Jill Finney

My highlights from 2007/08

"The Sacred exhibition attracted a recordbreaking number of visitors and the events, online, Learning and regional programmes succeeded in reaching out to people of other faiths and particularly to people beyond our traditional user profile. The achievement of the Business & IP Centre in securing £2.4m additional funding from the LDA owed much to the Centre’s ability to attract entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds – 44% of users last year were from ethnic minority groups, 51% were women and 4.5% were people with disabilities.

Priced Services across the Library performed well, with increased revenues from the Imaging Services team and an improved contribution from our document supply and digitisation services.The newly extended Shop area combined with a strong publications list and high visitor numbers to generate unprecedented sales for the British Library Shop – sales of the Sacred catalogue totalled 7,819 copies, making it our biggest selling catalogue ever. As a result of all these activities we exceeded our targets for revenue and gross margin.

Our campaigns had a major impact. Government recognised the importance of the Library by awarding us a Spending Review settlement that, even in a tough financial climate, will enable us to grow and develop our collections and services. We’ve also positioned ourselves as central to the continuing debate on IP reform; publishers, authors and consumers increasingly look to us for balance and leadership on this contentious issue."

Responsibilities