Richard Charkin

Richard Denis Paul Charkin OBE (born 17 June 1949) is a British publishing executive.

Charkin’s educational history is extensive – he acquired an MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College at Cambridge, was a member of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School, and even earned the title of Supernumerary Fellow of Green College at Oxford.

Career wise, Charkin has been active in the publishing field since 1972, notable for his 11-year-long run as Bloomsbury Press’ Executive Director as well as his presidency with the IPA and UK PA respectively.

As of late, he resides as Bloomsbury China’s President, as well as the non-executive director of Liverpool University Press and the Institute of Physics Publishing.

Many members of the Press wondered if Charkin’s successful ruminations would lead to the end of the Print, worrying that the introduction of the “New OED” project would far exceed the popularity of the original edition.

Charkin and the University Press agreed that, after this Edition, they could finally begin expanding upon the long-awaited distribution of CD-ROMs containing OED text.

In 1992, this was made a reality, thanks to the efforts of Charkin, alongside John Simpson, Ed Weiner, the Tim Benbow, Julia Swanell and more.

The Internet was still not a public tool at this point, making CD availability a big deal for readers and editors alike.

This was achieved through the project team’s painstaking effort of manually inputting the whole text of the OED, a personal choice that was made to honour the traditional print-based method.

Charkin’s willingness to push the Press in a bigger and bolder direction gave the team confidence to see the digitization project through, an accomplishment that evolved the art of lexicography and paved the way for the future of online publication.