mazel tov Dan!

Hey my pal Dan won an award from LITA, congrats Dan!

Chudnov led in the creation of two online communities (oss4lib and usrlib) and in the organization of successful hackfests at Access2003 and Access2004. He has been described by a colleague as “a continual source of new ideas, and seems to be able to effortlessly bring people together to collaborate.” Most recently, Chudnov led in the development of Unalog, an open source link sharing application that is finding wide usage and acceptance. Another colleague said, “no one is more influential in the area of Open Source software and the use of technology for social computing in libraries than Dan Chudnov.”

new us archivist

Without too much fanfare, Allen Weinstein became the Ninth Archivist of the United States last week. You might recall that the society of American Archivists expressed serious reservation with the process that brought Weinstein’s name to the table though they stopped short of opposing his appointment. More over at Daily Kos. It will be interesting to see what happens during his tenure.

[outgoing US Archivist] Carlin was dismissed right before Bush 41’s papers were to become available to the public under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act; this seems unlikely to be a coincidence. As someone working in a number of archives, I know from experience that it is VERY easy for an archivist to drag his/her feet on making a collection accessible; especially for a collection as massive as the files of a President’s Office, the archivist really has to want to release the files to get them out on time. Bush 43, as evidenced by his executive order earlier in his term extending restrictions on presidential papers, does not want this; in light of what appears to be an obviously political appointment, it will remain to be seen whether Dr. Weinstein will want it, or will be able to want it.