A librarian, Kilgour was dissatisfied with how books were cataloged in libraries, and how difficult it was to determine if a partner library had a particular book for inter-library loan.
In 1967, long before the Internet, he founded “OCLC” — the Ohio College Library Center. Four years later, the project went live, allowing 54 academic libraries around Ohio to see what each other had in their collections. By 1977 the system was expanded beyond Ohio, and in 1981 the effort was renamed the Online Computer Library Center. Librarians still simply know it as “OCLC”, and it allows them to see what more than 54,000 other libraries in 109 countries have in their collections.
The catalog will soon be available via the Internet, too. In 1974, the American Library Association awarded Kilgour the Margaret Mann Citation in Cataloging and Classification for “making the Library of Congress MARC database a practical and useful product,” and in 1982 awarded him Honorary Life Membership “for making the benefits of technology readily available to thousands of libraries.” Kilgour enjoyed teaching researchers: he taught at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill until he was 90. He died July 31 in Chapel Hill from a stroke at age 92.
Author’s Note: Back in 1985 when I was researching my first book, a librarian at Humboldt State University taught me how to use the OCLC terminal there, and I was extremely grateful to be able to borrow books from all around the nation.