Lorcan Dempsey is OCLC Chief Strategist and Vice President of Research. Before moving to OCLC he worked for JISC in the UK, overseeing national information programs and services. He is a librarian who has worked for library and educational organizations in Ireland, England and the US. He has consulted for the EU and national policy and service organizations in several countries. He has policy, research and service development experience, mostly in the area of networked information and digital libraries. Lorcan writes and speaks extensively, and can be followed on the Web at Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

A preeminent writer and speaker in the library and information science communities, Lorcan speaks on a wide variety of topics related to the reconfiguration of library services in a network environment, including Web 2.0 and libraries, systemwide library organization, Web scale library services and other stuff that is on his mind. His recent presentations have included subjects such as, “Making Data Work Harder,” “The Virtual Cultural Heritage,” “The Network Rewrites the Catalog” and “In the Flow: From Discovery to Disclosure,” among many others.