[Asis-l] Fwd: F. W. Lancaster, GSLIS professor emeritus, passes away

[Michel Menou]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	F. W. Lancaster, GSLIS professor emeritus, passes away
Date: 	Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:25:06 +0000
From: 	Schmidt, Kimberly Rae <kimsch at ILLINOIS.EDU>



F. W. “Wilf” Lancaster, professor emeritus at the Graduate School of 
Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, passed 
away on Sunday, August 25, at his home in Urbana, Illinois. He was 79 
years old. He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Cesaria; and his 
children, Miriam, Owen, Jude, Aaron, Lakshmi, and Raji; and his 13 
grandchildren.

A visitation will be held at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, August 30, at St. 
Patrick’s Catholic Church in Urbana with a funeral Mass to follow at 
11:00 a.m. Interment will occur immediately thereafter at Clements 
Cemetery on High Cross Road in Urbana. A funeral lunch will follow at 
St. Patrick’s. In lieu of flowers, please make contributions to Save the 
Children or the World Wildlife Fund.

Lancaster graduated as an associate of the British Library Association 
from the University of Northumbria at Newcastle, England, in 1955. After 
gaining experience as a senior assistant at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
Public Libraries, Lancaster immigrated to the United States in 1959. He 
became known for his revolutionary work in the evaluation and management 
of MEDLARS, the National Library of Medicine’s computerized 
bibliographic retrieval system for articles in academic journals in 
medicine and allied health professions. Though one of the earliest 
evaluations of a computer-based retrieval system, it continues to have a 
lasting impact on information systems today.

Lancaster joined GSLIS in 1970 as an associate professor and director of 
the biomedical librarianship program (1970-73); in 1972, he became a 
full professor; and in 1992, following his retirement, he was honored 
with the title of professor emeritus. During his distinguished career, 
he taught courses in information retrieval, bibliometrics, bibliographic 
organization, and the evaluation of library and information services. He 
served as the editor of /Library Trends/, a quarterly journal examining 
critical trends in professional librarianship, from 1986 to 2006. For 
the period from 1989 to 1992, he was named University Scholar, a 
prestigious program recognizing the University’s most talented teachers, 
scholars, and researchers.

Nationally and internationally, Lancaster was recognized as a leader in 
the field of library and information science through his work as a 
teacher, writer, and scholar. He was honored three times with Fulbright 
fellowships for research and teaching abroad, named a fellow of the 
Library Association of Great Britain, and recognized by the Association 
for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) with both the Award of 
Merit and the Outstanding Information Science Teacher award. He was the 
author of 15 books, several of which have received national awards and 
been translated into languages such as Arabic, Russian, Chinese, 
Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese. Lancaster also engaged in a 
wide range of consulting activities for organizations around the world, 
including UNESCO and the United Nations.

In 2008, /Library Trends/ published the Festschrift, “Essays Honoring 
the Legacy of F. W. Lancaster 
<https://ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9483>” (Volume 56, Issue 4), 
edited by Lorraine J. Haricombe and Keith Russell, both of whom studied 
under Lancaster. It includes contributions from his friends, family, 
students, colleagues, and scholars, celebrating his achievements and 
paying homage to his life’s work.

“I met Professor Lancaster when I was a new library school student, and 
he was a new library school faculty member. He was such a natural that I 
thought he had been researching, writing, and teaching for many years. 
But most noteworthy was the interest he took in his students, their 
ideas, their development, and their careers. He became a lifelong friend 
for so many of us,” said Russell (MS ’72), life sciences librarian at 
the University of Kansas.

The /Library Trends/ issue includes articles that highlight Lancaster's 
legacy in the area of underlying structure for online retrieval systems; 
his significant work in subject analysis, thesaurus construction, and 
system evaluation; his impact on measurement and evaluation in 
libraries; his accurate prediction of a “paperless society”; and his 
specialization in bibliometrics. It concludes with an interview by Leigh 
Estabrook, GSLIS dean emerita, who worked with Lancaster during a 
significant part of his career.

“Wilf was a wonderful scholar, teacher, and colleague. His influence on 
our field is both deep and wide and continues to be regenerated by his 
many former students. I will miss his intelligence, his provocative 
questions and his wit. He was a model of a whole human being in his love 
for his work and his love for his family," said Estabrook.

A detailed obituary 
<http://www.renner-wikoffchapel.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2204062&fh_id=10562> is 
available online.


-- 
Kim Schmidt
Director of Publications and Media Relations
Graduate School of Library and Information Science
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
501 East Daniel Street
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 265-6391
www.lis.illinois.edu


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/asis-l/attachments/20130830/062c294c/attachment.html>