User:Punkvert/Alan Hopkinson

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Declined by Theroadislong 20 days ago. Last edited by Theroadislong 20 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author.

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(Alan Hopkinson) was... (Technical Manager, Middlesex University)

DR. ALAN HOPKINSON

(1950-2016)

Family Background

As the eldest of four brothers, Alan enjoyed a stimulating childhood in the family home at Springfield Avenue, Chesterfield, Derbyshire. His caring nature and Christian faith won him friends at Chesterfield Boys School, university and throughout a successful career. Old Cestrefeldians may remember he was secretary of the Transport Society, a member of choir who won many essay prizes. At home, as a teenager, he developed a huge model railway layout with timetables, and designed a computer with pieces of punched plastic.

Education

His aptitude for language and logic won him a place at Balliol College, Oxford to study Greats.

Career

Knowing there were no jobs in Classics he went for a career in librarianship that coincided with the introduction of IT. Alan soon became a leading expert in this discipline. Initially he worked in the British Library, then at the Institute of Development, University of Sussex, followed by the Tate Gallery, then Middlesex University where he was director of bibliographical systems, introducing Radio-frequency identification (RFID), also known as the "biblio chip",.^[1] to streamline the work of librarians in 2004

Family Life

In 1980 he married a talented lecturer, Marion Colledge. They set up home in Bedford. Their children are proof that (with hard work and commitment) it is just about possible to raise a family while both parents also pursue successful careers.

International Fame

Alan helped set up new online cataloguing systems in various countries including Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and India. He relished the many international trips that this entailed, collecting countries (70) like other people might collect stamps. Frequently, when time and budget allowed, other members of his family would join him in exciting venues, such as Moscow at the time of the 1991 Soviet coup attempt. Hi discussion on the peculiarities of digitising materials from ancient writing ^[2] serves as a guide on how to safely treat and digitise ancient text.

By 2004, Hopkinson was (amongst many other roles) Chairman of the British Standards Institute (BSI Group) computer applications, member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and also chair of the Unimark International committee — a UNESCO digital library committee, which took him to meetings in Portugal and Holland.

He wrote four books and one hundred articles. In 1990 he was jointly awarded annual prize for the best book in librarianship of the year by the Library Association (LAUK)(later joining with Institute of Information Scientists (IIS) to form CILIP in 2002). The prize wa awarded for the second edition of Exchanging bibliographic data: MARC and other international formats written jointly with Ellen J. Gredley^[3].

Many of his responsibilities were in the voluntary and charitable sector and continued well into “retirement”. For example, he was a member of the British Friends of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and visited Egypt several times.

Awards

He was awarded Fellow of the British Computer Society and Fellow of CILIP^[4]. He was awarded a doctorate through public works^[5] in 2014 via Middlesex University.

Illness and Death

It was therefore all the more tragic that owing to a combination of the medications following the insertion of arterial stents in 2013 that Alan suffered serious brain damage and near total paralysis. Marion fought valiantly to provide him with the best possible care and therapy and it is greatly due to her dedication - applying teaching methods used in English as a Foreign Language vTeaching and Bobath concept physio methods that Alan regained a little speech and was able to spend his last 19 months back home again at Beverley Crescent. She provided a rich environment, employing a team of personal assistants including a driver to take him to family reunions in Derbyshire and herself taking him on East Midlands trains to visit CILIP in London and connecting him to the best physio clinics in the East Midlands.

Alan’s funeral was on April 21st 2016 at Queens Park, Bedford All Saints Church, cemetery committal took place at Norse Rd Cemetery Woodland area. As he wished, a bursary was set up in his name for a young librarian to attend the Annual Conference of the International Library Association ^[6]

Books

Exchanging bibliographic data: MARC and other international formats. E Gredley, A Hopkinson, 1990, ISBN: 0888022581^[7]

CDS/ISIS for Windows handbook, A Buxton, A Hopkinson UNESCO, ISBN:1-85604-108-5 1994^[8]

UNIMARC manual: Bibliographic format IFLA, A Hopkinson, 2008, ISBN: 978-3-598-24284-7^[9]

Selected Publications

Merlin for the cataloguer, A Hopkinson, Aslib Proceedings 29 (8), 284-294, 1977^[10]

Reference manual for machine-readable bibliographic descriptions, H Dierickx, A Hopkinson, Library Association Publishing, 1986^[11]

CCF: the common communication format, P Simmons, A Hopkinson, 1988^[12]

Introducing RFID at Middlesex University learning resources A Hopkinson, R Chandrakar, Program 40 (1), 89-97, 2006^[13]

Library automation in developing countries: the last 25 years A Hopkinson, Information Development 25 (4), 304-312, 2009^[14]

An evaluation of implementing Koha in a Chinese language environment, N Chang, Y Tsai, A Hopkinson, Program 44 (4), 342-356, 2010^[15]

OPAC 2.0: towards the next generation of online library catalogues, S Jetty, JP Anbu K, PK Jain, A Hopkinson, 2011^[16]

Experimenting with implementing FRBR in a Chinese Koha system N Chang, Y Tsai, G Dunsire, A Hopkinson Library hi tech news 30 (10), 10-20, 2013^[17]

For further publications by A Hopkinson, see GoogleScholar^[18]

References

[1] ttps://www.theguardian.com/education/librariesunleashed/story/0,,2293195,00.html

[2] ttp://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/68/hopkinson-zargaryan/

[3] ttps://tind.wipo.int/search?f1=author&as=1&sf=title&so=a&rm=&m1=p&p1=Gredley%2C%20Ellen%2C&ln=en

[4] ttps://www.cilip.org.uk/media/ih3mpz5v/focus50-2.pdf

[5] ttps://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Professional-librarianship%3A-always-preparing-for-Hopkinson/bcf1fc4cf68f1a02affffd8716859509fe3696d7

[6] ttps://2023.ifla.org/conference-participation-grants-awards/alan-hopkinsons-ifla-conference-award-2023/

[7] ttps://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Exchanging-bibliographic-data%3A-MARC-and-other-Gredley-Hopkinson/9eb7af3b94bb7534fb88ef65f0419ec47d945195

[8] ttps://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000099201

[9] ttps://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000186087

[10] ttps://www.emerald.com/ajim/article-abstract/29/8/284/28769/Merlin-for-the-cataloguer?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[11] ttps://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED280509

[12] ttps://digitallibrary.un.org/record/23115

[13] ttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/230649389_Introducing_RFID_at_Middlesex_University_Learning_Resources

[14] ttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0266666909349678

[15] ttps://www.emerald.com/dta/article-abstract/44/4/342/329707/An-evaluation-of-implementing-Koha-in-a-Chinese?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[16] ttps://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/OPAC-2.0%3A-towards-the-next-generation-of-online-Jetty-JohnPaulAnbu/52db4b1c03bcabc21cfc826ed141fe6a200fa42f

[17] ttps://www.emerald.com/lhtn/article-abstract/30/10/10/264249/Experimenting-with-implementing-FRBR-in-a-Chinese?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[18] ttps://www.emerald.com/dta/article-abstract/44/4/342/329707/An-evaluation-of-implementing-Koha-in-a-Chinese?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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