Leona Carpenter — Consultant and Writer

Book free to download

(Printed copies are also available, on request from JISC Collections; see also a review in Information World Review.)

Digital Images in Education: Realising the Vision
Edited by Leona Carpenter and Caren Milloy with Lorraine Estelle and Jane Williams. Published by JISC Collections, October 2007

In 2005, the JISC Images Working Group set about formalising its vision for the provision of digital images in UK higher and further education. In doing so, it consulted widely among those with an interest in creating, using and managing images for teaching, learning and in academic research, for the vision was to be strongly grounded in community needs and concerns. This book provides a comprehensive view of the digital image landscape by setting out:

• the vision, its background and progress towards its realisation
• digital image creation, use and management in and beyond UK education
• a summary of the findings from a series of reports commissioned by JISC to examine different aspects of the provision of images for use in education.

I was interested to see that SLAIS (School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, The University of British Columbia) has chosen this book as recommended reading for its Digital Images and Collections course. (See the syllabus.)

My background

My training and experience in librarianship, systems analysis and design, user interface design, user requirements analysis, project management, and programme management were gained at a variety of institutions, including the Polytechnic of North London, the Civil Service College, London Guildhall University, the British Library (1988-98), UKOLN (1999-2003), and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC, 2004-2006).

My article "Supporting Digital Preservation and Asset Management in Institutions", in Ariadne, is about one of the JISC Development programmes for which I had responsibility.
(For a summary of my professional publications, presentations and experience up to the time I left UKOLN in 2003, see my home page on the UKOLN site. Eventually I'll add an up-to-date CV to this site.)

For examples of the creative writing and editorial work I do as Leona Medlin, see:
—the Mulfran Press web site
—the Vennel Press pages on Richard Price's website, Hydro Hotel
—the Poetry Workshop web place and the workshop's hypertext Poetry Workshopproject
—Wikipedia entry for Yunna Morits.

Why Cardiff?

I have no FAQ, but this is the question I am most frequently asked!

Literary and other matters

DIVERS: the Poetry Workshop anthology

Divers was published under the Aark Arts imprint in celebration of 25 years of life of the Poetry Workshop — an activity/group I helped Duncan McGibbon get started in June, 1983. It includes poems by the current workshop participants C L Dallat, Jane Draycott, Hugh Epstein, Chris Hedley-Dent, Elizabeth James, Duncan McGibbon, Leona Medlin (that's me), Kim Morrissey, Richard Price, Lesley Saunders, Sudeep Sen and Richard Wright. Poems by David Windsor who died in 1988 are also included.

Divers was launched at Pentameters on 29 June 2008 with a reading party. There's a brief description of the book on the Poetry Workshop web place about the reading and anthology publication. Get in touch if you'd like to review or buy a copy.

What I'm reading now

—theRaconteur No.2 Summer 2009 issue out in July, with essay articles on the theme of nostalgia, some short fiction, three poems by Paul Henry... and many other "goodies" including a photo essay on prefabricated bungalows (prefabs). Photo essays are a regular feature of this new journal covering literature, culture and society.

—Rilke's The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge, in the OUP 1984 paperback edition of the 1930 translation by John Linton, with an introduction by Stephen Spender. There is a new edition from the Dalkey Archive out this year, translation and introduction by Burton Pike, that has been very highly praised for trueness to the original. I loaned it to a friend as soon as I bought it, so I'm not actually reading it yet. There is an excerpt on Amazon.com.