I work in open source software development in UK Higher Education having previously worked in IT and librarianship for many years. I am an experienced solutions architect and a full-stack LAMP developer (Linux, Apache/Nginx, MySQL/MariaDB, and Python/PHP) with working knowledge of Python, PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS with some experience of Perl, Java, and C#.

As of August 2024, I am producing a newsletter discussing open source software and my work in open source. You can read and subscribe at opensauce.simonxix.com.

major projects

Open Book Futures (2023-05 to present): Open Book Futures is a project to significantly expand key infrastructures created by Copim to achieve a step change in how community-owned open access book publishing is delivered. As part of this project, I am maintaining some project infrastructure and developing new experimental book publishing applications.

Copim (2020-08 to 2023-04): Copim was a project to build community-owned, open systems and infrastructures for open access book publishing. As part of the Copim project, I contributed to Work Package 6 on experimental book publishing by developing new web applications and solutions for experimental pilot projects and for the Experimental Publishing Compendium. I also maintained the project’s infrastructure of Linux-based open source applications including the website, version control platform, and online document storage and collaboration platform.

Soas Library Systems Replacement (2014-09 to 2015-07): In 2011, the Bloomsbury Library Management System consortium came together to discuss their shared need for new, next-gen library management systems. As a result of these discussions, Soas Library pursued a project to replace its legacy, proprietary library systems with next-gen open source replacements. I worked on a project team to implement VuFind as a library catalogue and discovery system, OLE as a library management system, and SobekCM as a digital asset management system.

repositories

GitHub

GitHub Gist

experiments

onion service version of this website

graphing my carbon usage

remixing D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover using public domain characters

displaying when my local trains are

generating a random heist story from Wikidata

picking a random flavour of tea

generating a random poem

generating a random poem based on dialogue from Twin Peak's Invitation to Love

@EveryDune, a Twitter bot tweeting the name of a random character from Frank Herbert's Dune everyday

certifications

ITIL Foundation certification in IT Service Management

Intermediate Certification in Enterprise & Solution Architecture

Practitioner Certification in Enterprise & Solution Architecture

experience as a PRINCE2 Registered Practitioner

publications and presentations

This list of publications and presentations is auto-generated from my Zotero library using the Zotero API.

Bowie, Simon. 2024. ‘The British Library Hack Is a Warning for All Academic Libraries’, LSE Impact of Social Sciences <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/03/19/the-british-library-hack-is-a-warning-for-all-academic-libraries/>
Alcott, Louisa May, and David Richardson. 2024. Little Women (Improved by Men), ed. by Simon Bowie (changes) <https://doi.org/10.21428/03cb2075.6c9fc504>
Lawrence, D. H., and Simon Bowie. 2024. Lady Mouse’s Lover (changes) <https://doi.org/10.21428/03cb2075.01eef942>
Bowie, Simon. 2023. ‘Protecting User Privacy on the COPIM Project’, Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) <https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.a7eb2e1a>
Bowie, Simon. 2023. ‘Glasgow Short Film Festival 2023’, TAKE ONE <https://takeonecinema.net/2023/glasgow-short-film-festival-2023/>
Bowie, Simon. 2022. ‘Free and Open-Source Software as (Non-)Liberatory Technology’ (presented at the Centre for Postdigital Cultures 2022 Annual Conference, Coventry, UK: Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University) <https://www.eventsforce.net/cugroup/frontend/reg/thome.csp?pageID=218301&ef_sel_menu=3741&eventID=780>
Adema, Janneke, Simon Bowie, Marcell Mars, and Tobias Steiner. 2022. Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing (2022 Update) (COPIM) <https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.1792b84f>
Bowie, Simon. 2022. ‘Auto-Invitation’, in Invitation to Love, The 6ress, 3, p. 6 <https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1144886005/issue-3-invitation-to-love?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details>
Sanders, Kevin, and Simon Bowie. 2020. ‘Open or Ajar? Openness within the Neoliberal Academy’ (Preprints) <https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202001.0240.v1>
Bowie, Simon, and Kevin Sanders. 2019. ‘Open or Ajar?: “openness” within the Neoliberal Academy’ (presented at the Open Repositories 2019, Hamburg, Germany) <https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/31178/>
Bowie, Simon. 2018. ‘Systems of Revolt: Open Systems for Open Knowledge’ (presented at the Open Access Week at Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK) <https://blog.simonxix.com/systems-of-revolt/>
Barron, Simon. 2018. ‘Systems of Revolt: Open Systems for Open Knowledge’ (presented at the UKSG 41st Annual Conference and Exhibition, Glasgow, UK) <https://blog.simonxix.com/systems-of-revolt/>
Mendias, Claudia, and Simon Barron. 2018. ‘New Directions for Discovery Services’ (presented at the OCLC EMEA Regional Council Meeting 2018, Edinburgh, UK)
Barron, Simon, and Andrew Preater. 2018. ‘Critical Systems Librarianship’, in The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship (Sacramento, California: Library Juice Press), pp. 87–113 <https://doi.org/10.17613/4fex-9p24>
Barron, Simon. 2017. ‘Opening the Black Box: Ethical Issues in Systems Librarianship’ (presented at the Lecture for City University London LIS students, London, UK)
Barron, Simon. 2015. ‘Using Free and Open Source Software to Open Data’ (presented at the Internet Librarian International 2015, London, UK) <https://www.slideshare.net/simonxix/using-free-and-open-source-software-to-open-data>
Barron, Simon. 2015. ‘Implementing Kuali OLE at SOAS Library’, Ariadne <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/74/barron/>