Get To Know the Candidates for the 2012 AT/Archon RT Steering Committee Election

CANDIDATES FOR VICE-CHAIR

Rand Boyd (Archivists' Toolkit)
Special Collections & Archives Librarian
Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives 

Rand Boyd, Special Collections & Archives Librarian, received a Bachelor’s degree in History from Chapman University and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from San Jose State University. He is the rare book and map cataloger and is responsible for collection development, preservation and conservation of the collections in the Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections and Archives. He has published and presented on local history as well as the challenges of engaging faculty with special collections. He is also a Certified Archivist and is currently the archivist for the California Academic and Research Libraries Association. 

Candidate Statement:

 My name is Rand Boyd and I am running for the Vice-chair for the ATART steering committee. I am enthusiastic about this opportunity because I have been using Archivists' Toolkit for five years now and it has completely turned around my repository so I am quite the cheerleader for the software. This is an important committee that requires good leadership, something I can provide. Please consider me as you vote. Thanks.

Sasha Griffin (Archon)
Project Archivist
Luther College

Sasha Griffin is the Project Archivist at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where she has been responsible for using Archon to create a single catalog of archival materials at Luther College and Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum.  She has her MLIS from Kent State University and a BA in History from Capital University.  Sasha has previous served as Liaison Coordinator and Steering Committee Member for the Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Roundtable.  

Candidate Statement:

For the last 18 months, I have been working with Archon to create a catalog (http://nordic.luther.edu) of Norwegian American archival resources at two separate institutions.  My experiences have included managing the creation of inventories for over 2,000 linear feet of archival materials, creating and importing .csv spreadsheet into the database, contracting a web designer and graphic designer, and documenting the Archon project through a blog (http://JourneystoAmerica.blogspot.com).  

I am enthusiastic about community learning and believe in the efficiency and productivity of collaborating with peers.  Last year, I organized a MAC-area Archon users group that met during the 2011 conference and I am currently assisting in the planning of an Archon Day to be held this summer in order to again bring together regional users to share ideas and experiences.  As part of ATART, I would love to create an aggregate spreadsheet that compiles organization's Archon URL and contact info so that others can see different instances and can readily contact the appropriate administrators with questions, comments, or compliments.  This contact sheet could also serve to connect geographically-close users to help start their own regional user groups and meet ups.

CANDIDATES FOR WEB LIAISON

Michelle Belden (Archivists' Toolkit)
Access Archivist 
Penn State University Special Collections Library 

Michelle Belden is currently Access Archivist and IT Coordinator at the Penn State University Special Collections Library; she will be transitioning to Processing Coordinator in September 2012. Michelle earned her MLS with a concentration in archives from UNC Chapel Hill in 2006. She then worked as Manuscript Curator, Interim Curator of the Women Veterans Historical Project, and Technical Services Archivist at UNC Greensboro, before moving to Penn State in 2009.

Candidate statement:

I have worked with Archivists' Toolkit at two different institutions, and in each scenario the support of developers and other users was instrumental in my institution’s success with the tool. I look forward to the merger of AT and Archon into ArchivesSpace, and feel a lot of optimism about the final product (understanding that there will never be a finally-final product, as it will continue to grow and change!) I have also maintained websites for both UNCG and Penn State Special Collections, and in fact began working with HTML, CSS, and content usability back in the 90’s when working for a dotcom startup in San Francisco. I would love to contribute to the future success of community-driven archival database software by helping maintain the online space for our community to share information about these two projects as they merge into one. Thanks for your consideration.

Tom Creighton
CTO and Chief Architect
Family Search 

Tom Creighton has more than 30 years' experience in software and systems engineering.Over the past 15 years he has contributed as principal engineer, architect, or lead architect on a variety of IT projects. His experience centers around creating scalable IT systems supporting large data sets and providing access across the Internet to 10s of thousands of concurrent users. He is currently working as CTO and Chief Architect at Family Search, the largest global genealogical society. In this role he has critical architectural responsibility for the systems built by Family Search to enable genealogical research. This includes infrastructure, software, and system design to support search across billions of vital records, access to digital images of vital records comprising petabytes of storage, and management of a combined pedigree system holding more than a billion individual records all interconnected by lineage relationships. Tom earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Brigham Young University, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. He is a member of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA), The Open Group (creator of TOGAF), and The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Tom's professional interests include management of large data sets and creation of scalable, distributed systems. He has a keen interest in creation of distributed systems based on the representational state transfer (REST) architectural style. In addition, he is very interested in and involved with development of technology and techniques to support long-term archival storage of digital data.