After more than 27 years of service to the Bancroft Library, Tim
Hoyer retired Monday, January 31. Tim's hallowed history with the
Bancroft is evident in the following citation from his 1998
Chancellor's Outstanding Staff Award:
Tim Hoyer, presently the Head of Bancroft Technical Services, began
his long career in Bancroft in what was then called the Catalog
Division in 1972, eventually heading up its copy cataloging unit.
In the 1980s, after the shift to computer-produced catalog cards and
the eventual closing of the Library's card catalogs, Tim conceived
and managed a plan to accomplish a retrospective conversion of
Bancroft's entire card file of printed materials. Tim was a
forceful advocate for the special needs of Bancroft's cataloging as
it merged into the general library's on-line cataloging system.
This was the beginning of Tim's work with computer-based access to
library collections. Tim's next project was to carry out a similar
conversion for the card file of the manuscript collections. Tim
secured grant funding for this three-year project, which included
not only the actual conversion of catalog records, but also a
complete physical survey of the collections, allowing us for the
first time a comprehensive look at their conservation needs. The
third cataloging project Tim led was the cataloging and physical
survey of Bancroft's pictorial collections, a very complex project
made much more difficult because there were almost no extant catalog
records to start with.
Tim was one of the first people to see the need for standards in
order to put archival finding aids on the web. At a national level,
Tim became involved in the development of the Encoded Archival
Description, which has now been adopted by the Library of Congress
as a national standard for the machine-readable description of
archival collections and serves as the basis for the University's
Online Archive of California.
Further grant writing on his part brought us funds to enhance
Berkeley's reputation for well-designed and managed computerization
projects: the California Heritage project to digitize and mount
25,000 images; the Finding Aids project to mount the entire UC
system's finding aids for manuscript and other collections on the
web; the project to inventory and digitize the Robert B. Honeyman
Western Americana Pictorial Collection; Berkeley's portion of the
Advanced Papyrological Information System project, involving the
Tebtunis Papyrus Collection. He also successfully sought funding to
create a finding aid for the 400,000 negatives of the San Francisco
Call newspaper's photographic morgue.
It is difficult to convey the energy which Tim has put in to these
various projects and into making Bancroft what it is today. He has
a profound commitment to Bancroft's mission, to make its collections
available to as many people in as many ways as is technologically
possible. Tim's vision has enabled Bancroft to remain at the
forefront of technological innovation and in the creation of
standards so that such innovation can benefit scholars and
researchers here at Berkeley as well as elsewhere. His tireless
persistence in pursuing these goals has had a profoundly beneficial
effect for Bancroft staff and patrons alike.
I personally have had the great fortune to work with Tim since 1987.
I was hired ("temporarily") as part of the retrospective conversion
team for monographs, and have worked in a variety of capacities
since, culminating in 1998 with my appointment as Assistant Head of
Bancroft Technical Services when Tim was appointed Head. Tim has
been a tremendously supportive mentor and has demonstrated the same
support to other BTS staff countless times. This has always been
especially evident in his management of extra-mural funds upon which
Bancroft relies to keep BTS fully staffed. No one writes a PAF
change quite like (or as often as) Tim does.
Being a fairly reticent person, I have learned the virtues of long-
windedness from Tim (wears down the opposition), as well as
repetition (lest they conveniently "forget"). His mastery lies with
the charm and aplomb with which he conducts himself. But seriously,
it has been a tremendous pleasure to work with someone who has the
commitment, drive, and good humor that Tim has. The rest of the
Bancroft staff and I will miss him terribly.
Please join us Friday, February 4th, at 4 p.m. in the Heller Reading
Room of the Bancroft Library to celebrate the end of Tim's tenure at
the Bancroft and the beginning of his new endeavors.
Terry Boom
Acting Head, BTS
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