Vol. 19, No. 12

Nov. 18, 1999

Archivist receives top,
international honor in field

Jean K. Brown, director of records management and archival services, has been named a fellow of ARMA International, becoming only the 23rd fellow to be named from the organization's membership of 10,000 information management professionals worldwide. She received the honor Oct. 19 at ARMA International's annual awards ceremony in Cincinnati. Brown has been a member of ARMA since 1979, the same year she joined UD as a records management analyst. In 1988, she was made acting director of University Archives, and in 1990 she became director. Currently, she manages the campus-wide records management program and assists faculty and staff, as well as local, national and international scholars in using the University's historical records for their research. "We've got some wonderful things here in the UD archives," Brown said, "including quite an interesting photograph collection that has been used extensively by scholars both inside and outside the University." She also manages the University's permanent art collection and serves on the Committee for Information Resource Planning and Management and the Risk Management Advisory Council. ARMA names no more than three fellows a year, and those elected to the honor must first be nominated, have that nomination supported by two other ARMA members and then extensively document their professional accomplishments and ARMA service. "I've been in the organization for 20 years and had lots of responsibilities, but I never thought of my work as leading to a specific honor-I was just doing my job," Brown said. "What was especially gratifying was to be nominated and have the nomination supported by three people whose work I greatly admire, people, moreover, from outside my local chapter; we have worked on some national projects together, but don't see each other every day." Since 1995, Brown has chaired ARMA's Publications Editorial Board. ARMA typically publishes six to eight titles every year and brokers others of interest to those in the information management field. "Every organization has records to be managed," she explained. "Knowledge management is an area of growing concern to corporations, so we brought out three titles last year targeted to this audience, such as Jan Duffy's Harvesting Experience: Reaping the Benefits of Knowledge, which is designed to help corporations manage their knowledge base so as to extract from it maximum market value." Brown holds a bachelor's degree in international relations and a master's degree in liberal studies, both from UD. -Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay