Dr Kevin Ashley
Organisation
Digital Curation Center
Job title
Director of the Digital Curation Center
Biography
Kevin Ashley is Director of the Digital Curation Center. The DCC's mission is to develop capability and capacity for research data curation in UK organisations and to engage internationally in support of that aim. The DCC provides national services (for tasks such as data management planning), advice and guidance for researchers and service providers, training on many aspects of research data management, analysis and consultancy for individual institutions to develop and plan research data services. Kevin and other DCC staff also participate in European projects such as 4C, the Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation (4cproject.eu) and FOSTER, promoting open research methods (fosteropenscience.eu.) He serves on a number of advisory and guidance bodies in the field of digital preservation and research data infrastructure and is vice-chair of the Digital Preservation Coalition.
Kevin’s career has been spent in roles supporting research, primarily at organisations with national or international roles. He was formerly (1997-2010) Head of Digital Archives Department, University of London Computer Centre (ULCC) where his team delivered digital preservation and repository services to organisations including the UK National Archives, the British Library and AIM25, the collaborative network of over 100 archives in London. These services included NDAD, which captured, preserved and provided access to UK government datasets, the first service of its type in the world. He and his team also developed and delivered training in digital preservation, including the award-winning digital preservation training programme. He was a member of the RLG/NARA task force which developed the TRAC methodology for repository audit and was chair of JISC's Repositories and Preservation Advisory Group. He was previously involved in the development and standardisation of network protocols, active in bodies such as ANSI, BSI and EWOS. He began his career in a medical research unit devoted to innovative uses of IT in the support of clinical research and practice.