Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster

Frederick Wilfrid ("Wilf"^[1]) Lancaster (September 4, 1933 - August 25, 2013^[2]) was a British-American information scientist. He immigrated to the USA in 1959 and worked as information specialist for the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland from 1965–68. He was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana from 1972-92 and professor emeritus from 1992-2013. He continued as an honored scholar after retirement speaking on the evolution of librarianship in the 20th and 21st century. ^[3]

F. W. Lancaster was in particular known for his work on online retrieval including evaluation studies of the MEDLARS-system. He has, however, an unusual broad and comprehensive authorship in Library and Information Science (LIS). Over a period of four decades he continuously emerged as a visionary leader in the field of LIS. His research, writings, and teachings earned him the highest honors in the profession. Lancaster excelled at many fronts: as scholar, educator, mentor, and writer.

Awards

• ASIS&T Award of Merit, 1988
• Best Information Science Book of the Year, 1992 for “Indexing and Abstracting in Theory and Practice.”
• Best JASIST Paper, 1969, for "MEDLARS: Report on Evaluation of its Operating Efficiency"

See also

• Document classification
• Information science
• Information scientist
• Information society
• Paperless society

List of works

• Baker, S. L. & Lancaster, F. W. (1977/1991). The Measurement and Evaluation of Library Services. 2nd ed. Arlington, Va.: Information Resources Press. (1st ed. 1977; 2nd ed. 1991).
• Lancaster, F. W. (1968a). Evaluation of the MEDLARS demand search service. [Washington] U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1968b). Information retrieval systems; characteristics, testing, and evaluation. New York, Wiley.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1978). Toward Paperless Information Systems. New York: Academic Press.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1982). Libraries and Librarians in an Age of Electronics. Arlington, Va.: Information Resources Press.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1985). Thesaurus construction and use; a condensed course. Paris: General Information Programme and Unisist, Unesco.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1986). Vocabulary control for information retrieval. 2nd. ed. Arlington, Va.: Information Resources Press.
• Lancaster, F. W. (1988/1993). If You Want to Evaluate Your Library. Champaign: University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. (1st ed. 1988, 2nd ed. 1993).
• Lancaster, F. W. (1991/1998/2003). Indexing and abstracting in theory and practice. London: Library Association. (1st ed. 1991; 2nd ed. 1998; 3rd. ed. 2003).
• Lancaster, F. W. (Ed.). (1993). Libraries and the future; essays on the library in the twenty-first century. New York : Haworth Press.
• Lancaster, F. W. & Fayen, E. G. (1973). Information Retrieval On-Line. Los Angeles: Melville Pub. Co.
• Lancaster, F. W. & Sandore, B. (1997). Technology and the Management of Library and Information Services. Champaign: University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
• Lancaster, F. W. & Smith, L. C. (1983). Compatibility issues affecting information systems and services. Prepared for the General Information Programme and UNISIST. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
• Martyn, J. & Lancaster, F. W. (1981). Investigative methods in library and information science; an introduction. Arlington, Va.: Information Resources Press.

Notes

References

• Festschrift: Haricombe, Lorraine J. & Russell, Keith (eds). (2008). The Influence of F. W. Lancaster on Information Science and on Libraries. Library Trends, 56(4).