Frederick Gridley Kilgour

Frederick Gridley Kilgour (1914–2006) was an American librarian.

Frederick G. Kilgour

Life

Frederick Gridley Kilgour was born on January 6, 1914 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He graduated in chemistry at Harvard in 1935, then worked in the Harvard University Library. During the Second World War he served from 1942 to 1945 in the U.S. Naval Reserve and was Executive Secretary and Acting Chairman of the U.S. government's Interdepartmental Committee for the Acquisition of Foreign Publications (IDC), which developed a system for obtaining publications from enemy and enemy-occupied areas. From 1946 to 1948 he was Deputy Director of the Office of Intelligence Collection and Dissemination at the US Department of State.

In 1948 Kilgour became Librarian of the Yale Medical Library and lectured on the history of science and technology. With Ralph H. Parker Kilgour proposed in 1965 an Ohio College Library Center and in 1967 Kilgour became its founding President until he retired in 1980. He died on July 31, 2006 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Contributions

• Kilgour is best known for proposing (with Ralph H. Parker) and then founding the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) and its services in support of library cataloging, interlibrary lending, and the WorldCat. Under Kilgour's leadership OCLC became the dominant international bibliographic utility.
• During the Second World War Kilgour developed an extensive system for obtaining publications from enemy and enemy-occupied areas.
• Kilgour founded and served as the first editor for the journal Information Technology and Libraries.

Publications

• Collected Papers of Frederick G. Kilgour, comp. by P.A. Becker and A.T. Dodson, ed. by L.L. Yoakim. Dublin, OH: OCLC, 1984. 2 vols: Early years and OCLC years.
• Report to the Committee of Librarians of the Ohio College Association. With Ralph H. Parker. 1965. Repr. in Kilgour, F. G. Collected papers: The OCLC years. Dublin, OH: OCLC, 1984, pp 1-7. The report that led to OCLC.
• Landgraf, Alan L. & Frederick G. Kilgour. "Catalog records retrieved by personal author using derived search keys." Journal of Library Automation 6, no 2 (June 1973): 103-108. Query formulation rules derived from Ruecking's word compression techniques can operate very efficiently using only a very few characters for author and title.
• "Historical development of library computerization." In: The Information age, its development, its impact, ed. by Donald P. Hammer. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976, pp 241-257.
• National Library of Medicine (Bethesda, MD). Oral history interview with Kilgour, 1985. Abstract at [1]
• Columbia University Libraries (online). Oral history interview with Kilgour, 1988. Finding aid: [2]

Awards

• United States Armed Forces. Legion of Merit, 1945.
• ASIST. Award of Merit, 1979.
• American Library Association. Honorary Life Membership, 1982.
• Four honorary doctorates.

Further reading

• "Fred Kilgour." Wikipedia [3]
• Obituary. [4]
• For more biographical details see his Collected Papers of Frederick G. Kilgour, compiled by P.A. Becker and A.T. Dodson and edited by L.L. Yoakim. Dublin, OH: OCLC, 1984; 2 vols.

Papers

• Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives (New Haven, CT). 1873-1956. 1.5 linear feet (4 boxes, 1 folio). The papers of Richard Kirby. Frederick Kilgour is listed as an important correspondent. Finding aid: [5]
• Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives (New Haven, CT). 1960-2006. 107.25 linear feet (77 boxes). Includes: Yale University Library Systems Office records: The records consist of correspondence, notebooks, subject files and magnetic tapes documenting the activities and operations of the Yale University Library Systems Office. Included are research and development records maintained by Frederick G. Kilgour and Ben-Ami Lipetz. [6]
• Yale University Library Manuscripts and Archives (New Haven, CT). 1948-1987. 17.5 linear feet. Includes Yale Medical Library records: The records consist of annual reports, minutes, accreditation records, budgets, and correspondence, including files of Frederick G. Kilgour and Stanley D. Truelson as directors of the Yale Medical Library. A significant number of records relate to Kilgour's involvement with early library automation efforts. Other records pertain to Kilgour's published writings on lib [7]
• OCLC Archives (online). Includes: Correspondence, photos, speeches, memos, reports, published articles, etc. Finding aid available via OCLC archives. [8]