications is the book chapter “Library Space and Print” in University Libraries and Space in the Digital World, Matthews $amp; Walton (eds), 2013, London, Ashgate. At the Chinese University of Hong Kong she currently renovating two libraries, has built a Digital Scholarship Lab and a Special Collections Reading Room, and with her commitment to sustainability has created an organic vegetable rooftop garden for library staff. Sustainability was the theme of the Academic Librarian 4 Conference she co-chaired in Hong Kong in 2016, and CUHK Library has been striving to become a green library.

In Hong Kong Louise is a member of JULAC (Joint University Librarians Advisory Committee) which works for deep collaboration between eight university libraries. From 2013 to 2106 she chaired JULAC’s purchasing consortium Consortiall, and led an ebook shared DDA purchasing pilot project. She is now co-chairing the implementation of a new shared ILS for JULAC.

Louise has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Manchester University, a master’s degree in Information Studies, and a Master’s in Public Administration from Warwick University.

Jody Beenk, Preservation $amp; Conservation Librarian for HKUL, is responsible for developing and implementing a system-wide Preservation and Conservation program for nearly 3 million printed volumes and the libraries’ growing special and digital collections. In addition to managing an in-house conservation lab and bindery, she also partners with colleagues throughout the library system to preserve and provide access to library materials in all formats.

Before coming to Hong Kong in 2010, Jody was a rare book conservator at Princeton University. For eight years prior to that, she worked in both general and special collections conservation at Harvard University. Jody holds an MA from the University of Iowa, and a Certificate in Preservation Management from Rutgers University School of Communication $amp; Information. She has recently served on committees for the American Institute for Conservation and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Guild of Book Workers.