Obituaries Richard Highwood R


ichard Highwood, who died in February, aged 86, spent the greater part of his career as an assistant librarian in the Corporation of London’s City Busi- ness Library, having been appointed to the position by Malcolm Campbell in October 1978 and retiring,


22½ years later, in May 2001.


He started at the City Business Library immediately after successfully completing, at the age of 40, a full-time BA History course at Birkbeck College, prior to which (after attending Bryanston School from 1951-54) he had worked in various public library posts at Stoke Newington, Finsbury and Battersea; then, after two years as a librarianship stu- dent at Ealing Technical College (1966-68),


he was successively Librarian, Group Planning Department, Rio Tinto Zinc Corporation; Deputy Librarian, British Steel Corporation; Librarian, Cement and Concrete Association; and Librarian, British Petroleum Company.


The City Business Library was his longest stay anywhere, and he became part of the furniture, with his many amiable eccentricities: characteristic phrases, sayings and (deliberate) mispronunciations. In his earlier days his answers to readers’ questions often included a great deal of personal reminiscence; but he was much valued for his expertise on financial and City matters upon which all staff made frequent calls, as did mem- bers of the public, several of whom may be said to have become his fans over the years. Indeed, his gravitas frequently led people to assume that he must be the City Business Librarian, the actual holder of that office (the present writer) appearing impossibly youthful by comparison.


Personally, I always appreciated Richard’s old-fashioned civility, as well as his adherence to certain traditional principles of good professional practice, not least to ‘reference librarian-


Norman Roberts N


orman Roberts, former Senior Lecturer at the Depart- ment of Information Studies, University of Sheffield (now the Information School) died on 14th February, 2024, after a short illness. Norman was born on 1 April 1926, in Buckley, Flintshire, but spent his child-


hood and youth in Caernarfon.


In 1942, having passed his School Certificate, he volunteered for the Welsh Guards, but was returned to school with a suspected flat foot. He obtained his Higher School Certificate in 1944 and was then called up into the Royal Welch Fusiliers, the flat foot apparently being disregarded! On transfer to India he became a member of the Indian Army, serving until 1947.


On leaving military service, Norman turned down the offer of a place at Oxford and chose to go to University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1950. He received glowing references for his intellectual


50 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL


prowess and critical thinking – qualities from which genera- tions of students were to benefit.


Evidently, a career in economics did not appeal to Norman and he attended Loughborough Library School in 1950-51 and worked in public and college libraries in Caernarfon, Liverpool and Aberystwyth before joining Birmingham Library School as a lecturer in 1959. Over this period he qualified as Associate of the Library Association in 1953 and as a Fellow in 1957. After a short period as a teacher at what is now Glamorgan College of Education (1962/64) Norman became one of the founding heads of department at the College of Librarianship, Wales, Aberystwyth, in 1964. He remained as Head of the Department of Welsh Studies until his move to the University of Sheffield in 1971.


At Sheffield he taught classification and thesaurus design and construction and is remembered as a fine teacher and super- visor of research degrees. He completed a PhD in 1984 with his thesis entitled Information retrieval thesauri in the social sciences: a study of ideas and attitudes relating to information


September 2024


ship by walking about’, rather than the deplorable later habit of pointing by immovable (usually seated) object – often a cause of confusion and bewilderment amongst readers unfamiliar with a library and its layout. His irritation with passing man- agerialist fads which seemed to have little to do with serving the reader – and the annoyance he must have felt as the young tyros of less than half his age (and with much less than half his manners) sometimes tried to tell him how he should do his job – very seldom resulted in a departure from his usual gen- tlemanly demeanour; and if he eventually became somewhat entrenched, and plans had to be worked around him, it must be acknowledged that he had many qualities which were much missed after he retired.


He lived first at New Romney, Kent – where he exercised his great horticultural expertise in his garden – and later (after ‘downsizing’) at Folkestone; he swam in the sea, and he enjoyed listening to classical music. Geographical proximity to the Continent resulted in frequent trips to Europe, often in earlier years as an honorary ‘uncle’ to his neighbours’ children at New Romney.


Although he liked (perhaps not very seriously) to give the impression that he was ‘essentially poor’ (his own phrase), I know for a fact that he was more than generous, and very kind, to many whom he felt deserved it. He made us laugh (with him, rather than at him): did he, we wonder, ever carry out his inten- tion of building himself a coffin as his first DIY task after he retired, as a means of saving on exorbitant undertakers’ bills? Richard Highwood was a ‘character’ who is remembered with affection by his colleagues and by readers at the City Business Library. He never married.


Garry Humphreys


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