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After earning a Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees in history from Portland State University, Scott Cline started his career as an archivist working for the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland as a Jewish History Specialist. Today Cline works as the City Archivist and director of the Seattle Municipal Archives—a position he’s held since 1985. Cline’s tenure with the city’s archives has been long and marked with distinction. His work to engage people from all walks of life was instrumental in making the Seattle Municipal Archives into a nationwide model for effective archival programs. His highly regarded work even led the Seattle City Council to proclaim August 30, 1999, as Scott Cline Day. Cline is also an award-winning author who has added to the archival canon with his insightful and probing contributions to the professional literature. As one nominator wrote, “Scott’s writing intertwines philosophy and religion into archival theory and practice and pushes us to consider the deeper meanings of our work.”
Peter Gottlieb earned a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1977, and since his first archival position, his career has shown a progression of increased professional responsibility and commitment to his institutions and the profession at large. Gottlieb is best known for his work as the state archivist of Wisconsin, a position he held from 1991 until his retirement in 2010. As state archivist, he served with distinction and vision, urging his staff and profession to effectively handle the transition from paper to electronic records. In the position, Gottlieb also developed the Wisconsin State Historical Records Advisory Board into one of the most productive and active of any in the United States. Gottlieb also has been an enthusiastic and invaluable archives advocate. One nominator wrote, “For [Gottlieb], it has never been about power or glory, it is about his responsibility to a profession for which he cares so deeply…he sets a model of professional involvement and integrity that we all would do well to follow.”
For fifteen years, Nancy Lenoil served as administrator of the highly regarded Western Archives Institute (WAI), an intensive two-week program that provides integrated instruction in basic archival practices to individuals with a variety of goals. In this position, Lenoil fostered the program’s growth and ensured that it continued to be a highly regarded program in the profession. She relinquished the position only when she became state archivist of California, but she continues her association with the WAI as a faculty member. Additionally, in 2003–2005, Lenoil brought her insight, experience, and considerable depth of knowledge about the needs and challenges facing the archives profession to her service on the Working Group for the A*CENSUS. Lenoil’s essay “A*CENSUS: Archival Census & Continuing Education Needs Survey in the United States: Report on Continuing Education” (The American Archivist, Fall/Winter 2006) won wide recognition and praise. Colleagues well beyond California also recognized her ability when they elected her to SAA's Nominating Committee and later to the SAA Council. In these professional leadership positions, Lenoil contributed, in one nominator's words, through “her willingness to share her experience, insights, and passion for archives” with everyone she encounters.
Ben Primer has been an archivist since 1981, when he began his long and successful archival career as a project administrator for the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project. Since that appointment, he has held positions with increasingly more responsibility, and today serves as the associate university librarian for rare books and special collections in the Princeton University Libraries system, where he has worked since 1990. In this position, he directs an internationally acclaimed department that consists of five different units comprising more than fifty professional and staff employees. Primer, who holds a PhD in history from Johns Hopkins University, also has made contributions in the area of strategic planning and development. Specifically, he has been immensely successful in fundraising at Princeton, securing major grant funding from NHPRC, NEH, the Delmas Foundation, and the New Jersey Historical Commission. One nominator wrote, “I think his greatest contribution to the profession is his indefatigable optimism for accomplishing what needs to be done.”
Timothy D. Pyatt has held distinguished positions in the field for more than twenty-five years. He has served in both archival and rare book positions, as well as university archivist at University of Maryland–Baltimore County and Duke University. He was director of processing for the Maryland State Archives, and curated rare book and manuscript collections at the University of Maryland–College Park, the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and at Duke University. Today he serves as the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and Head of the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State University. Pyatt’s publications and presentations reflect significant breadth and depth. His articles have appeared in Rare Books and Manuscripts Librarianship and the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and he has authored contributions to several SAA books, including Privacy and Confidentiality Perspectives: Archivists and Archival Records (2005), New Skills for a Digital Era (2007), and both Campus Case Studies and College and University Archives: Reading in Theory and Practice (2008). Pyatt has also made major contributions to several professional organizations, most notably SAA. Within SAA, Pyatt has chaired the College and University Archives Section, the Privacy and Confidentiality Roundtable, and the Committee on Ethics and Professional Conduct (CEPC).