Archivist comes full circle

We're pleased to welcome a new member of staff to ARMMS, or, in this case, welcome back a former member of the team. Dr Jan Merchant takes up her post as Senior Archivist today, having previously been the Assistant Archivist at Perth and Kinross Council Archive. However, prior to that post Jan worked with us in various roles, latterly as Project Archivist for the Drawn Evidence project of the early 2000s.

Jan has a PhD from the University of Dundee and was one of the first students to undertake CAIS' Archives and Records Management programme by online distance learning, graduating in 2006. She is a CAIS Hon Teaching Fellow and has taught the module 'Archive Services, Access and Preservation' and supervised dissertations.

We're delighted that Jan is rejoining ARMMS after her extended sojourn in Perth and look forward to benefiting from her knowledge, experience and enthusiasm.

Storify - online responses to the 'Burden or Benefit?' conference

We've tried to capture some of the responses to yesterday's conference using Storify. If you weren't able to make it to Dundee you can get a flavour of how the day unfolded and some of the issues discussed here:

Burden or Benefit? New developments in information rights, communication and compliance

CAIS' latest conference, organised jointly with the Centre for Freedom of Information in the University's School of Law, took place yesterday and was a great success.

The attendees heard presentations from three information commissioners, a former information commissioner, the Keeper of the Records of Scotland, a Caldicott Guardian, an expert in the use of social technologies in business and a University Records Manager.

All the speakers were keen to engage with the themes of the conference and explore the tensions between developing information rights law, the need for openness and accountability, the protection of individual privacy and the potential burdens and benefits for organisations trying to cope with these competing demands.

It was a fantastic day and we would like to extend our thanks to all our speakers, chairs, attendees and colleagues who helped make the day so enjoyable and valuable.

L-R Christopher Graham, UK Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion, former Scottish Information Commissioner and Hon Prof, School of Law, Rosemary Agnew, Scottish Information Commissioner, Euan Semple, author and social business expert and Ken Macdonald, Assistant UK Information Commissioner (Scotland and NI)