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Speaker and Panelists Biographies
Dr. Noha Adly
 Dr. Adly is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Cambridge University, UK in 1995. She was a Research Associate at AT&T Cambridge Research Laboratory (1995-1997) and a Visiting Researcher (1997-2000).
Since 1997, Dr. Adly has been a Consultant for information systems to several firms. She has also served as Consultant for Bibliotheca Alexandrina for the design and installation of its network and its information system. She is currently the Director of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Department and the International School of Information Science (ISIS) research center of Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Dr. Adly is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society as well as several other scientific, social and humanitarian organizations. Her research interests are distributed systems, database systems and digital libraries. Dr. Adly is also author/co-author of more than 25 publications in peer reviewed journals and scientific conferences in the field of computer science and engineering.
Dr. Faiza Adeeb Al-Bayati
 Dr. Faiza Al-Bayati is currently an Assistant Professor at the Central Library of Baghdad University, the Technical Advisor of Baghdad University Libraries and the Head of the Central Library Automated systems and Periodicals Departments.
Dr. Al-Bayati served as the Manager of the College of Engineering library, Baghdad University (1985–1989), the General Secretariat of Baghdad University Central library 1999–2000), a Consultant for the Petroleum Training Institute at the Iraqi Ministry of Oil (2002–2003), and a Consultant for the Iraqi National Library (2003–2004).
Dr. Al-Bayati had several contributions and activities as being a lecturer at two library and information science schools in Iraq. She was also involved in a number of continuing education programs in several firms on using information technology in libraries. Additionally, Dr. Al-Bayati is the manager of the newly initiated “Iraqi Libraries Network” website, a granted project by the Goethe Institute and Bielefeld University, Germany; a member of the Middle East Libraries Committee (MELCOM); and the Consultant for designing a new proposed website project for Baghdad University Central Library.
Dr. Al-Bayati had also contributed to more than 12 articles in different scientific journals and conference proceedings in different aspects of library systems and information science.
Ms. Eglal Bahgat
 Eglal Bahgat is an expert in documentation and knowledge management, and a pioneer in using IT for bibliographic information storage and retrieval.
Ms. Bahgat initiated and managed the implementation of the first Arabic software for Arab libraries. She headed the National Project of Egyptian library automation and the Egyptian Libraries Network for several years.
Ms Bahgat is currently Deputy Director of Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CultNat), board member of the Integrated Care Society and the Mubarak Public Library, as well as member of the consultancy board of the Maadi Public Library. She is the project manager of “eternalegypt” website, a joint project between Cultnat, The Supreme Council of Antiquities and IBM, a premier website that uses innovative technologies and services to create an interactive, multimedia experience of Egyptian cultural artifacts, places and history for global audience. She is also the project manager of the Egyptian National Archives Digitization project. She is an active board member in number of organizations covering libraries and documentation. She also held various information positions in the US and Canada.
Dr. Colin Baker
 Colin Baker studied Semitic Languages and Literatures (Arabic and Hebrew) at the University of Leeds, England, gaining a Bachelor of Arts Degree with First Class Honours in 1985. He undertook postgraduate research on mediaeval Arabic medical literature at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a Master of Philosophy in 1987 and a PhD in 1991.
He was appointed an Assistant Librarian at the John Rylands Manchester University Library (1985-86), and a Research Associate at the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library (1989-1995). In 1995, he joined the British Library as a curator of Arabic, becoming Head of the Arabic Collections in 1996 and, in 2003, Head of the British Library's Near and Middle Eastern Collections. He is a member of the Middle East Libraries Committee (Melcom) UK and of the National Council on Orientalist Library Resources (secretary 2002-2005). He regularly gives talks in the UK and abroad on the British Library’s Arabic collections.
His publications include: Medical and Para-medical Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1994); Arabic and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscripts in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 2001); Subject-Guide to the Arabic Manuscripts in the British Library (London, 2001); Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an, Turning the Pages, CD-Rom (The British Library, 2002). He contributed to the Arabic Treasures of the British Library (UK Friends of the Alexandria Library/The British Library, 2003). His book on Qur’an manuscripts is to be published by the British Library (end of 2006).
Dr. Hoda Baraka
 Dr. Hoda Baraka is the CIT Minister's Senior Deputy, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Dr. Baraka has twenty four years of extensive experience in providing consultation services in the field of information technology for the public and private sectors. Services include policy development, infrastructure development, ICT for community development, sustainable development, human resources development, capacity building, and training.
Her experience includes Policy Development, Public-Private Partnerships, Establishing Protocols and MoUs among various stakeholders, supervision of national ICT projects in the field of education, e-government, e-health, e-content, national databases, and geographical information systems.
Dr. Baraka is also a Professor with the Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt. She gives invited talks in many national and international conferences in the subjects of information technology, e-content, e-learning, networking, databases and software engineering. Dr. Elizabeth Beaudin
 Elizabeth A. S. Beaudin received her Ph.D. from Yale University, writing her thesis on medieval love narratives from Muslim Spain. She has taught language and literature courses at Fairfield University and Yale. Dr. Beaudin is also a systems architect with 20 years of information technology experience, during which time she has developed both academic and administrative systems in a university environment. Her academic background helps balance the demands of technical architecture design with the scholar’s needs for useable content.
Dr. Beaudin's work on the recent OACIS project included developing the software, interface, and technical communications for a new electronic union catalog. For two new granted projects at Yale University Library -- Project AMEEL and Iraq ReCollection -- Dr. Beaudin will coordinate the separate sub-components of both projects that will create a scalable digital repository on the Middle East, while directing the technical achievements of the projects. Dr. Beaudin is currently Manager of International Digital Special Projects, Yale University.
Mr. John Eilts
 Mr. Eilts joined the Stanford Library as its first Curator for the Middle East collection in 2001. Prior to that he was a Program Officer and Product Manager for the Research Libraries Group. While at RLG he worked with the product development team for the implementation of Arabic script cataloging in the RLG Union Catalog. Prior to joining RLG, he was the Head of the Near Eastern Division of the University of Michigan’s Hatcher Graduate Library.
Eilts studied Arabic at Portland State University, Harvard University, and the University of Michigan in the US and at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
Dr. Gillian Evison
 Gillian Evison read theology at St. John's College, Oxford before moving to Wolfson College to complete a D.Phil in Oriental Studies, which focused on classical Hinduism. She was appointed Librarian of the Indian Institute Library, the Bodleian Library's specialist unit devoted to South Asian materials, in 1993. In 2005 she was seconded to the position of Head of Research Support for the Department of Special Collections at the Bodleian and holds this position in parallel with responsibilities for the South Asian collections. She has a particular interest in the curatorial and technical challenges offered by digitization. Past projects include the Digital Shikshapatri and she currently directs the Bodleian’s Oriental Surrogates Project, an initiative to digitize some of the library’s most important illuminated Middle Eastern and South Asian manuscripts, and the ARTstor project, which will contribute several thousand images of illuminated Medieval and Renaissance Western manuscripts with accompanying metadata to the ARTstor database. In addition to these digitization projects, she chairs Oxford’s the non-Roman script Special Interest Group, which is involved in the implementation in Oxford’s new Virtua Library Management System, due to go live in the autumn of 2006. She serves on a number of National Steering Committees, including those of the National Council on Orientalist Library Resources and the South Asia Archive and Library Group.
Mr. Michael A. Keller
 Mr. Keller was educated at Hamilton College (B.A. Biology, Music 1967), SUNY Buffalo (M.A., Musicology, 1970)), SUNY Geneseo (M.L.S., 1971), and SUNY Buffalo (a.b.d. Ph.D., Musicology). He served as Music Librarian and Sr. Lecturer in Musicology in several universities and as Associate University Librarian and Director of Collection Development at Yale University. He joined Stanford as the Ida M. Green Director of Libraries, and was then named to his current position of University Librarian and Director of Academic Information Resources. In 1995, he established the HighWire Press, currently supporting high-impact STM journals among more than 50 major scholarly societies, and in April 2000, he was assigned publisher for the Stanford University Press. In 1999, Mr. Keller became co-founder of the Stanford-California State Library Institute on 21st Century Librarianship.
As University Librarian, Mr. Keller endeavors to champion deep collecting of traditional library materials concurrent with full engagement in emerging information technologies. Long involved in the great debate on serials pricing, he has served as advisor, consultant, and committee member to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and other scholarly societies. Based on the successful HighWire model, Keller is now fostering development of additional information tools and services for the scholarly community.
Keller speaks at numerous annual scholarly gatherings worldwide and has consulted for a variety of institutions and programs, including the City of Ferrara in Italy, Newsweek magazine, Princeton and Indiana Universities, and several information technology companies as well as scholarly societies. In addition, he serves on the boards of several organizations and is involved in a number of professional bodies such as the Digital Library Federation, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Pacific Neighborhood Coalition, and the World Economic Forum.
Dr. Mohamed Hossam Loutfi
Dr. Mohamed Loutfi is currently the Chairperson of Civil Law Division, Bani-Suef University, since 1995. He used to work as an attorney at law from 1978 – 1984 and 1995 – 2002. Moreover, Dr. Loutfi used to be an Associate Professor of Civil Law, Cairo University, Bani-Suef Branch (1984-1995). In 1983, Dr. Loutfi received his PhD from Paris University No. XI.
Dr. Loutfi has several publications in Arabic, English and French languages. Dr. Loutfi was a Member of the Drafting Committee of Copyright for Acts in Egypt 1992, 1994, 2000; Member of the Arab League Committee for Drafting a Model Law on Copyright for Arab Countries, 1998; Expert of WIPO for several Arab countries to update their Intellectual Property laws to be in conformity with TRIPS Agreement; Expert on Intellectual Property for WIPO, UNESCO, Arab League, ADIMO, ALESCO; Member of committee of draft law on Telecommunications (November 99 to August 2000); Member of committee of draft law on Electronic Signature (January 2001 to June 2001); Member of committee of draft law on E-commerce business (February 2000 to November 2001). Besides, he has also been a Lecturer in all WIPO meetings in Cairo 1995-2000 and in the majority of WIPO meetings in Arab countries 1995-2002.
Mr. Simon Samoeil
 Simon Samoeil was born in Latakia, Syria, and moved to the United States in 1975. He is currently Curator of the Near East Collection at Yale University, a position which he held since 1990. Yale’s Near East Collection is one of the oldest collections in North America dealing with this part of the world. Mr. Samoeil systematically acquires and maintains materials from the Near East and North Africa in all subject categories in Islamic, Arabic and Near East area studies.
Mr. Samoeil obtained his baccalaureate from Latakia and subsequently he attended the Centre Universitaire de Vincennes in Paris, France. In 1979 he obtained a Master's Degree in Library and Information Science at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) in New Haven.
After graduating, Mr. Samoeil worked at the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia as the Arabic Librarian, then as Middle Eastern Bibliographer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. In 1983, Mr. Samoeil was appointed the Middle East Technical Services Librarian at the Harvard College Library, and in 1985, returned to the University of Pennsylvania as the Middle East Technical Services Librarian with the concurrent responsibility as Division Head of this unit.
Mr. Samoeil has published and lectured widely on Near East librarianship and related issues. He is a member of the following professional organizations: Middle East Librarian Association (MELA), the American Oriental Society (AOS), and the Middle East Librarians Association Committee on Iraq Libraries.
Ms. Lauren Schoenthaler
 Ms. Schoenthaler received her B.A. degree from Northwestern University and her J.D. from Hastings College of the Law, magna cum laude. At Hastings, Ms. Schoenthaler was an editor of the Hastings Law Journal and a member of Order of the Coif.
Ms. Schoenthaler joined Stanford in 2001 and practices general university law. Prior to joining Stanford, Ms. Schoenthaler clerked for the Honorable A. Wallace Tashima, at both the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Central District of California. Ms. Schoenthaler has also served as a Deputy District Attorney for Santa Clara County. In the private sector, Ms. Schoenthaler was an associate of Pillsbury Madison & Sutro (now, Pillsbury Winthrop) practicing primarily in the areas of antitrust, intellectual property and general litigation.
Dr. Ismail Serageldin
 Dr. Serageldin is the Director of the newly established Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, and chairs the Boards of Directors for each of the seven research institutes and three museums affiliated to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Previously he served as Vice President of the World Bank (1992-2000), Chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR, 1994-2000), Chairman of the Consultative Group to Assist the Poorest (CGAP), a micro-finance program (1995-2000), Chairman of the Global Water Partnership (GWP, 1996-2000), and Chairman of the World Commission for Water in the 21st Century (1998-2000). Dr. Serageldin worked in a number of capacities at the World Bank (1972-2000) and has published and lectured widely.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in engineering degree from Cairo University, and a Masters' degree and a Ph.D. from Harvard University and has received 15 honorary doctorates. Dr. Serageldin currently serves as Distinguished Professor at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and as chair and member of a number of advisory committees for academic, research, scientific, and international institutions and civil-society efforts. He has written more than 50 books and monographs (edited or authored) and 200 articles, book chapters, and technical papers on various topics.
Mr. Stuart Snydman
 Stuart Snydman is the Manager of Digital Production Services at the Stanford University Libraries. He received a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Virginia in 1992 and a Master of Arts in Education Policy from Stanford University in 1995. Mr. Snydman began work in the field of digital libraries in 1999, managing a five-year effort to digitize and preserve the publications and documents of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade, a 2.5 million page archive held at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. He has since managed over ten other large-scale projects to preserve and provide online access to unique library collections. He implemented the first digitization lab in the world to use a fully automated robotic page-turning scanner for the mass digitization of books. He currently oversees all digitization operations and projects at the Stanford University Libraries. Mr. Snydman has published writings on the organization of higher education in the United States, and the history of technology in education.
Dr. Sohair F. Wastawy
 Dr. Wastawy received her BA, MA, and completed work towards her Ph.D. thesis in Linguistics at Cairo University, Egypt. She possesses a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, USA and a Doctorate degree in Library and Information Management from Simmons College, Massachusetts, USA.
Dr. Wastawy has been a practitioner in the information field since 1975 and practiced librarianship in a number of countries that include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the USA. She began her library career at Cairo University Library, taught librarianship in the first women’s library program in Saudi Arabia and was the Dean of Libraries at Illinois Institute of Technology at Chicago from 1988 until 2004.
Dr. Wastawy was recently appointed as the first Chief Librarian for the new Library of Alexandria, Alexandria, Egypt. In addition to her leadership role and managerial responsibilities, Dr. Wastawy is often a consultant to non-profit organizations, corporations, and accreditation commissions.
Dr. Wastawy is an expert in library management in academic and research institutions. Her most recent publication “Learning Communities: An investigative Study into their Impact on Library Services” was published in Science and Technology Libraries, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, 2004. Dr. Wastawy has been the recipient of many excellence awards, a Peace Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship.
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