Obituaries F


Brian Burch OBE


ormer Librarian at the University of Leicester Brian Birch OBE has passed away.


Born in 1937 to a farming family in Kent, Brian was educated at Bromley County Grammar School for Boys, from where he won a scholarship to read History at Clare College, Cambridge. Before going up to Cambridge, he got his first taste of librarianship helping at the public library in Bromley.


After graduating, he married Dorothy Hurlock, then studied for a Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship at UCL. This led to a job at the Guildhall Library in London and then, in 1966, to a post as Assistant Librarian in the School of Education Library here at Leicester.


In 1970, Brian moved from the School of Education to the University’s main library. He was appointed Sub-Librarian (Medicine) in 1972, Deputy Librarian in 1978, and University Librarian in 1982, a post he held for thirteen years. After his retirement, he was appointed OBE for services to librarian- ship.


In view of his knowledge and skills, the University asked Brian to write its official history, to coincide with its 75th an- niversary. The result, The University of Leicester: A History, 1921-1996, was published by University of Leicester Press.


Mike Keen E


dward Michael Keen (Mike), the son of an aircraft designer, was born on 1 April 1940 in Coventry. He started work in 1957 as a Library Assistant in Coven- try Public Library and continued in Kingston upon Thames where he worked in the library of the aircraft


manufacturer, Hawker Siddeley. During 1962, he studied the ALA course at North Western Polytechnic in London where he met his wife Norma, whom he married in 1965. Jack Mills, an early researcher in classification systems was one of his lecturers. In 1964 Mike joined Mills and Cyril Cleverdon, then Librarian at the Cranfield College of Aeronautics, u ndertaking research, partly carried out at ASLIB in London, that became known as the Cranfield 1 and Cranfield 2 experiments. This was pioneering research on the effectiveness of indexing systems for information retrieval.


In 1966 Mike and Norma sailed to the USA for Mike to work with Professor Gerard Salton, the then leading computer sci- entist in the field of information retrieval, at Cornell University carrying out research using SMART – System for the Mechani- cal Analysis and Retrieval of Text. Norma says that “Both Cyril and Gerry were fascinating characters!! Way beyond us in social ability, experiences and background... but Mike matched them in enthusiasm for developing the ‘search engine’ ideas and they all got on so well”.


In September 1967 Mike joined the staff of the College of


Librarianship Wales (CLW) in Aberystwyth on a two-year research contract where he led further funded research into index languages with Jeremy Digger and Alan Wheatley.


52 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL


In 1972 when Lucy (Tedd) joined CLW as a research assistant she shared an office with Mike, and this was the start of a long period of collaboration, much of which was funded by the Brit- ish Library Research and Development Department and JISC. An early project explored methods of teaching online biblio- graphic searching and resulted in the 1976 videotape DIALOG with ERIC (starring Lucy and Mike) which was widely used for teaching students. With Lucy, Dick (Hartley) and Andy Large, Mike wrote a key text book on the principles and practice of online searching in 1989. Also in 1972, whilst a postgraduate student at Manchester Polytechnic Dick became aware of Mike’s ground-breaking research which he followed whilst working in various librar- ies. In 1982 when he applied to follow an advanced Masters programme at CLW, Dick can still recall the excitement when he received a letter about the programme signed by THE Mike Keen and was very pleased to have the good fortune to have Mike direct his studies. Subsequently Dick was appointed as a lecturer in CLW in 1985 and worked closely with Mike for nine years, an experience which he really valued. By the 1980s as microcomputers became widespread, some of Mike’s research work centred on their use for teaching printed subject indexing, and he also helped develop teaching simula- tions for online searching. Chris (Armstrong), who had been a CLW student in the 1970s when he found Mike an inspiring and compelling lecturer, joined Mike in the 1980s as a research assistant. Chris found Mike hugely supportive and encouraging to those new to research work.


April-May 2022


It has been invaluable to colleagues working on subsequent anniversaries.


Brian spent another two years researching the University’s early history and cataloguing the library’s manuscript collec- tion, before stepping down from all University work to enjoy his retirement with his family.


He enjoyed visiting formal gardens and building up his own personal library, including a fine collection of early and rare editions of Don Quixote.


Brian Burch passed away peacefully in his sleep at LOROS on 21 November, 2021, five months after Dorothy. He is sur- vived by his sons Martin and Jonathan, who have asked that any donations in their father’s memory be made to LOROS.


Mike Simpson (University of Leicester).


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