Life Stories
David John Thornton Ball
David John Thornton Ball (1968 BA Modern Languages) died on 15 May 2025 aged 74.
David came from King Edward VI Grammar School, Handsworth, to specialise in German at Keble, where he may be remembered as much for his obdurate defence at bar football as for his extensive cultural sweep. Ever-willing to discuss Schiller or Goethe with friends who had never heard of either, he invariably left them feeling slightly better educated. He played Bruch and Albinoni endlessly on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the air in his room thick with smoke from his Holmesian pipe. He rowed at four in the college 6th VIII in the 1970 Summer Eights (see A Larkin) but was not by instinct an athlete.
After graduating David took up librarianship, becoming a graduate trainee at the renowned Mitchell Library in Glasgow, later gaining a post-graduate diploma from Aberystwyth. In 1985 he took a Masters degree in Literature at Strathclyde, reflecting his continued interest in German literature – Goethe’s Faust and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus in particular.
During David’s career, the ancient craft of Librarianship rapidly evolved into Information Science and David soon took a leadership role. In 1987 he was appointed Head of Library Services for the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times newspapers, driving the digitisation of their photographs and press cutting collection: a ground-breaking process at the time. In 1994 he was appointed Librarian at newly-created Bournemouth University, where the team he led won prestigious awards for their work creating a brand-new facility. David had many significant academic publications to his name, the title of one arguably summarising his life work: Librarians as midwives of change in scholarly communication.
In 2014, David took early retirement and started his own consultancy company, specialising in scholarly communication, e-books, virtual learning environments and the design and management of academic libraries: he managed projects in Europe and the UK. He spent a year in Uganda, where he worked with the Coalition of Uganda University Libraries on Open Access policy development and implementation.
In 2019 David joined the team of volunteers in the Cathedral Library, Salisbury and as he reduced his consultancy work, he was also able to pursue some of his other hobbies, such as playing chess, bridge and backgammon. David enjoyed cooking, walking (hill walking in his early days) and birdwatching, and he had strong feelings about climate change and social justice and latterly, he joined the Green Party.
He leaves a wife, Margaret, daughter Helen and twin granddaughters, Kari and Skye.
Kindly provided by a College contemporary