I work for 9 days out of 10 as an Academic Liaison Librarian at the University of York and 1 day in 10 as a trainer in library marketing, and presentation skills, for various organisations including the Bodleian Libraries, the british library, and the NHS.
The thing I'm really interested in is communication, both online and face to face. All my work revolves around that in some way. There are short and long bios below. Feel free to get in touch via email.
The main places to find me online are Bluesky and LinkedIn; I'm also sporadically on YouTube, and sometimes on Slideshare. I’m on Instagram but as a drummer not a librarian, and here’s why I’m no longer checking or posting on Twitter.
Short Bio
Ned Potter is Faculty Engagement Manager: Community & UX at the University of York, and a Trainer for various organisations including the Bodleian Libraries and the British Library. He has run library workshops across four continents, and his presentations have been viewed over 2.5 million times online. His book The Library Marketing Toolkit was published by Facet in 2012. Ned can be found online at ned-potter.com and on Bluesky at @nedpotter.bsky.social
Long Bio
Ned Potter is a Faculty Engagement Manager for the Library at the University of York, looking after the Arts & Humanities Faculty, with a specialism in Community + UX. Previously he has been an Academic Liaison Librarian at York, and before that worked at the University of Leeds, as Digitisation Coordinator, and on the JISC funded LIFESHARE Project. He has a BA in Philosophy / English and an MA in Music, both from York, and an MSc in Information & Library Management, from the University of Northumbria.
Ned has been involved in several projects around librarianship: In 2010 he founded LISNPN, a network for New Professionals in Librarianship which grew to over 2000 members from more than 60 countries around the world. In 2011 he collaborated with three other librarians to set up the Buy India a Library project, which in just two weeks crowd-sourced funds enough to build a permanent library in one of the poorest parts of India, as well as four mobile libraries to travel around Africa. Later that year he was named a winner of a Special Libraries Association Early Career Conference Award.
Ned authored the Library Marketing Toolkit, published by Facet Publishing / Neal Schuman in 2012. It has been Number One in the Amazon Library charts on both sides of the Atlantic. He has also contributed to several other books, including Ben Bizzle's Start a revolution: stop acting like a library, and written a marketing column for Library Journal.
In 2012 Ned became a trainer for the British Library and the UK Electronic Information Group (UKeIG), and has provided marketing expertise for diverse organisations such as the Bodleian Libraries and the Latvian Ministry of Culture. In 2013 he was invited to Africa for the first time to present at the annual LIASA Conference and has since keynoted in New Zealand and run training in Australia. He has run over 300 workshops across four continents, and lectured on the Library Masters programme in a fifth.
Ned can be found online at ned-potter.com and on Bluesky at @nedpotter.bsky.social.
IMAGE CREDITS
Most of the images used in the design for this site are Creative Commons Zero sourced from sites like Pexels and Pixabay. Photos used in individual blog posts are either CC0 or credited there. The drum pics are my own.
Some images have been used by permission - on the Events page the image of me presenting at the UXLibs conference was taken by Andy Priestner. The amazing sketchnote on the Past Talks page, from the LIANZA conference in New Zealand, was both created and photograhed by Lee Rowe. Thanks to both of them for letting me use their pics!