Cloyd Dake Gull

Cloyd Dake Gull (1925-2003) was an American librarian.

Life

Cloyd Dake Gull was born on June 17, 1915, in Lorain, Ohio. Graduating from Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, in 1936, received an AB in Library Science (1937), then an AM (1939) at the University of Michigan.

Gull was periodicals librarian at North Carolina State College library, 1939-1942, then was on active duty in the U.S. Naval Reserve from 1942 to 1945. After the war, he joined the staff of the Library of Congress in various positions. In 1952, Gull become a technical analyst with Mortimer Taube's Documentation, Inc. Between 1954 and 1958, he was an Administrative Officer in the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Gull joined the Computer Department of General Electric in 1958, and became a consulting analyst for information processing in the Information Systems Operation of the Defense Systems Department and worked on proposals for numerous library automation projects.

Over the years between 1945 and 1952 he served in a variety of positions in the Processing Department, Catalog Maintenance Division, and Union Catalog Division, eventually becoming assistant chief, deputy chief, or acting chief of each. He also worked on the surplus books for veterans program and was a bibliographer with the Science and Technology Project.

At the Library of Congress, Gull continued to explore the use of punched cards and served as the focal point of pioneering efforts to introduce computers into the Library. From 1950 to 1953, he also served as managing editor of the Journal of Cataloging and Classification. Twice during the period he left for other jobs (with Harry Ferguson, Inc. in Detroit and the Central Intelligence Agency), but in both cases he returned to the Library of Congress after a brief time.

In 1952, Gull left the Library of Congress to become a technical analyst with Documentation, Inc. This firm, headed by Mortimer Taube, was the first organized specifically to conduct research and development in the library and information world. They engaged in pioneering work in the emerging field of information science, working on the uniterm system of coordinate indexing, problems of storage and retrieval, and methods of machine literature searching. Under a contract with the Department of Defense, they developed the first system to use computers for searching bibliographic information.

The Library School of the University of Michigan offered Gull the opportunity to teach a summer workshop on "The Logic of Mechanizing Information for Research" in 1953. He repeated this workshop many times in the next decade at Michigan and other universities, eventually calling it "Electronic Information Systems for Libraries."

Between 1954 and 1958, Gull served as Administrative Officer in the Division of Engineering and Industrial Research at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gull joined the Computer Department of General Electric in 1958, eventually becoming a consulting analyst for information processing in the Information Systems Operation of the Defense Systems Department. Over the next five years, he worked on proposals for numerous library automation projects.

From 1961 to 1963, Gull was a member of the GE team which designed the MEDLARS system for medical literature bibliographic control and searching services under a contract with the National Library of Medicine. The result was the first installation of a computer in a library, as well as the first successful computer-driven photo offset composition system in the world, which was used for the publication of Index Medicus.

Gull joined the faculty of the Indiana University Library School in 1964, teaching classes in information science, technical services, and science and technology bibliography. He was also involved in the development of the Library School Ph.D. program, served as the President of the Indiana chapter of the Special Libraries Association, worked on Indiana University's participation in the Library of Congress' MARC project, and did some consulting work on library automation projects.

Gull left the Indiana University faculty in 1967 and joined the National Library of Medicine, where he served for about a year as liaison officer for the National Libraries Task Force on Automation and Other Cooperative Services. He was also the MEDLARS liaison officer.

After leaving the National Library of Medicine, Gull worked briefly as the Washington area representative for a consulting firm and then in 1969 formed the firm of Cloyd Dake Gull and Associates, Inc. They provided services and research and development work for numerous clients in the library and information science field until 1983, when Gull sold the company and retired. He died May 1, 2003.

Contributions

Gull worked at the Library of Congress as: Deputy Chief/Acting Chief of the Catalog Maintenance Division; Editor-in-Chief of the Science and Tech. Project. At LC, he was associated with theoretical and practical use of punched-card equipment. He was a consultant for GE Information Systems Operations 1958-63. He also worked at: Prof., Library School, Indiana Univ., 1964-67; Officer for NLM Task Force on Automation 1967-68; Pres., Gull & Associates Inc. 1969-?. Gull was involved with federal government and special libraries. He participated in MEDLARS development. See a brief obituary in The Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, June/July, 2003.

Offices

• American Documentation Institute. President, 1960.
• American Library Association. Counselor, 1962-65.
• Special Libraries Association. Indiana Chapter President.
• U.S. National Committee for the International Federation for Documentation (FID). Chairman, then at-large member of the 1960-1966.

Further reading

• University of Michigan Special Collections Research Center. Cloyd Dake Gull Papers, 1937-1987. Finding aid. [1]
• Who's Who in Library Service. 4th ed. p 264.

Papers

• University of Michigan Special Collections Research Center. Ann Arbor, MI. Cloyd Dake Gull Papers, 1937-1987. [2]d