F. W. Lancaster as Scholar, Teacher, and Mentor: Reflections of Students

This essay captures the reflections of several students who studied with Professor F. W. Lancaster during his tenure at the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) from 1970 to 1992 and beyond. It is organized around the emerging themes as expressed by a diverse group of students in the United States and from around the globe. These students have given us permission to use all or some of their comments in this Festschrift. Introduction Those who have come to know Professor F. W. Lancaster primarily through his writings may not know of his personal qualities that have endeared him to many of his students. This essay is a tribute to Lancaster by several former students for his personal qualities that reflect his caring, sharing, inspiring, and encouraging nature, and his down-to-earth wisdom and ready wit. F. W. Lancaster joined the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois in 1970 and served as a faculty member until his retirement in 1992. Notwithstanding his retirement, Lancaster continued to direct students’ research as an emeritus faculty member. During his tenure, hundreds of students took his courses, which included Information Storage and Retrieval, Vocabulary Control for Information Retrieval, Measurement and Evaluation, and Foundations of Librarianship for students entering the masters program. Based on the student dataset in the MPACT database, Lancaster mentored more students and served on more research committees during his tenure than other faculty at GSLIS in the field of Library and Information Science.1 Appendix A shows Lancaster’s advisees and the dissertation committees on which he served. LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 56, No. 4, Spring 2008 (“The Evaluation and Transformation of Information Systems: Essays Honoring the Legacy of F. W. Lancaster,” edited by Lorraine J. Haricombe and Keith Russell), pp. 747–762 (c) 2008 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois F. W. Lancaster as Scholar, Teacher, and Mentor: Reflections of Students Lorraine J. Haricombe and Chandra Prabha 748 library trends/spring 2008 In this essay, we draw on the reflections of several of Lancaster’s former students who studied at the GSLIS in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. The students who responded to our call for contributions gave us permission to use their personal stories for this project (see Appendix B). We, the authors, are former students ourselves and we have interspersed our own reflections of Lancaster and of his family throughout this essay. Our goal is to let each student’s voice be heard as they reminisce about Lancaster’s impact on their lives, their professional careers and in their research interests. A quick review of Lancaster’s advisees reflects a significant number of international students. They arrived in the United States from Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, Pakistan, China, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa, The Dominican Republic, and Taiwan. Reflections offered by his international students demonstrate Lancaster’s global reach through his writings and travels. He always seemed especially sensitive to the diverse needs of students who came from different cultural backgrounds and educational systems. The students who responded to the call for contributions to this personal tribute included both masters degree and doctoral students and roughly spanned the last quarter of the twentieth century. Master’s degree respondents include: Julie Sigler (’71), Linda Smith (‘72), Becky Lyon (‘72), Elana Hanson (’74), Tad Graham (’74), Clifford Haka (’77), Terry Mills (’81, ’82), Rashmi Mehrotra (’82), and Sidney Berger (’87). Doctoral student respondents include: Evelyn Curry (’81), Jaime Pontigo (‘84), Chandra Prabha (’84), William Aguillar (’84), Sharon Baker (‘85), Sharon (Chengren) Hu (’87), Szarina Abdullah (’89), Lorraine Haricombe (’88 ’92), and Hong Xu (’96). Without exception former students agree that Lancaster made a lasting impact on their careers and left them with a deep respect for his personal qualities since his very early days of teaching at GSLIS. Overall, his students recognize him as a dedicated teacher and mentor with a downto-earth quality, a father figure with warmth and hospitality, and one who never failed to recognize his students for their contributions to his research and to his writings. This essay honors Lancaster for the human values he espouses. It is organized around the themes that emerged in the stories several former students shared with us. The Dedicated Teacher and Mentor From his earliest days at GSLIS Lancaster had a distinguished aura and a distinct humane side as described by Hanson (‘74). She writes: The most commanding presence in the Library Science halls in 1973 was F. Wilfrid Lancaster. When I was assigned as his research assistant I nearly fainted. His look, stance, walk, features, and reputation all struck awe and even a bit of fear into the heart of this nervous elementary 749 haricombe & prabha / reflections of students education graduate and former resident of the sorority just across the street. Wilf took me into his office and home, welcoming me as his assistant on campus and family member off campus. He and his wife introduced me to the cuisines of the world; as I helped prepare his manuscripts, he helped prepare me for the coming of the computer to the world of medical libraries I was about to enter as a hospital librarian. What I didn’t realize was that inside this legend was a great human being who took equal delight in taking budding librarians under his wing and getting them ready to take on new challenges in the whirlwind that was becoming information science. Smith (’72) wrote, “As an undergraduate in physics and mathematics at a small college, I had completed the few computer science courses offered at the time. But it was not until I enrolled in Professor Lancaster’s courses that I began to understand the potential of computer applications for the field in which I had chosen to pursue a career: library science.” Smith writes that she was a student of Professor Lancaster in two courses: Information Storage and Retrieval and Vocabulary Control. He literally wrote the textbook for each course (Information Retrieval Systems: Characteristics, Testing and Evaluation, 1st ed., 1968; Vocabulary Control for Information Retrieval, 1st ed., 1972). I remember sitting in the auditorium in Room 66 in the basement of the Library at some point that year, watching a demonstration of an early online retrieval system from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), AIM-TWX (Abridged Index Medicus-Teletype Writer Exchange Network). We had been learning about NLM’s pioneering efforts to carry out batch processed searches of bibliographic records of the medical literature (MEDLARS—Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), but this was something new: online searching in real time. By the time I returned to Illinois in 1977 to join the faculty, Professor Lancaster had published yet another book (Information Retrieval Online, 1973) and developed a course on online information systems. He generously offered to let me teach the course, which until that point had involved reading about developments in information retrieval online, with no hands-on component. We were able to partner with the Library in spring 1978 to introduce a laboratory component for the course using the BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Services, Inc.) system. I continued to be the primary instructor of that course until 1996, each year updating it to reflect the changes in online resources and the systems used to access them. In 1996 GSLIS launched its LEEP program, the online option for earning the M.S. degree in which I now teach regularly. It has been rewarding to pioneer instruction using online technology, just as Professor Lancaster pioneered teaching about online technology for information retrieval twenty-five years earlier. Professor Herbert Goldhor, former Director of the (then) Graduate School of Library Science (GSLS), hired Lancaster in 1970 to launch the school’s program in Biomedical Librarianship. Lancaster served as direc750 library trends/spring 2008 tor of the program for four years until 1973. Lyon (’72), an early recipient of a fellowship to study biomedical librarianship funded by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), remembers that Lancaster was the project director and advisor to ten students who received the NLM fellowships. I remember him as an excellent professor, advisor, and mentor. Wilf is directly responsible for guiding me in the direction of the National Library of Medicine, where I have happily spent 27 years of my 35 year career. I would probably not have considered applying for the NLM Associate Program if Wilf hadn’t told me to do so. He was a truly great mentor—seeing an opportunity that I would not have considered and firmly moving me in that direction. Having Wilf as a professor, mentor, and later friend, has been very important to me. I will always be grateful to him for the many ways in which he taught, guided, and inspired me. Sigler (’71), a member of that first scholarship group at GSLIS writes: I recall the excitement of his arrival at U of I, Mr. MEDLARS himself! . . . In many ways his presence at U of I contributed to a year that I’ve always considered one of the most worthwhile of my life, because of what I learned and the confidence I gained in myself and the friends who I still have. Graham (’74) registered for Lancaster’s Information Storage and Retrieval class and marveled at Lancaster’s foresight as he remembers their first field trip to the Ohio State University (OSU) Main Library, where a bold experiment called the Ohio College Library Center (OCLC) was underway. Born of the simple notion of sharing resources and saving money, Lancaster pointed out it was the online aspect that would ultimately prove to be the most important innovation. Online would change the way we work. In 1981, the OCLC would be renamed the Online Computer Library Center. Graham asks: “How did he [Lancaster] know that?” Lancaster predicted that librarians would no longer function simply as caretakers of printed materials. They would be at the center of exploring ideas, of discovering connections between those materials and assisting in the birth of new ideas. Graham continues: “We haven’t quite fully achieved this vision of the new world order, but the evidence thus far would suggest we are getting close. In any case, because Professor Lancaster was out in front, well-grounded in both the theoretical and the practical approaches, and because he understands the technology, his two courses enabled me to establish an excellent foundation on which to build a highly successful 30-year career in information systems. For that, I will always be grateful.” Mills (’81,’82) expresses similar sentiments and writes “having you as my CAS degree faculty advisor while at Illinois between 1980 and 1982 [was] very important to me . . . in fact [it was] the highlight of my aca-