FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: 8 June 2013
Family History Information Standards Organisation, Inc. (FHISO) is
pleased to announce the appointment of Drew Smith as the first Chair of
FHISO, effective 1 July 2013. Drew is currently the Organisational
Member Representative to FHISO from the Federation of Genealogical
Societies (FGS).
“I am deeply honored to have been given this opportunity by the FHISO
Board,” Drew said. “As someone who has made a career in information
technology and librarianship, I recognize the critical importance of
information standards, and as a long-time genealogist, I understand the
needs of the world’s genealogy product and service vendors,
repositories, societies, and individuals to collaborate and to share
family history information. I look forward to leading an international
effort to support the creation of these essential information
standards.”
“We are excited to have Drew join us in this leadership role, as it
marks a significant milestone in transitioning the organisation from its
formative state into an operating standards development body,” said
Robert Burkhead, FHISO Acting Chair and Technical Standing Committee
Coordinator. “Drew’s knowledge and experience in the industry will serve
FHISO’s membership and the entire community well.”
Individuals from FHISO member organisations expressed their own
praise and support for Drew’s appointment. “Drew brings an excellent
synthesis of a genealogical librarian and an active player in the larger
family history community, and I look forward to working with him in his
new role,” said D. Joshua Taylor, Lead Genealogist and Business
Development Manager – North America for brightsolid online publishing,
the creators of findmypast.com.
“Having worked with Drew in various organizations and committees, I
believe he is the perfect choice to chair FHISO at this formative time,”
said Bruce Buzbee, President of RootsMagic, Inc. “I have seen firsthand
his organizational skills and leadership qualities in groups where
members may have very different opinions or somewhat different goals.”
Loretto (Lou) Szucs, Vice President of Community Relations for
Ancestry.com, had this to say: “Having known and worked with Drew for
more than fifteen years, I can’t think of anyone who is better qualified
to serve as the first Chair of this important new organization. Drew
has consistently shown his outstanding leadership skills in working with
family history organizations, libraries, and other historical and
technology organizations. As the world’s largest online family history
resource, with more than 2.5 million subscribers and more than 11
billion records online, Ancestry.com is proud to be a founding member of
FHISO.”
“The appointment of Drew Smith as Chair of FHISO sends a strong
signal to all wait-and-see organisations,” said Bob Coret, founder of
Coret Genealogie. “FHISO is becoming a strong organisation which, with
the recent Call for Papers, is leading the way in developing genealogy
and family history information standards. As a Founding Member of FHISO
from the Netherlands I’m pleased to hear that Drew Smith also embraces
the non-English part of the genealogical community, which reflects the
international character of FHISO.”
Drew Smith is an Assistant Librarian with the Academic Services unit
of the University of South Florida (USF) Tampa Library, and serves as
the liaison librarian to the USF School of Information. He has taught
graduate-level courses in genealogical librarianship and
indexing/abstracting, and undergraduate-level courses in web design.
Drew earlier worked for academic computing departments at USF and at
Clemson University (South Carolina).
Drew is a Director of FGS (2008-2013), chair of its Technology
Committee, and “Rootsmithing with Technology” columnist for its FORUM
magazine. He is past Secretary of the Association of Professional
Genealogists (APG). Drew is President of the Florida Genealogical
Society of Tampa and has served on the board of the Florida State
Genealogical Society. He administers the GENEALIB electronic mailing
list with over 1200 genealogy librarians as subscribers, a list he
founded in 1996.
Drew has been the co-host of The Genealogy Guys Podcast since
September 2005, and together with George G. Morgan has produced over 250
one-hour episodes. Drew is author of the book Social Networking for
Genealogists, published in 2009 by Genealogical Publishing Company, and
with George is co-author of the upcoming book Advanced Genealogy
Research Skills, to be published in September 2013 by McGraw-Hill. Drew
has written extensively for NGS NewsMagazine (now NGS Magazine),
Genealogical Computing, and Digital Genealogist.
Drew holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer
Engineering and a Master of Science in Industrial Management from
Clemson University, and a Master of Arts in Library and Information
Science from USF.
About FHISO
FHISO is a standards-developing organisation bringing the
international family history and genealogical community together in a
transparent, self-governing forum for the purpose of developing
information standards to solve today’s interoperability issues. To learn
more about FHISO, visit http://fhiso.org/. To become a member, visit http://fhiso.org/membership-enquiries/.
Contacts:
FHISO General Enquiries, enquiries@fhiso.org
FHISO Membership enquiries, membership@fhiso.org
FHISO Media Relations, Anthony C. Proctor, acproctor@fhiso.org.
