Richard Ovenden was educated at Durham University and University College London, and has worked as a professional librarian since 1985. He has served on the staff of Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland (as Deputy Head of the Rare Books Section), at the University of Edinburgh (as Director of Collections), and now at the Bodleian Library Oxford (as Keeper of Special Collections and Associate Director of Oxford University Library Services).

He sits on JISC’s Content Services Committee and Digitization Advisory Group, is a Board Member of the Digital Preservation Coalition and serves on numerous other boards and committees. He has published widely on the history of collecting, the history of photography and on professional concerns of the library, archive, and information world. He currently head of Oxford’s involvement with the Google mass digitization project. He holds a Professorial Fellowship at St Hugh’s College, Oxford.