Monday, June 5, 2000
John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA

Cosponsored by NELINET Preservation Advisory Committee,
John F. Kennedy Library, and Northeast Document Conservation Center

Tim Berners-Lee
3Com (Computer Communication Compatibility) Founders Chair
at the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts

A graduate of Oxford University, England, Tim Berners-Lee now holds the 3Com Founders chair at the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He directs the World Wide Web Consortium, an open forum of companies and organizations with the mission to lead the Web to its full potential. With a background of system design in real-time communications and text processing software development, in 1989 he invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing, while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client (browser-editor) and server in 1990. Before coming to CERN, Tim worked with Image Computer Systems, of Ferndown, Dorset, England and before that a principal engineer with Plessey Telecommunications, in Poole, England.

Paul Conway
Head of Preservation
Sterling Memorial Library
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

Paul Conway has headed the Preservation Department at Yale University Library since 1992. Among his responsibilities at Yale, he chairs the Library Management Council and serves as operations manager for Project Open Book, a project exploring the feasibility of converting preservation microfilm frames to digital images. Prior to coming to Yale, Paul conducted research projects for three years at the National Archives, including a study of research use of archives and a review of how government agencies implement digital imaging and optical disk technology. During 1988 and 1989, he served as Preservation Program Officer for the Society of American Archivists in Chicago, where he carried out a nationwide survey of archival preservation programs. He began his professional career in 1977 as an archivist on the staff of the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has a Masters Degree in History and a Ph.D. in Information and Library Studies, both from the University of Michigan. Paul is widely published on preservation topics and archival management. Most recently, his writing has focused on the challenges of preserving library resources in digital form.

Walt Crawford
Senior Analyst, Access Services Officer, and Information Architect
Research Libraries Group
Mountain View, California

Walt Crawford is an information architect at the Research Libraries Group, Inc. (RLG), in Mountain View, California. Crawford has been a full-time professional in library automation since 1968, at RLG since 1979. His most recent projects at RLG are Eureka on the Web, a user-oriented search service, and involvement in a range of new digital initiatives including Museum Resources. Crawford was president of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of the American Library Association, in 1992/93. He received the 1995 LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Continuing Education, the 1997 ALCTS/Blackwell Scholarship Award (for Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality, coauthored by Michael Gorman), and the 1998 Gale Group Online Information Authorship Award (for "Paper Persists" in the January 1998 Online Magazine). Crawford has written fourteen books and more than 180 articles on libraries, technology, publishing, and personal computing, and speaks a few times a year on the future of libraries and media and on technology-related topics (with more than 75 speeches to date). His articles and columns currently appear in American Libraries, eContent Magazine, Library Hi Tech News, and Online Magazine. His most recent book is Being Analog: Creating Tomorrow's Libraries (ALA Editions, 1999).

Megan Desnoyers
Archivist
John F. Kennedy Library
Boston, Massachusetts

Megan Desnoyers, Archivist of the John F. Kennedy Library, received her profession's most prestigious honor when she was named a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) at the Society's annual meeting in Chicago, IL, August 28, 1997. The distinction of Fellow is awarded to a limited number of individuals in the nation for their outstanding contribution to the archival profession. Desnoyers was praised for her work as a teacher, a mentor of young people entering the profession and for her significant contribution to the collection and preservation of valuable historical materials across the nation. A resident of Stow, Massachusetts, Desnoyers began her archival career in 1969 at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, NY. In 1970, she went to work for the John F. Kennedy Library when it was temporarily housed in Waltham, MA and from there to Columbia Point when the Kennedy Library opened in 1979. Desnoyers is responsible for the Library's acquisitions and for the processing of collections. For nine years she was also curator of the Ernest Hemingway Collection, which is housed at the Kennedy Library. Desnoyers is a graduate of Vassar College and received her Masters in Library Science from Rutgers University. A member of the New England Archivists, Megan serves on the Archives Advisory Commission for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and on the State Historical Records Advisory Board for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Fynnette Eaton
Director of the Technical Services Division
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Washington, D.C.

Fynnette Eaton currently serves as Director of the Technical Services Division within the Smithsonian Institution Archives. She joined the Smithsonian to establish an electronic records program at the SI Archives. Previously, she served as Chief of the Technical Services Branch at the Center for Electronic Records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where she was responsible for developing a preservation program for electronic records created by Federal agencies. Other work experience as an archivist at the National Archives included positions in the Office of Presidential Libraries and the Documentation Standards Staff. She has presented papers and is the author of articles on the preservation of electronic records at the National Archives. She was selected as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists in 1995 and received the IAC/IRM Technology Excellence Award in 1996 for designing the Archival Preservation System at NARA. She has a B.A. and M.A. in History from the University of Maryland and attended the NAGARA Advanced Institute for Government Archivists on Archival Administration in the Electronic Information Age, Pittsburgh (1992 & 1993) and the National Defense University, IRM College, Advanced Management Program (1997).

Arnold Hirshon
Executive Director
NELINET
Newton, Massachusetts

Arnold Hirshon has been the Executive Director of NELINET (the New England Library Information Network) since April 1999. NELINET is a library consortium that promotes library technology development and resource sharing among nearly 600 academic, public, and corporate libraries throughout New England. From 1995 to 1999 Hirshon served as Vice Provost for Information Resources at Lehigh University, where he was responsible for the University libraries, computing, telecommunications, and media services. At Lehigh, Hirshon led the strategic planning and restructuring process to integrate the computing and library functions, spearheaded a university-wide effort to improve the enterprise-wide (administrative) information systems, instituted Lehigh's charter membership in Internet 2, and initiated a large-scale expansion of electronic library information resources. Hirshon was also the founder and first chairperson of the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI), which led the development of a statewide virtual union catalog user-initiated lending system.

Jan Merrill-Oldham
Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian
Preservation at Harvard
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Jan Merrill-Oldham, Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian, directs the work of the Weissman Preservation Center in the Harvard University Library, and the Preservation & Imaging Services Department in the Harvard College Library. Together, these programs provide conservation, microfilming, digitizing, photography, and consulting services to the more than 90 libraries at Harvard. Over the course of her career, Jan has chaired and served on a wide range of preservation planning and advisory committees and task forces for the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, Library of Congress, the Commission on Preservation and Access, and other organizations. She has lectured widely, served as a consultant to institutions and professional organizations, and authored and edited more than 40 publications. She earned ALA's Esther Piercy Award in 1990 and an award for distinguished service to the University of Connecticut in 1994. Recent publications include: Selecting Research Collections for Digitization (Council on Library and Information, 1999) and "The Conservation of General Collections," in the American Library Association's newly published compilation, Preservation: Issues and Planning (edited by Paul Banks and Roberta Pilette).

Jeff Rothenberg
RAND
Santa Monica, California

"CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) commissioned Dr. Jeff Rothenberg, senior research scientist of the RAND Corporation, to write Avoiding Technological Quicksand to follow up his 1995 article in Scientific American, "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents" by elaborating on his proposal for emulating obsolete software/hardware systems on future, unknown systems as a means of preserving digital information far into the future." - Preservation & Access International Newsletter, no. 5, March 1999.

"Jeff Rothenberg is a senior computer scientist in the social policy department of the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif. He received a master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin in 1969 and then spent the next four years working toward a doctorate in artificial intelligence. His research has included work in modeling theory, investigations into the effects of information technology on humanities research, and numerous studies involving information technology policy issues. His passions include classical music, traveling, photography and sailing." - Scientific American, January 1995, v. 272, no. 1, pp. 42-47, "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents," by Jeff Rothenberg. An updated version of "Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents", is available on the CLIR Website.

Ann Russell
Executive Director
Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)

Ann Russell has been the Executive Director of NEDCC since 1978. She is currently the Chairman of the Association of Regional Conservation Centers. Russell is the co-author of two books on preservation, and has served on the Board of Directors of the National Institute for Conservation of Cultural Property and of the Intermuseum Conservation Association. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Brandeis University and an undergraduate degree from Harvard University.

Updated April 23, 2000