People often talk about “paradigm shifts,” but few actually bring one into being.
Robert Saxton Taylor was one person who did.
After he was named dean of Syracuse University’s School of Library Science in 1972, Taylor suggested the school adopt a name that would signal a new direction. Under his leadership, SU’s School of Information Studies emerged as the top such college in the country.
Taylor, 90, died New Year’s Day at Francis House on the city’s North Side.
“I came here to Syracuse because this was the one library science school in the country that had a potential — a real potential — for change,” he said in 2007. “I wanted the word ‘information’ in there, so eventually we arrived at Information Studies — ambiguous enough to cover almost anything, as it has.”
During Taylor’s nine-year tenure here, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) clearinghouse was launched, and in 1980 America’s first master’s degree in information resources management was added to the school’s curriculum. It’s now known as the iSchool at Syracuse.
“I have the warmest, most vivid memories of Bob, who was both our locally vibrant dean and the internationally recognized founder of the new field of information studies,” said iSchool Dean Elizabeth Liddy. When she began work on her doctorate here, Liddy said, “He was truly open to my less-than-traditional views and goals of study.”
Gentle giant
SU alum Mike Eisenberg, now dean emeritus of the University of Washington Information School, recalls Taylor as a “giant in his field.” By the time he arrived at SU, Taylor had already established Lehigh University’s Center for Information Sciences and had helped design the Hampshire College Library Center in Amherst, Mass. He also wrote a book, “The Making of a Library” and a paper that transfixed and transformed reference librarians around the world: “Question-Negotiation and Information-Seeking in Libraries” (1967).
“So as you can imagine, Bob was pretty intimidating,” Eisenberg said, “a larger-than-life presence. But he had a soft voice and a laugh that disarmed you to his probing questions and keen insights.”
Connie Webb was the assistant to Dean Taylor in 1976, and now she’s the vice president for administration at SUNY ESF. “He was shy in a way, and there was a sweetness about him especially for someone as large as he was physically, well over 6 feet tall, and as large he was in his field as well,” she said.
His gentility never prevented him from fighting for the changes he knew were necessary. Library school alumni were outraged by the name change as were other library schools. And SU administrators occasionally faced off with Taylor over the information school’s affairs.
“At one point SU wanted us to merge with the computer science school,” Webb recalled, “but Bob strongly resisted that he took a stand when it was the right thing to do.”
“Taylor made waves with his bold decisions,” said iSchool director of communications Margaret Spillett, “but his foresight and action secured this school its position as an innovative place.”
For his part, Taylor credited his colleagues — Eisenberg, Webb, Marta Dosa, Pauline Atherton, M.J. Dustin — and successors such as deans Evelyn Daniel, Jeffery Katzer, Ray von Dran and Liddy for making his vision a reality. He fondly remembered working with Emerita Professor Antje Lemke, who was instrumental in bringing him here.
“Changing the name of the school was a major contribution,” Lemke said last summer, “and Bob was an excellent dean, but he also had a very good relationship with the students. Many deans don’t.”
Ithaca origins
A native of Ithaca, where his family owned the Corner Bookstore, Taylor graduated from Cornell, became a newspaper reporter in East Texas and served in World War II in Europe. There, after seeing action at the Battle of the Bulge, he worked alongside a young Henry Kissinger in the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps.
Upon returning to the U.S. with his German bride, the former actress Leni Reichenberger, he earned a master’s degree in library science at Columbia before accepting a job at Lehigh University library in Bethlehem, Pa.
In 1967, Taylor was a founding faculty member at Hampshire College. His projects had national and international implications. He was a reviewer for the National Science Foundation and a longtime member of the American Society for Information Science serving as its president in 1968. He taught for a year in Holland as a Fulbright Scholar.
Under his leadership SU’s School of Information Studies pioneered the expansion of the traditional role of libraries, preparing the way for the integration of computers and the Internet into library operations.
Ironically, Taylor himself avoided computers, preferring to write his books, papers and speeches on legal pads. He began using word-processors just before he retired in 1983 and first went online in the late-1990s to research a detailed genealogy of his family.
In retirement Taylor enjoyed landscaping his Onondaga Hill home and bird-watching. He spent five years as the sole caregiver to his wife, Leni, who had Alzheimer’s disease. After her death in 1997, he married Fay Inman Golden, who was director of Liverpool Public Library. She was with him when he died Jan. 1.
A memorial service is being planned at SU’s Hendricks Chapel at a date to be announced. A remembrance site can be found at ischool.syr.edu.
On Nov. 18, 2008, as Taylor’s health deteriorated, iSchool’s board of advisors honored him with a resolution of thanks for “revolutionizing” the field and for establishing the institution’s reputation as “the Original School for the Information Age.”
