Happy Birthday, Dr. Kilgour!

The program will reflect on his life and career, and his contributions to librarianship. There will be a special presentation of Volume 3 of the Collected Papers of Frederick G. Kilgour, which is being published by OCLC in 2004 in honor of his 90th birthday.

Speakers at Dr. Kilgour’s birthday celebration, which is free and open to all, will include:

• William Crowe, Spencer Librarian, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, and chair, OCLC Board of Trustees
• Joe Hewitt, associate provost and university librarian, UNC at Chapel Hill
• Joanne Marshall, dean, SILS
• Jay Jordan, president and chief executive officer, OCLC
• Phyllis Spies, vice president, Worldwide Library Services, OCLC

Dr. Kilgour founded the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC: a dozen years later the name was changed to Online Computer Library Center) in 1967. Before this milestone, he worked as a librarian and library director at Harvard and Yale universities for nearly 25 years. During World War II, he was a U.S. Navy intelligence officer in the Office of Strategic Services, where he developed a system for obtaining publications from enemy and enemy-occupied areas, and for which he received the Legion of Merit.

Dr. Kilgour led OCLC from 1967 to 1980, presiding over its spectacular growth from an intrastate network to a national network. During his tenure, OCLC grew from a staff of two and revenues of $67,000, to a staff of 500 and revenues of $27 million. The number of libraries OCLC served grew from the original 54 Ohio academic libraries to 2,300 libraries in all 50 states. The number of records in WorldCat grew from the ground up to five million. Today, there are more than 45,000 libraries in 84 countries using Dr. Kilgour's creation.