Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

February 2006 Volume 4(1)

Heather F.C. Tait, ALA

It was with great sadness that the death of Heather Tait, ALA, was announced on Sunday, 29 January 2006, after a brief illness.

Heather was appointed as Assistant Librarian (part-time) in the Cataloguing Department of the Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde, on 22 March 1968, where she remained until her retirement on 30 September 1994, latterly in the promoted post of Sub-Librarian (part-time).

During her 26 years of service, Heather saw the evolution of cataloguing from a minimal-content, manual operation to a sophisticated, MARC-based, online system, meeting the highest international standards. She witnessed the change from UDC to Dewey classification, the move of the entire library to a different building, and the growth of the collections to more than 1 million items, with a growing portfolio of electronic databases.

Heather coped with the changes and stresses of the working environment with an indefatigable cheerfulness and right good will that was a blessing to students and colleagues alike. She was always genuinely interested in people, and uniformly supportive of them. Professionally, she served as auditor for the Scottish Group of UC&R, she was joint editor (with her late husband, James A. Tait) of “Library Resources in Scotland”, and she was an enthusiastic member of the Cataloguing and Indexing Group in Scotland.

During her retirement, Heather maintained her interest in librarianship through voluntary work in the Library of the Scottish Police College at Tulliallan and at the Chaplaincy Centre of the University of Strathclyde.

Heather’s passing is mourned by her many friends in the University and beyond.

Duncan T.D. Irvine
Senior Librarian, Andersonian Library, University of Strathclyde

Information Scotland Vol. 4(1) February 2006

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.

Last updated: 13-Mar-2006