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THE TEAM BEHIND THE COURSES

Built by people who’ve done this for 35 years

Opening the Book has been training library staff since 1991. We developed the first face-to-face training in the UK in a range of topics from engaging with readers to auditing collection quality. Following successful national programs of regional workshops across England, Wales and Scotland, we were asked by the Society of Chief Librarians (now Libraries Connected) to develop online training to reach all 146 library services in England. We created our own training platform to bring the distinctive voice and style of our face-to-face training online - and were genuinely surprised by how successful the move proved to be.

Instead of spending a day away from the library and then returning to try to maintain the enthusiasm - while skeptical colleagues say, ‘That’ll never work, we tried that years ago’ - staff can work through the training at their own pace. They have time to read, think and test out ideas in their own workplace as they go. The learning becomes part of daily practice, making it easier for new ideas to take hold and real change to happen. Today, the impact of our online courses can be felt in libraries across five continents.

Meet Rachel All courses →
The Opening the Book training team - Anne Downes, Rachel Van Riel and Fiona Edwards.
  • Anne Downes Senior Trainer
  • Rachel Van Riel Founder & Director
  • Fiona Edwards Online training lead
  • 35 Years since 1991
  • 25k+ Library staff trained worldwide
  • 51 Countries UK to Uganda
  • 5 Continents across the world

FOUNDER & DIRECTOR · SINCE 1991

Rachel Van Riel

Founder of Opening the Book. Responsible for the strategic direction of the company and leads all its activities.

FOUNDED OTB
1991
ROLE
Strategic direction · all activities
IN DEMAND AS
Conference speaker

Background

Rachel started out as an academic, working in university and adult education. Her second career was in community arts - creating books and performances from the lives of ordinary people. Though she has always loved reading, Rachel landed in libraries by accident - and never looked back. In libraries, she discovered the community-based, flexible and open institutions she was looking for.

In founding Opening the Book, Rachel brought together her experience in university and adult education, where she learned that people have a hunger to be stretched; community arts, where she found that everyone enjoys expressing their own creative views; and libraries, where she discovered the institutions for the kind of audience development work she wants to do.

Founding Opening the Book

Since founding Opening the Book in 1991, Rachel has developed a substantial body of international work across cultural change, consultancy, research, programs, collection development, library furniture and new approaches to library interior design. Sometimes challenging as a ‘critical friend’ to libraries, Rachel is a passionate advocate for public libraries in the wider cultural and educational sector.

She is much in demand as a speaker and has addressed many national and international conferences. Rachel loves the creative satisfaction of making change happen - whether in transforming a space, planning a strategy, or motivating staff to experiment with new approaches.

Training: at the heart of OTB

Training was the starting point of Opening the Book and remains always at its heart. Rachel is closely involved in planning, structuring and writing our courses to deliver the same excitement and inspiration which she communicates as a speaker face-to-face. Empowering and motivating people in libraries to make change happen is the most important part of Opening the Book’s work.

SENIOR TRAINER · MENTOR · COURSE WRITER

Anne Downes

Connects the small step and the large picture. Has mentored hundreds of learners through our courses.

SPECIALISM
Personal mentoring
EARLIER CAREER
Cultural policy & PR
LED ROLLOUTS IN
UK · IE · AUS
BASED IN
Brighton, Sussex

What Anne brings

Anne is passionate about the power of learning to change people and institutions. She brings experience of cultural policy and strategy to support Opening the Book’s creation of relevant training content for public libraries.

Anne writes and develops our online training courses and is an experienced trainer. She has mentored hundreds of learners through a range of courses and supports large rollouts. she ensures that every one of our courses has a structured approach which will deliver new understanding and new practice.

Mentoring & Advanced courses

Anne leads in personal mentoring on our Advanced courses and enjoys working with the energetic, sharp and creative library staff she meets online. An eclectic reader, Anne led the way when Opening the Book first explored the relevance of the reader-centered approach to non-fiction as well as fiction.

She is impressed with the way that staff from libraries all over the world use our training to make change happen in their libraries.

Earlier career

Anne is especially interested in audience development and partnership working, and strengthening the public library’s capacity in these areas. Anne’s earlier career was in marketing and PR for literature - she has been a director of literature festivals as well as a literature officer in different sections of the UK funded arts sector. Her first career was as a director of Youth Enterprise, and she brings the energy of that world into creative course development for libraries too.

Beyond mentoring

Anne has created and managed large rollouts of training courses in the UK, Republic of Ireland and Australia which have established international standards for reader-centered work. She has also managed innovative projects for Opening the Book and developed links with European libraries. She combines an intellectual grasp of the large-scale with a sharp awareness of the key small steps which must be taken to get there - this ability to connect the small and large picture makes for really helpful mentoring.

COURSE AUTHOR · ONLINE TRAINING LEAD

Fiona Edwards

Lead on Opening the Book’s online training for both public and school libraries. Has mentored learners in many different countries.

FIRST CAREER
English & Drama teacher
WORKSHOPS DELIVERED
Hundreds, face-to-face
MENTORED LEARNERS IN
Australia → Egypt → Norway

Range of experience

Fiona has a wide range of experience in library training and library projects to promote reading for pleasure. She has delivered hundreds of face-to-face workshops for library services and, in recent years, has enjoyed the move online - where she can respond more flexibly to individual workplace contexts. Fiona has provided mentoring and support to learners in many countries from Australia to Egypt to Norway.

Fiona is the lead on Opening the Book’s online training courses for both public and school libraries, providing mentoring and support to learners in many different countries. Her previous background in teaching English and drama, and educational publishing, is highly relevant - but Fiona has enjoyed the move online, where she can respond to individual workplace contexts.

Education in her blood

Fiona is the lead in developing our courses for schools as education is in her blood. Her first career was as a teacher of English and Drama, and she also worked as an editor in educational publishing for a number of years as well as serving as a school governor.

Reader-in-residence

A lifelong reader, Fiona began her career association with public libraries as one of the world’s first Readers-in-Residence - creating groundbreaking programs to support and develop reading at Pontefract Library in the UK. She takes this on-the-ground experience into her support of online learners, with a clear understanding of how to make practical changes happen in a library context.

whichbook.net & library design

As the online editor of whichbook.net, our innovative book-choosing website, Fiona keeps up to date with publishing trends, supports whichbook readers and runs the Instagram account @whichbooknet. She is always looking for unusual books that readers don’t discover for themselves - and working with the whichbook team to share these books with readers via the unique website is the thing that gives her a real buzz.

Fiona also plays a key role in Opening the Book’s library design projects - especially in planning how library collections are mapped onto discovery layouts and working on detailed display and merchandising.

TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT · THE PLATFORM

Tristan Campbell

Leads the technical development of the Opening the Book platform. The courses and the technology that delivers them are designed together.

ROLE
Technical development lead
APPROACH
Courses and technology, designed together

Built in-house, like everything else

The platform these courses run on is designed and built in-house, with technical development led by Tristan. Courses and technology are developed together - it is why the interactive exercises, audio narration, accessibility tools and mentor feedback feel like one thing, rather than content poured into an off-the-shelf system.

Technology that serves the learning

Every feature starts from what helps a learner: reading tools to change text size and color theme, audio support, progress tracking you can trust, and a dashboard that makes mentoring personal. Because the technical team works alongside the authors, ideas move quickly from the page into the platform.

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