Hi Richard
I think I first met you back in 1984, when I visited the Museum Documentation Association, with Joan Smith, to discuss using GOS for cataloguing archives with Jennifer. What a long way Modes has come since then.
I can’t tell you how important your work with Modes has been in my working life at BAS. It enabled us to implement standards and cope with a wide variety of modern formats easily, to provide the detailed indexing and searching demanded by those using the archive, and enabled access to digital copies of the documents themselves. Thanks to your sustained and dedicated leadership and IT skills, Modes has stood the test of time and remains a wonderfully powerful tool for collections management.
It has been such a pleasure to work with you on the Software Development Committee/Working Group, and it will be great to continue that with your new role in the Group. Your good humour, creativity, and willingness to explain and explore without defensiveness are qualities I’ve valued particularly, and hope to have learned from personally. I won’t be taking up the early morning runs, though – however much I admire you for doing them!
Wishing you good health and lots of fun in the extra time you have in ‘retirement’!
Jo