The State Library Senior Management Team
Chief Executive Officer and State Librarian
Ms Margaret Allen
Director, Client Services
Ms Susan Ashcroft
Susan has had experience working in various library sectors during her career. She has worked in special libraries, academic libraries, public libraries and a state library.
In 2001, Susan was the Director: Public Library Services at the State Library of Western Australia for over four years after which she went to live in the UK. During her time there, she ran a public library service in inner London. Susan also headed the library service for Statistics Canada in the mid 90’s and her experiences span the east and west coast of Australia as well as abroad.
Much of Susan’s career while living in Canberra for 20 years was spent in the Commonwealth Government and during that period, she worked in fields outside the library sector. Susan has experience in areas such as marketing, information consultancy and, investment and trade, and throughout her time within government was also involved in policy development.
Susan is married and has an extended family of six children and four grandchildren. She is a keen house renovator and an amateur gardener.
Director, Resource Services
Ms Alison Sutherland
Alison started her involvement with libraries at the age of 6 when she created her first date due slips, progressing at the age of 9 to her first date stamp via her Christmas stocking! Her first voluntary post was at Marmion Primary School at the age of 11, then at Duncraig/Sorrento public library when she was 14. Sad but true!!!!
During the past 20 years Alison has worked in School, Health, Special and Academic Libraries in areas including records management, acquisitions, serials, cataloguing, circulation, information literacy, reference and electronic resources; both in Western Australia and London.
She started at the State Library in August 2005 moving from Curtin University of Technology Library where she had worked extensively with EBL (Ebook Library) the Perth based Ebook company to develop an academic library model for their Ebook suite, as well as overseeing the implementation of SFX, an Ex Libris tool that links subscribed journal holdings with databases via an OpenURL protocol.
Alison is a professional member of the Australian Institute of Management, a life member of the Australian Library and Information Association, and an Aurora Leadership Institute Alumnist.
Director, Strategic and Corporate Services
Mr Mark Woodcock
Director, Strategic Projects
Mr George Cowcher
George is one of the State Library’s longest serving staff members having started straight from school in 1973 as a library cadet. As a cadet, he worked in all parts of the organisation. Following graduation, he took up a permanent position in the JS Battye Library of West Australian History.
During his 14 years and 14 days in Battye, George worked with a number of collections including monographs, serials and archives and indexed thousands of articles into the Battye indexes. This was when he wasn’t rostered on the reference desk.
1990 saw a complete change of direction when George moved to the Public Library Services Directorate. During his 16 years in this area he worked across the directorate in a number of positions. These include as a selector of adult non fiction and fiction collections; providing consultancy on services to adults and services to seniors; managing selection and consultancy services including to regional libraries; managing the $10m+ budget; and finally, being Director for two years.
Following an organisational restructure, George took up the position of Director, Resource Services for 2.5 years. In January 2009 he moved into the position of Director, Strategic Projects with a focus on zero based budgeting and structural reform of public library services.
Page last updated: 25/06/2009 12:48:14