Richard Ovenden
Richard Ovenden, OBE
Richard Ovenden OBE has been Bodley’s Librarian (the senior Executive position of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) since 2014, and Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums, since 2022.
Prior to this he has held positions at Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh.
He was educated at the University of Durham and University College London, and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford.
He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019.
Richard serves as President of the Digital Preservation Coalition, and holds Fellowships of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has been elected to both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
He was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Durham University in 2024.
He writes extensively on libraries, archives and information management, and has published a monograph on the 19th century Scottish photographer John Thomson, co-edited the massive 17th century library catalogue of Samuel Jeake, co-edited a volume of essays honouring the writer and editor Christopher Tolkien, and most recently is the author of Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack (2020) which was BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week, and was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021.
He writes regularly for the Financial Times, The Atlantic, and Prospect.
