Information Research Weblog

I don't know that many of those reading this Weblog will have known, or know of, Professor Wilf Saunders, who died last Friday. Wilf was the founding Director (in 1962) of the Department of Information Studies at the University of Sheffield, under the original name of the Postgraduate School of Librarianship.

Wilf was President of the Library Association and Chair of the Committee that recommended the amalgamation of the LA, the Institute of Information Scientists and Aslib - an idea that did not come to fruition at the time, but which subsequently led to the merger of the LA and the IIS into CILIP. He received a CBE for his services to education.

Wilf became known to a wider audience when his "Dunkirk Diary of a Very Young Soldier" formed part of the background for the BBC drama/documentary on the Dunkirk evacuation. Published by Birmingham Public Libraries, where Wilf had begun his career, the "Diary" told his personal story of the preliminaries to the evacuation and his own days on the beach, often wading in water to boats that sank under their loads, before being taken off and transported back to England. He made a brief appearance in an interview associated with the programme. After Dunkirk, Wilf, a Signaller, attended officer training and spent the rest of the war in North Africa and Italy, in charge of a signals unit.

His many friends around the world will miss him - someone described by one of his contemporaries as "a True Gentleman".