Seamus Ross

Professor

Phone: 416-978-5763
Skype: seamus.ross

Email: seamus.ross@utoronto.ca

Office: BL 648

Seamus Ross is Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and served as Dean for seven years (2009-2015). During 2015 and 2016 he served as Interim Director of The Centre for Culture and Technology. Before joining Toronto, he was Professor of Humanities Informatics and Digital Curation and Founding Director of HATII (Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute) at the University of Glasgow (1997-2009).

During 2016 and 2017 he is Visiting Professor at School of Information Sciences and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business (Athens) and Visiting Scientist at the Digital Curation Unit of the IMIS Athena Research Centre.

Dr. Ross served as Associate Director of the Digital Curation Centre in the U.K. (2004-2009) and was Principal Director of ERPANET (2001-2004) and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) (2006-2009). He was a co-principal investigator on such projects as the DELOS Digital Libraries Network of Excellence (2004-2007), Planets (2006-2010), and Digicult Forum (2002-2004). Dr. Ross was Assistant Secretary (Information Technology) at the British Academy in London (1990-1997).

Research Description

Dr. Ross’s scholarly research has focused on Digital Preservation/Curation digital humanities,Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), digitization, digital repositories, emulation, digital archaeology, semantic extraction and genre classification, cultural heritage informatics and knowledge representation and reasoning. See for instance his co-authored studies of “Digital Archaeology” and forensic storage formats, his examination of digital preservation and archival science, and his introduction to digital preservation, Changing Trains at Wigan. He also promotes broadening access to scholarship and was instrumental in the creation of the Digiman Animation Series by DigitalPreservationEurope (e.g., 2009 video Digital Preservation and Nuclear Disaster: An Animation ).

Dr Ross’s research has been supported such funding agencies as the European Commission’s funding programs, the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK, Heritage Lottery Fund (UK), and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Selected Publications

Y Kim and S Ross, 2015, “An Approach to Document Fingerprinting,” in R B Allen, et al. (eds.), Digital Libraries: Providing Quality Information, ICADL2015, LNCS9469, pp.107-119, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-27974-9 11 Proceedings of the 17th Asian Digital Library Conference ICADL 2015, December 9-12, 2015, Yonsei University, Seoul, KOR.

V Banos, Y Kim, S Ross, and Y Manolopoulos, 2013, “CLEAR: a credible method to evaluate website archivability,” in J Borbinha, M Nelson, and S Knight (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES2013), (Lisboa, PT: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal), September 2-6, 2013.

S Ross, 2012, “Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries,” New Review of Information Networking, 17(1), pp. 43 – 68.

Y Kim and S Ross, 2012, “Digital Forensics Formats: Seeking a Digital Preservation Storage Container Format for Web Archiving,”International Journal of Digital Curation, 7(2), pp. 21- 39.

Y.Kim and S Ross, 2011, “Formulating representative features with respect to genre classification,” Text, speech and language technology, 42, pp. 129 -147.

L Candela, G Athanasopoulos, D Castelli, K El Raheb, P Innocenti, Y Ioannidis, A Katifori, A Nika, G Vullo, and S Ross, 2011, The Digital Library Reference Model, DL.ORG EU Digital Libraries Project, Technical Report DL.ORG, Pisa, IT.

G Oliver, Y Kim, and S Ross, 2009, “Documentary genre and digital record-keeping: red herring or a way forward?,” Archival Science, 8 (4), pp. 295 – 305.

A Rusbridge and S Ross, 2008, “Ingest Strategies for Digital Libraries: the Challenges of Handling Portable Objects,” , IFLA2003 World Library and Information Congress, August 10-14, 2008, 74th IFLA, Quebec, CA.

A McHugh, S Ross, P Innocenti, R Ruusalepp, and H Hofman, 2008, “Bringing Self Assessment Home: Repository Profiling and Key Lines of Enquiry Within DRAMBORA,”International Journal of Digital Curation, 3(2), pp. 130-142.

S Jones, S Ross, and R Ruusalepp, 2008, “The Data Audit Framework: a Toolkit to identify research assets and improve data management in research led institutions,” Proceedings 5th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects (iPRES 2008). Joining up and working: Tools and Methods for Digital Preservation, September 29-30, 2008, British Library, London, UK, pp. 257-263.

A McHugh, S Ross, R Ruusaleep, and H Hofman, 2007, The Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA), 256 pages, (ISBN 978-1-906242-00-8).

S Ross, 2006, “Approaching Digital Preservation Holistically,” Information Management and Preservation, (Oxford: Chandos Press), pp.115-153, (ISBN 1843341867).

S Ross, M Donnelly, M Dobreva, D Abbott, A McHugh, and A Rusbridge, 2005, Core Technologies for the Cultural and Scientific Heritage Sector, DigiCULT Technology Watch Report 3, European Commission, 296 pages, (ISBN 92-894-5277-3).

S Ross, 2000, Changing Trains at Wigan: Digital Preservation and the Future of Scholarship, National Preservation Office (British Library), Occasional Publication, 44 pages, ISBN 0712347178.

S Ross and A Gow, 1999, Digital archaeology? Rescuing Neglected or Damaged Data Resources, (London & Bristol: British Library and Joint Information Systems Committee), (ISBN 1900508516).

Example Recent Presentations/Papers (last 12 months):

– [Invited talk], Enabling Digital Curation in the Context of Digital Repositories: Risk Assessment, Management and Mitigation. School of Information Sciences and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business, March 9, 2016, Athens, GR.

– [Keynote], Data Analytics and Digital Curation, ICADL 2015 (Asian Digital Library Conference), December 9-12, 2015, (December 11, 2015), Yonsei University, Seoul, KO.

– [Invited talk] The Digital Resilience and the Renewable Data Economy: Emerging approaches to data management across time, technologies, and socio-cultural environments, School of Information Resource Management, Renmin University of China, November 2, 2015. Beijing, CN.

– [Luojia Forum Lecture], Digital Resilience and the Renewable Data Economy: Emerging approaches to data management across time, technologies, and socio-cultural environments,118th Luojia Forum Lecture, Wuhan University, October 27, 2015, Wuhan, Hubei, CN.
Affiliations & Collaboration
2016

Visiting Professor at School of Information Sciences and Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business (Athens) and Visiting Scientist at the Digital Curation Unit of the IMIS Athena Research Centre.

Four Current Activities:
- Member, Advisory Board of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure, Phase 2, 2015-.
- Member, Europeana Research Advisory Board, 2015-
- Member, Standing Committee on Education and Training of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 2013-2017.
- Member, Steering Committee of Internet Archaeology, Apr 1995 – present. (Pioneering online journal focused on archaeology).
Examples of Completed Activities:
- Panel Member, Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel on Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution, 2013-15. Our report was published in Jan 2015.
- Panel Member and co-rapporteur (with F Guirao) for Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche (MESR) of the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe (CVCE), Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, 2012-13.
- Panel Member, Digital Humanities Observatory International Advisory Board of the Royal Irish Academy, 2008 – 2011.
- Member, Scientific Advisory Board of the Virtual Knowledge Studio for the Humanities and Social Sciences by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Mar 2006 – Mar 2011.

Seamus Ross

Seamus Ross

Research Description

Selected Publications

Affiliations & Collaboration