Ever since 2008 when the University of California, Santa Cruz announced they were taking over the vast collection of Grateful Dead memorabilia amassed by the band over their 40+ year long strange trip, Deadhead archivists have been patiently waiting to see who would be given the key to wonderland. On April 7th, UC Santa Cruz announced that Nicholas Meriwether will be the key-master. UCLA archivist Lance Watsky was also in the running for the position.
Meriwether comes to UC Santa Cruz with a lengthy pedigree. Meriwether holds a bachelor of arts degree from Princeton University, plus a Masters in Library Science–with a specialization in archives–from the University of South Carolina.
His research on the Grateful Dead, their cultural significance, and their impact on late 20th century society has resulted in a number of publications.
Meriwether is the editor of All Graceful Instruments: The Contexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007), as well as four volumes of Dead Letters: Essays on the Grateful Dead Phenomenon (Dead Letters Press).
“The Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz represents an extraordinary collection with immense research value to academics and scholars from a wide range of disciplines—including historians, literary critics, musicologists, and others,” noted Meriwether.
The archive is set to open in 2011 at the newly renovated McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz.
“The Grateful Dead Archive will be, like the Dead, something much more than it initially appears,” noted longtime Grateful Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally. “Just as the band was not merely a music group but an adventure, an odyssey, and a subculture, the Archive will reflect not only the Dead, but that most critical of post-war decades, the ineffable 1960s.”
