Rachel Kirkwood

Collection Development Manager at the University of Manchester Library in the UK, where she leads a department also responsible for stock management, shelving and off-site storage. She first became interested in collection development nearly 20 years ago, when as Deputy Librarian at the Goethe-Institut London she wrote their policy for English-language material. More recently she has been exploring the possibilities of data-informed collection development without subject specialists, in the context of a large, research-intensive academic library, and has published on this in the journal Library Management. She is passionate about data (and metaphors)!

Earlier in her career she worked at the British Library and at the School of Slavonic & East European Studies in London. Rachel holds a BA (Hons) in English and German, from the University of Leeds, an MSc in Information Science from City University, London, and is currently researching a PhD at Manchester on the topic of conceptual metaphors in the theology of 17th Century Quakers.

You can find her on LinkedIn, academia.edu and researchgate. She tweets as ‘stuff-stock-studies’ @racheljkirkwood