Meet the Adam Matthew Digital Team

2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the Adam Matthew Group and it has been an amazing journey so far.

When David and I started the business we placed a strong emphasis on working closely with faculty and librarians to understand and deliver the resources they wanted. We strive to maintain this bespoke approach – even as we continue to grow. I still enjoy visiting universities around the world and meeting scholars in the Arts and Social Sciences to discuss their dream projects. The challenge is to transform these ideas into a digital reality. We can’t pursue them all, but at present I am currently working on ideas relating to Global Commodities, Romantic Poetry, the Environment and Popular Culture.

We have always adopted a ‘win-win’ approach with libraries – helping them to preserve their materials, increase scholarly research and raise their profile, whilst at the same time retaining their rights and benefiting from royalty income. It is a sustainable way of publishing with benefits to all parties. It encourages libraries to work with us again and again, although I am always happy to receive proposals from new libraries that wish to digitise their material but do not have access to funding.

We will doubtless have some celebrations during the course of the year, but we will also be looking forward to the next 20 years. We have a strong team in place and a lot of ideas that we want to develop.

As you can imagine, I enjoy reading and travel – I also have a passion for live music and theatre. Recent highlights include going to the opening night at the Met to see Tosca, seeing Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton at the O2 Arena, being mesmerised by Warhorse at the National Theatre and seeing my daughter in a school production of Tess of the D’Urbervilles (I’m biased, obviously).

David, Bill and I started Adam Matthew Digital in January 2007 and the response from the academic community to our online resources has been fantastic.

From the outset we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the competition by producing a varied portfolio of primary source collections that ranged in content from manuscripts by medieval travellers to diaries and letters offering unique twentieth century social commentary. We design our projects so that they are both detailed enough for major scholarly research and accessible for students to have fun with in the classroom.

It is also extremely important to us that our collections are set at a price that enables access for institutions ranging in size and funding from small community colleges to Ivy League universities. With our range of banded pricing and our Archive Secure payment plan we believe we have achieved this and thousands of students, scholars and librarians from all over the world now access our collections. My global travel means I’m lucky enough to get to meet with many of our users and these presentations and meetings are extremely rewarding and vital for making improvements with every new product release.

We continue to add approximately ten new titles every year and we’re particularly excited to be covering new subject areas with our Jewish Life in America and Confidential Print: Middle East collections. We have also released Archive Explorer our federated search engine that is freely available to use across all Adam Matthew titles and makes finding content or researching new collections very easy.

We have many technology, sales and editorial partners and I enjoy liaising with them on a variety of issues. This can range from discussing our hosting requirements, to a presentation with one of our sales agents in Europe or East Asia to discussing a future project with a scholar or archivist.

I look forward to seeing many of you on my travels and thanks for making my job such an enjoyable one!

As an Editor with Adam Matthew Digital, I am responsible for every stage in the life of my projects, from selecting and assessing rare manuscripts to conceptualising the final web pages. It is a wonderfully varied role which combines historical research with new technologies, bringing me into contact with leading academics and archivists from all over the world. It is unceasingly interesting, challenging and enlightening – I learn something new every day!

My role as Project Editor at Adam Matthew Digital is incredibly diverse and interesting. With responsibilities that include assessing and selecting archival material, attending conferences, meeting with archivists and librarians, quality checking images, indexing documents and managing the design and build of my projects; every working day is different.

The best part of my job is that it allows me to explore different areas of history as I work and talk to archivists and academics passionate about their specialist subjects. I am currently working on our Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice 1490-2007 project and one of our exciting new forthcoming projects: World War I: A Portal.

My role within Adam Matthew Digital is to assist the Project Editors with indexing and other support work, although I am primarily responsible for all Adam Matthew Publications microfilm projects. I have a colourful career history: before coming to Adam Matthew I worked in publishing, the travel industry and teaching, spending time in Spain and Turkey. I am a big music fan, and I love travelling and eating out.

In my role as Editorial Assistant I support the Project Editors with many aspects of the digital publishing process. My role is very varied and every digital project is different, but some of my duties include checking scanned images for quality, indexing documents and liaising with academics.

As an editorial assistant, I spend my time doing a variety of tasks on a variety of projects. This leads to an interesting life: two months into the job I was reading nineteenth-century pulp fiction to index it for American West, then scanning and image-checking records of court cases for Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, then visiting archives in France to gather material for a new project on the First World War – all in the space of a fortnight. My main work at present involves the Slavery project, helping the editorial team to build on the stages that have already been published.

As PA to Bill Pidduck I get to assist in many areas of his work. Most recently this has included the privilege of exploring archives and capturing information for forthcoming digital collections. In addition I am responsible for planning overseas trips and conferences, as well as the preparation of reports and administrative support for the Project Editors.

I have also served as Office Manager since 2004, which is a varied role encompassing: HR; outsourcing administrative staff and temporary workers; health and safety; production of project guides; organising staff events; and offsetting our carbon footprint in partnership with Climate Care. With my free time I relax by reading and cooking and enjoy holidays in our VW camper.

I control all aspects of the Finance function at Adam Matthew working closely with all three Directors. Over the last year I have been re-evaluating existing systems, improving and modifying where necessary, as well as introducing new systems to provide better KPIs and key management information.

I enjoy kick boxing, yoga, running, cinema and reading as well as working with the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.

I joined Adam Matthew in January 2007 as PA to David Tyler having had a varied career whilst moving around the UK and Europe with my husband's job (Cyprus, Sardinia, and Shetland to name a few). I have a son at University in Cardiff and in my spare time I like to visit him and the rest of my family in Wales.

I joined Adam Matthew's Administration team in 2007. Coming from Sussex originally, by way of Oxford, France and Jersey, my husband and I have now settled in Wiltshire. I enjoy reading, cryptic crosswords, gardening and cricket (watching, not playing)!

Although I come from a predominantly fine-art education, my experience in e-commerce and online publishing in London has enabled me to combine creativity with technology and organisation at Adam Matthew.

Developing new functionality, new tools and layouts for the Adam Matthew Digital website is one of the most exciting parts of my role and I enjoy the ‘blue skies thinking’ creative process. This creativity/technology combination comes into use when producing other marketing materials, such as HTML email notifications and both online and printed adverts. Although our printed publicity material is currently outsourced, I have a lead role in their design, layout, production and dissemination.

As well as maintaining our corporate websites, I manage the licensing process of digital purchases and much of the post-sale customer service, including the provision of usage statistics (both counter compliant and Google Analytics) and customer profile updates.
I am a ‘typical’ creative, who is always looking for new ways to do things and a natural organiser, keen to develop new systems whenever required. Thankfully, Adam Matthew Digital is both a dynamic and innovative publishing company and keeps me busy in all aspects of my varied role.

My role in sales and marketing support is extremely varied and often involves tasks such as the creation of HTML campaigns, managing our customer database, organising online trial access, uploading content onto our website and assisting with publicity and the receipt of licence agreements.