Siobhan Haimé
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siobhanh.bsky.social
Siobhan Haimé
@siobhanh.bsky.social
1.2K followers 280 following 450 posts
Publishing Technologies Librarian.
Open Access, Publishing, Diversity, IT, Libraries & (Digital) Collections.
Tech & Hiking | She/Her | Views (unfortunately) my own.
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siobhanh.bsky.social
Today in "AI made me do it" ...
A screenshot of a LinkedIn post with the user information cropped out. The post reads: I don't write fiction - at least not yet. So I asked Chat GPT to write me a 1,000 word scene about a prostitute who is in love with a married man who has a mistress. I was impressed. I then asked if there was still a role for writers. This was Chat GPT's response. "There’s AI now, sure — but AI can’t feel. It can generate decent sentences, but the voice, the truth, the sharp edges that hurt in the right places… that still comes from a human. In fact, because AI makes generic writing easier, unique human writing becomes more valuable. It’s like cooking: machines can mass-produce food, but people will still line up around the block for a dish made by someone who loves the craft." That gives me hope. hashtag#chatgpt hashtag#ai hashtag#writing
August 13, 2025 at 5:06 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
You know you've truly made it as a librarian when you've been spending enough time on vendor websites to get personalised YouTube ads from them 🫠💀
A photo of a TV playing YouTube ad from Taylor and Francis.
July 4, 2025 at 7:34 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Technological advancements can feel overwhelming, but a strong knowledge foundation lets you effectively evaluate if, when, and how to engage with them

My #UKSG2025 workshop focuses on fostering the critical literacy needed to implement new technologies in academic libraries. Hope to see you there!
Advert for the UKSG Conference in Brighton on Monday 31st March-Wednesday 2nd April
March 17, 2025 at 6:35 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Nothing to do with this then 🙄
Highlighted text: "I've run ProQuest before, the amount of energy and effort and attention and the drain we got from those onetime deals like this Pulse business. And I also understand that the real-world data is kind of the same. It's a lot of effort to do onetime deal and it's a distraction. Add to this the low margin of the e-Books business, very low margin of the e-Book business"
February 21, 2025 at 3:30 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
If anything, there concerns were raised by financial analysts (one from Barclays specifically, if you're curious) during the Q4 2024 earnings call about the feasibility of this model in the US market:
Manav Patnaik: Yeah. Thank you. I guess I had a broader question just around your overall government exposure, a lot of questions around that. I was hoping you could help us frame what's your direct exposures to the federal and state governments. And also, I guess, indirectly, if they all get the academic and government solutions, especially if they get their funding cut in other areas, how you think you can manage that as well? Matti Shem Tov: So, hi. I'm Matti, I'm going to answer this one. Thank you for the question. So I've been in the academia business for almost -- for over 20 years. I've seen the academia business going through a lot of different cycles. And I remain optimistic that academia will prevail and will continue to grow in a certain -- although in a low single-digit to mid-single-digit over time. Yes, we do have a percentage of our income coming from the US government spending. It's pretty small. But we do acknowledge the fact that if the federal fund will go down, we have -- we will be exposed to those. If the cuts are significant, we will be exposed. But as I mentioned earlier in my call, I'm optimistic about the trajectory and the future of this industry. I've been there for 20 years, gone through several cycles. I'm optimistic and positive about the future of the business.
February 20, 2025 at 5:12 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Highlighted text: It's a lot of effort to do onetime deal and it's a distraction. Add to this the low margin of the e-Books business, very low margin of the e-Book business, it was kind of a very intuitive decision, when we discuss the VCP with the management, this is a drain. This is just taking our time" and "And over time, we have a high degree of conviction that we believe we can transition this onetime business, maybe not one to one, but over time, we'll transition it into more subscription, recurring subscription base. This is what we do. A big portion of our business is going subscription. I mentioned we are moving from 80% to 87% subscription reoccurring after the disposals, and I believe we can go even higher."
February 19, 2025 at 10:47 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
A central tenet of our Value Creation Plan is to concentrate our focus on recurring revenues, which is the combination of our subscription and reoccurring order types. In order to do this, we've strategically selected three product lines, we are exiting the transactional business model and are introducing new subscription-based offerings for select portions of each of these content sets. We anticipate multiple benefits from this strategic decision. We expect the business will grow faster, will become more predictable, will have improved profit margins, will increase the focus on our core businesses, improving the probability of accelerating their organic growth and will have a negligible impact on our free cash flow. These assumptions are based on our experience with these product lines over the last few years, which is illustrated in the chart on the page. In the last column, we removed the impact estimated this decision would have had on last year's performance.
February 19, 2025 at 10:42 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
And lastly, we are refocusing incentive models across the company to reward success for driving subscription and reoccurring revenue growth. This is -- there is more work to do in all this area, but we have made substantial progress in a short time.
February 19, 2025 at 10:39 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Some highlights from the Q4 call
Now let's talk about what was accomplished in the last three months in executing our plan and what lies ahead for the remainder of 2025. Improving the predictability of our revenue and driving core subscription and reoccurring sales is key priority of the plan. In Academia & Government, we recently announced that we are moving to subscription-only strategy for ProQuest e-Books and Digital Collections. This is a meaningful step change in our go-to-market strategy for this product line. ProQuest e-Books, it is the world's largest subscription of academic e-books, including more than 700,000 titles. ProQuest Digital Collections offer more than 160 million primary source items plus scholarly journals, videos and audio tracks. With the launch of this new product offering, we will phase out onetime transactional sales of e-books, digital collections and print books by the end of 2025. The change will allow us to focus our growth on investing in subscription-based solution, which will make up 90% of A&G portfolio.
February 19, 2025 at 10:38 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
See also: Q3-2024 Earnings call: seekingalpha.com/article/4733...

With the following (thanks to @thomaspadilla.bsky.social for pointing this out yesterday, leading me to find out the other call would be taking place today!)
Matti Shem Tov Basically, this is a good -- a great segue to what we're actually doing. And as part of my three-month journey talking to the internal people, sales organization product and some of our customers volatility and exposure to one-time revenues is, also we can see that during the last quarters and going forward, we are going to take away some of the volatility and rationalize some of the onetime transaction business. We're looking further into the one-time business is low-margin, it's low profit, it's low-growth, it's extensive. It's very hard to predict and part of the -- my impression is we are currently contemplating this and taking away this volatility and making rooms to focus -- to help us focus more on product innovation, subscription, reoccurring predictable profit revenue streams. That's where we're going.
February 19, 2025 at 10:27 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager (played by Kate Mulgrew) looking at a datapad (a sort of iPad) with a mix of irritation/disgust/disappointment/general displeasure. If you are familiar with my facial expressions, you may recognise this as a dead ringer for my version of this expression.
November 11, 2024 at 11:19 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
Always fun to return to Leeds Libraries as a visitor and see what has changed and what remains unchanged ;)
The University of Leeds white marble Parkinson steps
September 11, 2024 at 1:49 PM
siobhanh.bsky.social
I'll be presenting on uses and limits of AI in academic library collections at #UKSG2024!

I'll discus technical aspects of AI and the technology behind generative AI, use cases for collections with some hypothetical implementations that I tested, and what I think we can expect looking forward.
A graphic promoting a UKSG 2024 conference talk Title: 'Demystifying AI and evaluating future uses and limits in library collections' Presenter: Siobhan Haimé Date and time: Tuesday April 9, 2024 / 03:00 - 04:00 PM
April 6, 2024 at 8:05 AM
siobhanh.bsky.social
One week to go till the Library Careers Event for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students, staff and public at Lancaster university. There is still time left to sign up so please do make sure to sign up and share this event :) bit.ly/3uzar5S
A pale blue background with a white border. On the right-hand side of the border are three graphics of white books. There is a Lancaster University Library Logo at the top of the page Library Careers Event for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic students, staff and public 6th March 2024 10am-3pm Lancaster University Library (Events and Exhibition Space) We know the importance of having diversity in the workplace and are committed to ensuring that university libraries are spaces people from all communities can access and work at. Join us to find out more about the diverse range of roles that are available at university libraries, listen to the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic library staff and network with a wide range of people across the national library sector. We hope you can join us at this exciting event which aims to provide a safe, inclusive and engaging space for all attendees. Sign up here bit.ly/3uzar5S More details to follow! Sponsored by EBSCO
February 28, 2024 at 2:43 PM