The University of California, Santa Cruz, has announced the winner of the world's most-reposted help-wanted ad (at least until that Denver pot-tasting gig opened up).
Nicholas Meriwether, an oral historian for the South Caroliniana Library, will be the Grateful Dead Archive's first archivist. Meriwether has edited several books about the band – including All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon and four volumes of Dead Letters: Essays on the Grateful Dead Phenomenon.
The Dead donated their substantial archive to UCSC in 2008. Much of the collection was preserved thanks to the pack-rat tendencies of Eileen Law, who interfaced between the band and Deadheads from 1972 on. Materials that might have been tossed into the dustbin long ago will now be available to scholars and increasing numbers of greedy bastards eager to replicate the Dead's weirdly prescient business model.
The Grateful Dead Archive is scheduled to open in 2011, when it will anchor UCSC’s newly renovated McHenry Library.