Lee Dirks is the Director of Education & Scholarly Communications in Microsoft's External Research division, where he manages a variety of research programs related to open access to research data, interoperability of archives and repositories, preservation of digital information as well as the application of new technologies to facilitate teaching and learning in higher education. An 19-year veteran across multiple information management fields, Lee Dirks holds an M.L.S. degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as well as a post-masters degree in Preservation Administration from Columbia University. In addition to past positions at Columbia and with OCLC (Preservation Resources), he has held a variety of roles at Microsoft since joining the company in 1996 - namely as the corporate archivist, then corporate librarian, and as a senior manager in the corporate market research organization. In addition to participation on several (US) National Science Foundation task forces, he also teaches as adjunct faculty at the iSchool at the University of Washington, and serves on the advisory boards for the University of Washington Libraries as well as the iSchool's Master of Science in Information Science program.