National Archives Chief Scoops IWR's Top Award

Natalie Ceeney, Chief Executive of The National Archives, was named ‘IWR Information Professional of the Year’ at the recent Online Information Conference 2008. The announcement was made by IWR Editor, Peter Williams, at a presentation ceremony attended by past winners and judges.

The judging committee, all former winners of this prestigious award, Roddy McLeod, Karen Blakeman, Neil Infield, Euan Semple and Brian Kelly were both impressed with the quantity and quality of entries. Selecting a winner proved to be so difficult that the judges decided to take the unprecedented step of awarding a commendation to another information professional in addition to the overall winner.

Peter Williams explained the rationale behind the decision to bestow this honour upon Ceeney, “In 2005, Natalie Ceeney became the 16th Keeper of the Public Records – or, as she prefers to be known, Chief Executive of The National Archives and Head of Profession for Knowledge and Information Management for Government. This shift in the job title reflects the significant change that has taken place at The National Archives over the last three years. Natalie says that information should be seen as the third corporate asset behind money and people. She believes that the information management professionals need to ‘talk the language of business’ and that communicating effectively and arguing persuasively should be an essential part of an information mangers’ skill-set. She also strongly believes that information management should be seen as a strategic issue and part of every civil servant’s job, just as IT is. Through her role as Head of the Profession for Information and Knowledge Management, Natalie is playing a vital role in influencing this position, thus ensuring information professionals are able to meet the changing and complex challenges in the management and exploitation of information. She is a worthy winner.” Erica Stoddart, Director of Corporate Services and Finances at the National Archives collected the award on Natalie’s behalf.

A commendation also went to Open University Lecturer, Tony Hirst. Commenting on the recognition, IWR's Editor said, “Tony describes himself as someone working from ‘outside’ who is trying to encourage and cajole members of the profession to look at the future around us and start thinking about how it might impact on everyday workflow when the 2.0 way of doing things is the norm. His work includes his blog, twitter stream and tip pick bookmarks, though to work on library website analytics, mash-up education and repository mining. He engages in debates about rights and advocates the use of RSS for all sorts of syndications – he is another worthy winner.”