Lorcan Dempsey
Lorcan Dempsey is a vice president and is Chief Strategist of OCLC. He is a native of Dublin, Ireland, where he worked for some years in public libraries. He writes and talks about libraries and networked information. He is interested in the impact of changing patterns of research and learning on libraries, in libraries as public institutions, and in the architecture of digital information environments. Career. Dempsey was appointed director of UKOLN, a research and policy unit at the University of Bath, in 1994. In May 2000, Dempsey moved to work for the Jisc; part of his assignment  involved being Programme Director of the DNER. In 2001 he joined the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) as Vice-President of Research. He was named OCLC Chief Strategist in March 2004. In January 2022, OCLC announced that Dempsey would retire from his position in April 2022. Influence. Dempsey maintains a blog aimed at the wider library and digital information sectors, and tweets on similar issues. A 2007 blog post was responsible for the coining of the term "amplified conference". He has introduced many other concepts and terminology into the library community, including the "network level"; "collective collection"; "disclosure"; "sourcing and  scaling"; "library logistics"; "making data work harder"; "Amazoogle"; "in the flow"; "discovery happens elsewhere"; "inside out and outside in (of collections)" and "web scale". He introduced the term "memory institution" into popular use. Dempsey has written and presented extensively on library issues. His published works cover topics such as the Warwick Framework, libraries in the contemporary world, the evolution of the digital library, and the library catalogue. Views on Wikipedia. In 2006 he noted the importance of Wikipedia as an "addressable knowledge base": Wikipedia makes it easy to include in any online communications a pointer to more knowledge on any  topic using a convenient stable URL. "The economy and convenience of doing this is enormous", he said. In 2012 he noted: "Wikipedia is already an 'addressable knowledge base', which creates huge value. DBpedia aims to add structure to this. Perhaps more importantly, Wikidata is an initiative to create a machine- and human-readable knowledge base of all the entities in Wikipedia and allow them to be augmented with further data and links." Awards. Dempsey is the co-recipient of the 2004 ALCTS presidential citation and the 2010 NFAIS Miles Conrad award. In June 2014, Dempsey was awarded the Honorary Degree  of Doctor of the University (DUniv) by The Open University of the UK.