Q&A: SLAC's archivist closes a chapter

Approaching retirement, Jean Deken describes what it's like to preserve decades of collective scientific memory at a national lab. Jean Deken was hired at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for a daunting task--to chronicle the history and culture of the decades-old lab and its reseachers as the fast pace of its science continued. She became SLAC's archivist on April 15, 1996. Deken is retiring after more than 20 years at the lab. In this Q&A, she discusses big changes in physics, the challeng...