Professor Wilfred Leonard Saunders CBE (18 April 1920- 27 July 2007) was a British librarian and the founding director of what became the University of Sheffield Information School. [1] [2] [3]
Saunders was born 18 April 1920 in Birmingham and joined Birmingham Reference Library as a library assistant in 1936, influenced by his elder sister who was a librarian. [2] Early in World War II he was a radio operator with the British Expeditionary Force in France, and his diaries from this time were used as a source for the BBC documentary Dunkirk . After the war he gained a degree in economics from the University of Cambridge, and was deputy librarian at the Institute of Bankers (1948-1949) before returning to Birmingham as the founding librarian at the University of Birmingham's Institute of Education (1949-1956). He moved to the University of Sheffield in 1956 as deputy librarian. [1]
In April 1963 he took up the post of director of the university's new Postgraduate School of Librarianship, the second postgraduate school in the United Kingdom after that at University College London. The school took its first intake of students in September 1964. [3] He was appointed as professor of librarianship in 1968, and remained at the school until his retirement in 1982. [1]
His 1989 Towards a unified professional organization for library and information science and services : a personal view, known as The Saunders Report, proposed that the Library Association and the Institute of Information Scientists should combine: this finally took place in 2002 with the establishment of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). [2] He served as president of the Library Association in 1980, and was a council member of Aslib (1965-1971 and 1973-1979) and the first chair of the Library and Information Services Council (1981-1984). [2]
A festschrift in his honour was published in 1989 on the 25th anniversary of the founding of the school. [4]
He was appointed CBE in the 1982 New Year Honours, [5] and was awarded an honorary Litt.D. by the University of Sheffield in 1989. [2] [6]
Saunders died 27 July 2007 and was survived by his wife Joan and their two sons. [1]
Elonnie J. Josey was an African-American activist and librarian. Josey was the first chair of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, having been instrumental in its formation in 1970; served as president of the American Library Association from 1984 to 1985; and was the author of over 400 books and other publications.
Wayne August Wiegand is an American library historian, author, and academic. Wiegand retired as F. William Summers Professor of Library and Information Studies and Professor of American Studies at Florida State University in 2010.
The School of Library and Information Studies of the University of the Philippines or UP SLIS is the oldest library school in the Philippines. Formally established in March 1961 as the Institute of Library Science, it can trace it roots to 1914, making it one of the first library schools in Asia. It is an independent degree-granting unit of the University of the Philippines Diliman, and offers programs in the field of library and information science. In December 2015, the Commission on Higher Education declared the school as the first and only Center of Excellence among universities and colleges with library and information programs in the Philippines.
Education for librarianship, including for paraprofessional library workers, varies around the world, and has changed over time. In recent decades, many institutions offering librarianship education have changed their names to reflect the shift from print media to electronic media, and to information contained outside of traditional libraries. Some call themselves schools of library and information science, or have dropped the word "library" altogether.
Kadapuram Abraham Isaac was an Indian writer and librarian. He was a Professor and Head of the Department of Library and Information Science at the University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram. Isaac was known for initiating and moulding the professional Library and Information Science (LIS) education in Kerala and has authored several books on Library and Information Science. He had served as a member of the Senate of the Kerala University and as Dean of its Arts Faculty.
William John Hutchins was an English linguist and information scientist who specialized in machine translation.
Herbert Spencer White is an Austrian-born American librarian. He is Dean Emeritus and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the School of Library & Information Science at Indiana University, and Adjunct Professor, University of Arizona, Tucson. A recipient of the ALA Medal of Excellence Award, White is the primary author of at least nine books, and the author of an estimated 200 articles in the professional literature of Library Science. He is a major contributor to current theory and understanding of the role of the Special library in contemporary American organizations.
Lester Eugene Asheim was an American librarian and scholar of library science and film history. He was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School and the University of North Carolina and held positions in the American Library Association (ALA). He was included among the "100 most important leaders we had in the 20th century" by the American Library Association.
The Information School or iSchool of the University of Sheffield, in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, was founded in 1963 as the University's Postgraduate School of Librarianship and became in 2010 the first UK iSchool. Other names were the Postgraduate School of Librarianship and Information Science and Department of Information Studies (1981-2011). As of 2021, it employs 33 academic staff, 16 administrative/support staff, 6 affiliated research staff, and has about 65 research students. The current head of school is Professor Val Gillet.
Peter Havard-Williams was a Welsh librarian and library educator. In the mid 1980s, he served as Chief Librarian to the Council of Europe.
Carleton Bruns Joeckel was an American librarian, advocate, scholar, decorated soldier, and co-writer, with Enoch Pratt Free Library (Baltimore) Assistant Director Amy Winslow, A National Plan for Public Library Service (1948) that provided the foundation for nationwide public library services.
Frederick Wilfrid ("Wilf") Lancaster was a British-American information scientist. He immigrated to the US in 1959 and worked as information specialist for the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1965 to 1968. He was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, from 1972 to 1992 and professor emeritus from 1992 to 2013. He continued as an honored scholar after retirement speaking on the evolution of librarianship in the 20th and 21st century. Lancaster made notable achievements with early online retrieval systems, including evaluation studies of MEDLARS. He published broadly in library and information science over a period of four decades and continuously emerged as a visionary leader in the field, where research, writing, and teaching earned him the highest honors in the profession. Lancaster excelled at many fronts: as scholar, educator, mentor, and writer.
Jack Mills was a British librarian and classification researcher, who worked for more than sixty years in the study, teaching, development and promotion of library classification and information retrieval, principally as a major figure in the British school of facet analysis which builds on the traditions of Henry E. Bliss and S.R. Ranganathan.
Chaminda Chiran Jayasundara obtained his bachelor's degree in Statistics from the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka in 2000, MSc in Information Management from the University of Sheffield, UK in 2002 and Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in Information Science from the University of South Africa in 2010. He has worked at the University of Colombo Library as the Deputy University Librarian, Fiji National University as the University Librarian, Sir John Kotelawala Defence University as the University Librarian and currently the University Librarian of the University of Kelaniya.
The Alice G. Smith Lecture, established in 1989, is sponsored by the University of South Florida School of Information. The lecture is an annual recognition of a scholar or author whose achievements have been instrumental in the development of librarianship or information studies. The lecture series honors the memory of the School's first director, Alice Gullen Smith, known for her work with youth and bibliotherapy. The Lecture Fund was created with the purpose of memorializing the work of Smith, who was central to the School's first accreditation by the American Library Association in 1975. Florida Library Association archivist, Bernadette Storck has provided an oral history of the development of libraries in Tampa, Florida that details the contributions of Smith including her establishment of the Tampa Book Fair that encouraged thousands of children to foster a love for books and reading
The Department of Information Studies is a department of the UCL Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
Sheila Mary Corrall is Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests are in scholarly communication, collection development in the digital world, professional competence, and intellectual capital in library and information services.
Professor Samuel Ehimigbai Ifidon is a Nigerian retired librarian. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Classics from the University of London; postgraduate diploma, from the University of Ibadan, Masters of Library and Information Science, University of Western Ontario, Canada; Doctorate Degree from the University of Ibadan. A Chartered Librarian, Fellow of the Nigerian Library Association and member of Nigerian Institute of Management. He has published 7 books, 8 chapters in books, and over 50 articles in national and international journals.
The College of Librarianship Wales was a monotechnic college specializing in library and information science in Aberystwyth, Wales, between its foundation in 1964 and August 1989, when it was merged with University College of Wales to become the Department of Information & Library Studies of that institution. During its twenty-five years of independent existence the college grew to be the largest library school in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. It also gained an international reputation for library education,
Lenrie Olatokunbo Aina is a professor of Library and Information Science, and former National Librarian/Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of Nigeria (NLN) Abuja.