Citation for Hugh A. Blackmer
Associate Professor and Science Librarian
on the
Occasion of His Retirement
June 2005
There
are two descriptors which appear again and again as one talks to people about
Hugh Blackmer, or reads what colleagues have written about him. One is “curious;” the second is
“humorous.” (Indeed, I’m told a third
might be “sweet tooth,” but that relates to his ingestion of multiple desserts
while at his interview lunch, and probably should be allowed to fade into
legend.)
Ever
since Robert Bolt popularized it in his play about St. Thomas More, the expression
“a man for all seasons” has been somewhat over-used, but Hugh is one of those
rare people for whom it is appropriate.
As most of you know, Hugh is an anthropologist, having received his PhD
from Stanford in 1976. He is also a
librarian (Simmons 1992), a Peace Corps veteran, a musician, instrument
builder, haiku poet, photographer, and hiker.
The courses he’s taught at W&L include Human Geography,
Cross-Cultural Studies in Music, Anthropology of East Asia, History of
Technology, Digital Libraries, History and Prospects of Humanity Computing, and
Information Visualization. These would represent
range enough for most people but do not include the many courses for which he’s
provided bibliographic instruction, and those extend from chemistry to English
to West African women novelists to mitochondrial DNA (and many more). I suspect that Hugh already knew something
about each of the topics before he
started working on his class lecture.
From his earliest days at W&L, Hugh’s service has been
broad-based. We should not forget that
in addition to the other things we’ll mention here, he served on the Global Stewardship
Committee and interviewed students for Watson fellowships.
Hugh
came to W&L in 1992 as a Reference Librarian, and in 1996 was chosen from a
strong pool to be the first Science Librarian and head of the Telford Science Library. These positions – which include everything
from traditional reference service to developing the science collections, print
and otherwise - would be demanding enough for one who defined them in a more
traditional manner, but Hugh’s service to the University has gone well beyond
the words on his position description.
This is where that curiosity comes in.
Hugh was lured into librarianship
by the infinite promise of the new information technologies, but even more by
his own vision of what a librarian is.
He once wrote, “librarians…have a unique
vantage point on lifelong learning, since they are called upon daily to stretch
what they know.” A librarian’s basic
duty, Hugh said, was “to help people continue to educate themselves.” What a beautiful match of personal
inclination with professional obligation!
Hugh
says that his “long-run interests center on the practical uses of digital
technologies,” and his ability to see over the horizon and to spot the promise
of an emerging technology has benefited us all in untold ways. Hugh was instrumental in developing W&L’s
presence on the internet, starting with a “Gopher” system when that was
cutting-edge and moving on to establish the first University webpage as well as
the processes for individuals to set up personal and departmental web pages. Through the Associated Colleges of the South,
Hugh was also an early promoter of GIS and an advocate for librarians to
support it on their campuses. One fan
remarked that Hugh “has done more to promote faculty use of the internet than
any other employee of the University.”
When
each new electronic resource in the Sciences came along, W&L was earlier
than most in signing up, less because of our adventurous nature than because,
in Barbara Brown’s words, “Hugh was
always pounding on my door for money…we probably bought more of those sooner
that we otherwise might have given his persuasive arguments.”
Hugh’s
curiosity and desire to learn drives his own relentless study, but he is a
teacher first and foremost. He wants to
help you learn, as well. He wants to help you learn even if you think
you don’t have time or see the immediate advantage of the technology he’s taken
by. One of Hugh’s colleagues remembers having first heard about the Worldwide
Web when Hugh brought it up at a staff meeting, and continues, “Most of us
didn’t quite understand what he was talking about, but it didn’t long for him
to brow beat us into taking this seriously.”
Hugh’s boundless and good-humored enthusiasm for learning and teaching has
made us all better teachers, scholars and librarians. He has been called variously “a catalyst in
preparing his fellow librarians and the campus community for the electronic
information age,” “an enthusiastic and engaging prophet of change,” and “a great catalyst for the use of
information technology in academic research and teaching.” A colleague in the Library may have captured
it best when he said, “Thinking of Hugh's retirement leaves me sad because
there is literally no one else like him.
He has excelled in the continuing education of his colleagues…Hugh is
conversant with the cutting edge of technology and its application to the flow
of information and on hundreds of occasions he has passed along articles, new
web sites or blogs that advance our understanding.”
Of
course there’s nothing worse than being harangued about
Finally,
it should be noted that Hugh was among those who first saw the shape of the
“Library outside the walls.” In 1997,
which was still the infancy of the Web, he wrote, “The physical setting of
spaces, shelves, work surfaces and computers (in the Library) is just the
matrix. What we do to animate the matrix
is the important thing, and that rests on the outreach of the Library into
classrooms, labs, residences, and the processes of information use that support
teaching and research activities.” In
writing this, Hugh anticipated a wave that gathered force in libraries only recently,
namely the conviction that librarians can no longer sit in their libraries and
wait for the users to come to us. Just
as our collections are now ever-available in cyberspace, so must librarians be
meeting faculty and students where they live, in classrooms, labs, residences
and wherever teaching, learning, and study happen. Certainly Hugh Blackmer is the prototype for
this new sort of peripatetic, ubiquitous, and we hope irresistible, librarian.
It’s
typical of Hugh that he’s departing W&L in the same style as he’s lived
here, by conceiving a new tool to engage emeritus faculty. Hugh has postulated a “virtual geezer box,”
namely a portal for emeritus faculty who’d like to maintain, and extend, their
web presence. Hugh sees our retired
faculty blogging, podcasting, and sharing virtual space with their colleagues
in an online version of the Emeritus Faculty Lounge in Leyburn Library. As Hugh puts it, “I’m only the first of the
retirees who has a substantial web presence, and there will be others. What can we do to preserve and encourage the
repurposing of such digital legacies?...many emeriti
continue to be active researchers, and would probably welcome conduits that
keep alive their connections to the University.” So like Hugh, to see an emerging need, draw
it to our attention, and begin work on a way to meet it! (And so like Hugh, with his enduring wit, to
title it “A Virtual Geezer Box.”)
Hugh,
may your energy never flag and may your curiosity never be entirely
satisfied. All the
best for a long, happy and productive retirement.
Merrily
Professor and University Librarian