Dr Paul Ayris is the Director of Library Services at University College of London (UCL). UCL is strong in all areas of academic study and has an outstanding research record. The Library is represented on 16 sites and has important collections in Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Science, Technology and Medicine. UCL has one of the largest medical schools in Europe. UCL Library Services is developing to meet these needs and to expand as UCL itself grows within London. Dr Ayris is also an Honorary Lecturer at the UCL Department of Information Studies.

Dr Paul Ayris is also the Vice-President of LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche) and Secretary of the SPARC Europe Board. He chairs the OAI Organizing Committee for the Geneva Workshops on Scholarly Communication, and chaired the 2006 European Repositories meeting in Glasgow. He also chairs the JISC’s NHS-HE Content Procurement Group for the NHS-HE Forum. He is a member of the JISC's Journals Working Group, of the JISC’s Publishers Action Group, of the SCONUL/CILIP Health Strategy Group, the RLUK/SCONUL Joint Scholarly Communications Group, the RIN’s Research Communications Forum and the NSF-funded Blue Ribbon Task Force on economically-sustainable digital preservation.