PEOPLE
Gordon Wright
fter a distinguished career in the library and information world, Gordon Wright passed away on 3 January 2020 aged 97. Gordon Henry Wright was born in 1922 in Abbey Wood, London. He started as a library assistant in Woolwich, a career which was interrupted by the War and his service in the RAF. Returning to Wool- wich in 1945 he moved on to be appointed by London County Council to establish libraries in technical colleges on a salary of £75 a year. His first achievement was the establishment of the library in the London School of Printing.
A
1956 found him working at the Westminster Technical Institute, from where he
successfully applied for the newly created post of County Technical Librarian, employed by Hertfordshire County Council but based in Hatfield Technical College. The Coun- cil’s aim was to develop libraries in its expanding network of further education and technical colleges and to introduce services to meet the growing demand from local industry and commerce for information; in Gordon, the County found the person they needed to drive the concept into operation, to innovate and to inspire change. When he left Hatfield 14 years later there were 15 well-resourced college libraries in Hertfordshire as well as a new four-storey, purpose-built library at what had now become The Hatfield Polytechnic. Gordon ensured that each college library included tutor-librarians on its staff, teach- ing students information skills and working closely with their lecturer colleagues. He had persuaded the County Council to invest in these libraries for educational reasons but also as the foundation of a technical information service to the rapidly growing research-based industries in the county.
A Chief Information Officer, John Fulwell, was appointed to lead the service, which became known as HERTIS and attracted more than 300 subscribing companies. Gordon also recognised the potential impact of technology on libraries; he researched and promoted the use of new
print technologies in both colleges and HERTIS member companies and expanded his programmes to embrace microform technology. In 1967 the National Reprographic Centre for documentation (NRCd) was set up at Hatfield with Gordon as Project Head and Bernard Williams as Director to investigate the application of these new tech- nologies. Research grants from OSTI, DSIR and the DES were won to support a range of Research & Development programmes and Gordon went on to oversee early work on catalogue automation projects.
Gordon was strongly supported in these innovative developments by two far-sighted senior officials, Dr W Chapman, the first Principal of Hatfield Technical College and Lorna Paulin, the County Librarian, but he proved adept at winning over elected county councillors with his carefully researched proposals.
In 1966 he edited and wrote half the text in The Library in Colleges of Commerce and Technology; this was “effectively the first book on the subject” (Margaret Ashby. HERTIS; the Development of a Library Network, HERTIS, 1986).
Gordon left for Canada in 1970 to take up the post of
Director of the newly established Bibliocentre at the Uni- versity of Toronto, which supported the Ontario College Library System. He moved on to become Director of Planning, Budgeting and Administrative Services at the Robarts Library, the University of Toronto and retired in 1988.
In 1986, Gordon was invited back to Hatfield to celebrate 30 years of HERTIS and his considerable contribution to library and information development, imagination and drive were recognised with the designation of the library which he had designed as the “Wright Building”. As the obituary in the Toronto Globe and Mail states, “Gordon was a passionate painter, carver, stain-glass creator and archivist”. His wife, Irene, pre-deceased him and he is survived by their four children.
Nigel Macartney,
(with thanks to Mark Wright, Professor Di Martin and Graham Bulpitt)
Macrh 2020
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