At the end of June, Research IT said farewell and best of luck to Glen Jackson, our colleague who retired after more than 20 years of service to UC Berkeley. Glen was the last remaining original team member of the Museum Informatics Project, an initiative that set out in the early 1990's to develop a world-class facility and team to support museum informatics solutions for the UC Berkeley campus and beyond.
While working for the Museum Informatics Project (MIP), Glen developed much-needed solutions to challenging data and digital asset management problems and acquired deep skills in numerous areas, such as digital library systems and collections informatics. In addition, he served as both system and database administrator for the team. As the MIP effort begin to wind down in the late 2000's, Glen's role shifted to support the CollectionSpace program on campus. Glen's knowledge and understanding of collections-based research and management, operating systems, databases, and – most importantly – the day-to-day operations and challenges faced by museums, made him an indispensable resource as UC Berkeley deployed CollectionSpace for five campus collections.
While the loss of Glen's technical contributions leaves a major gap, it is Glen's sense of humor, his dedication, and his deep well of patience will be missed most. Glen would have retired a year earlier, but he wanted to be sure that several collections and systems were safely migrated to new platforms, managed by a team of professionals, before he turned over responsibility to their new custodians. It is this dedication and heart that distinguished Glen.
Nancy Goldman, head of the Pacific Film Archive (PFA) Library, says, "Our successful CineFiles project is due in large part to Glen’s efforts from the start to help develop and maintain it. He solved every problem thrown at him in short order and with good humor – sometimes even in the middle of the night! Thank you Glen for your dedication and expertise."
Glen: from all of us in Research IT, best of luck and happy travels!
(In the photo that accompanies this article, Glen shuts down the last server he administered for the Museum Informatics Project.)