Until January 2012 Michael Ridley was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Librarian at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada). Currently, on sabbatical, he is writing a “book-like-thing” on literacy, completing a graduate degree in higher education, editing Access (the magazine of the Ontario Library Association), teaching, and consulting with a number of professional organizations.

Ridley has been a professional librarian since 1979 working at a variety of positions at the University of Guelph, the Health Sciences Library at McMaster University, and the University of Waterloo. In 1995 he returned to the University of Guelph as the Chief Librarian and in 2004 was named the CIO.

Ridley has served as the President of the Canadian Association for Information Science, President of the Ontario Library Association, and Chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries. I have been a member of the Board of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN),and the Canadian University Council of CIOs (CUCCIO). Currently he is serving on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION).

In 2007 Ridley was named “Academic Librarian of the Year” by the Ontario College and University Library Association (OCULA), a division of the Ontario Library Association (OLA). In 2008 he was awarded the newly renamed Larry Moore OLA Distinguished Service Award from the Ontario Library Association. In 2010 I was honoured to be awarded the Miles Blackwell Award for Outstanding Academic Librarian by the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (a division of the Canadian Library Association).

In 2013 Ridley was presented with the 2013 Outstanding Alumni Award from the Faculty of Information Alumni Association (FIAA), University of Toronto.