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Richard Ovenden has been Bodley’s Librarian (the senior executive position of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) since 2014. Prior to that, Ovenden held positions at Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh. He moved to the Bodleian in 2003 as Keeper of Special Collections, becoming Deputy Librarian in 2011. He was educated at the University of Durham and University College London, and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Society of Arts, and a Member of the American Philosophical Society.

Ovenden serves as Treasurer of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, as President of the Digital Preservation Coalition, and as a member of the Board of the Council on Library and Information Resources (in Washington, DC). He has written extensively on professional concerns of library and information management, on the history of photography, and has written a history of the deliberate destruction of knowledge, Burning the Books. Ovenden was awarded the OBE in The Queen’s Birthday Honours, 2019.