Equal Opportunities Subcommittee:
Biographical Notes

Alison Behr

Alison Behr is Acquisitions and Information Technology Officer at the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. She represents the Sexuality Issues in Libraries Group (formerly Burning Issues Group) on the LA's Equal Opportunities Subcommittee. SILG is an organisation in liaison with the Library Association, which is working towards quality library services for lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgendered people.

Alison joined this Subcommittee when it began in 1986, as Hon. Equal Opportunities Officer for the Association of Assistant Librarians (now Career Development Group). At the time she was working for Feminist Audio Books, a tape library of lesbian and feminist material for blind and partially-sighted women and men and others who had difficulties with the spoken word. Her special interests have remained people with disabilities and access problems and Section 28. She has run courses and written articles on these issues and on equal opportunities in general in New Library World, Branchlines, and the Assistant Librarian, among others.

Alison has varied library experience in special, academic (London polytechnics) and public libraries, specialising in cataloguing and library computer systems in recent years. She has an honours degree in librarianship from the Polytechnic (now University) of North London, which included a dissertation on cultural institute libraries abroad. She compared British Council, French Institute and Goethe Institute libraries in London, Paris, Cologne, Munich and Madrid, travelling and interviewing staff in English and French. She has spent all her career in libraries apart from a year with the British Council administering Academic Travel Grants for Eastern Europe.

She lives in inner London with her husband and three cats.

For further information see the SILG website at http://www.croydononline.org/hs/bissues/index.htm or join the discussion list at http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/burningissues