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From Library Cards to 60 Staff: The Accidental Entrepreneur Who Built a Publishing Institution — Lesley Whyte of Bibliographic Data Services
Episode 188
Monday, 12 October, 2026
Lesley Whyte didn't set out to be an entrepreneur. She was studious, academic, and fully expected a career inside universities. What she didn't expect was that a job in Dumfries, a chance meeting with an IT-minded colleague named Eric, and a radical idea about how libraries could access information would lead her to co-found a business that now employs 60 people and underpins how libraries and publishers across the UK work every day.Bibliographic Data Services — BDS — provides metadata for books, music, film, and computer games to libraries, retailers, and e-tailers. It's a niche that didn't really exist when Lesley started out in 1987, and a business model she and Eric had to essentially invent. When they launched in late 1994, the internet was barely a word most people had heard — and yet it was the internet that made BDS possible.In this episode, Lesley talks honestly about the confidence she didn't have as a young woman, the slow accumulation of experience and self-belief that changed everything, and why she thinks women need to stop standing in each other's way. She also shares one of the more striking stories you'll hear on this show — her mother's reaction when Lesley announced she was starting a business.This is a conversation about the long game: building something over three decades, finding the right co-founder, adapting to technology, and choosing, every time, to believe that what you're doing has value — even when the people closest to you aren't so sure.How BDS got started in 1994 — and why the internet made it possible when nothing else would haveThe Princess Diana publishing story: how BDS proved its model on the day the world changedCo-founding with Eric — a partnership that has lasted 30 years and never had a dull momentWhy Lesley had no idea she was an entrepreneur until she was already oneThe mother who said "the last thing you need is to start a business" — and the church member who called it criminalWhy women are sometimes the least supportive of other women — and what Lesley thinks we should do about itAI at BDS: using it to cut the laborious work while protecting the human expertise that makes metadata valuable"Be brilliant" — the mantra John gave Lesley that she now uses with her whole teamQuote of the episode: "If we don't allow women to advance, then what's the point in educating them?" — Lesley Whyte
