RE: F. Kilgour in CHE

["Sloan, Bernie" <bernies@uillinois.edu>]

Like Fred Friend, I also had positive interactions with Fred 
Kilgour in the 1970s (and beyond).

But my favorite Fred Kilgour recollection is from the late 1990s. 
I had a paper on resource sharing published in the March 1998 
issue of Information Technology and Libraries ("Testing Common 
Assumptions about Resource Sharing", Information Technology and 
Libraries, 17:18-29).

After this paper was published I received a thick envelope from 
the University of North Carolina. It contained a very nice 
hand-written note from Fred Kilgour congratulating me on my 
paper, but at the same time pointing out how I had missed one of 
his papers in my lit review. The envelope included a copy of his 
paper, and it was right on target. :-)

Bernie Sloan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
"FrederickFriend"
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 4:06 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: F. Kilgour in CHE

Fred Kilgour did indeed make a very valuable contribution to
services to library users, and I can provide one small example
from my knowledge of this great man. In 1979 or 1980, when
Librarian of the University of Essex, I invited Fred to talk to
us at Essex about the possibility of joining the OCLC cataloguing
service. I expected Fred to say that we would have to adopt
US-style catalogue cards, but Fred agreed to set up a special
production run at OCLC to maintain the Essex sheaf catalogue. A
cynic might say that it was the price Fred was willing to pay to
get a UK customer, but I knew from talking to Fred that he was
genuine in his wish to help librarians and library users to adapt
to automated cataloguing procedures by retaining what was
familiar to them. Essex and Newcastle were the first UK
universities to join OCLC, even though in the early days we could
not start cataloguing until 3 p.m. UK time, when the US service
started.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk