Seamus Ross is Director of Humanities Computing and Information Management at the University of Glasgow (http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk). He runs the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) which provides an academic undergraduate and postgraduate programme, carries out research in application of advanced technologies to arts, humanities and heritage sectors, manages the provision of infrastructure and computing services for the Faculty of Arts, oversees the development and management of the departmentally based teaching laboratories, and promotes collaborative IT-based research in the Faculty.  The Institute has launched a postgraduate programme of study in digital preservation for archivists, records managers, and digital librarians. The primary focus of his research is in the areas of digital preservation,  data recovery and the anthropology of cyberspace.

Before taking up this post he served as Assistant Secretary for Information Technology at the British Academy.  In this role he was responsible for the development of information technology services within the Academy, advising its Committees, Schools and Institutes abroad, and its Humanities Research Board on Information Technology matters, advising the projects it supports as well as managing the IT aspects of a dozen of them directly.  Before that he worked for a company specialising in expert systems and software development, first as a software engineer and then in a number of management roles. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford.

He has lectured and published widely on issues of information technology and digital preservation. His most recent publications include Digital archaeology? Rescuing neglected or damaged digital collections, (with Ann Gow), (London & Bristol: British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee, 1999); ‘The Expanding World of Electronic Information and the Past's Future', in Higgs, E, (ed.), Historians and Electronic Artefacts, (Oxford, 1998); and ‘Consensus, communication, and collaboration: fostering multidisciplinary cooperation in electronic records', in INSAR (Supplement II), Proceedings of the DLM-Forum on electronic records, (Brussels, 1997). Since 1996 he has acted as Information Communications and Technology advisor to the Heritage Lottery Fund and is a monitor for number of large ICT-based projects (e.g. museum applications, retroconversion of library and archival finding aids, and moving image projects) in the UK.  Among these are two projects developing digital library applications: Images of England and the Scottish Archives Network.

He is a member of a number of national and international organisations, steering groups, and project committees working in the area of digital preservation including the DLM-Monitoring Committee of the European Commission, Arts and Humanities Data Service for the United Kingdom Steering Committee (http://ahds.ac.uk), the Research Libraries Group's PRESERV Working Group on Preservation Issues of Metadata, and co-investigator in the InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems).  The InterPARES project is the leading international collaborative effort in the area of digital preservation.  It is developing the theoretical and methodological knowledge essential to the permanent preservation of records generated electronically, and, on the basis of this knowledge, formulating model policies, strategies, and standards capable of ensuring their preservation.