Laurence Wood

British Museum librarian

John Lawrence Wood, librarian: born Shildon, Co Durham 27 November 1911; Assistant Cataloguer, Department of Printed Books, British Museum 1936-46, Assistant Keeper 1946-59; Deputy Keeper 1959-66, Keeper 1966-76; married 1947 Rona Ross (one son, one daughter); died London 13 December 2002.

Laurence Wood was one of the last Keepers of Printed Books at the British Museum before, in 1973, the Department of Printed Books was subsumed into the new, independent British Library.

He was ideally qualified to work in the library of the British Museum. He was highly intelligent, very knowledgeable, an excellent linguist and devoted to the work of his department – a devotion he disguised by a light-hearted and humorous style. For 21 years from 1945 he served as the very competent head of the department's acquisitions division. He then became one of the Keepers, in charge of services to the public and matters relating to the staff.

He was born in 1911, the son of James A. Wood, a solicitor in Shildon, County Durham, and was educated at King James I School, Bishop Auckland, before going up to Merton College, Oxford. In 1933 he was awarded a First in Modern Languages (French), and then spent a period as a lecturer at the University of Besançon in eastern France.

In 1936 he joined the staff of the British Museum to assist with the production of a revised edition of the General Catalogue of Printed Books. The 20 cataloguers recruited for this work between 1934 and 1939 formed a very able body of men and women. At a period when unemployment was high the museum was able to take its pick of applicants with the best academic qualifications.

In the Thirties he worked on the Subject Index as well as on the General (author) Catalogue. When war was imminent in 1939, he acted as assistant to the head of the Department of Printed Books, who was organising the evacuation from London of the most valuable parts of the collections. He was called up for National Service in 1941 and assigned to the code-breaking and intelligence centre at Bletchley Park.

At Bletchley he met Rowena Ross, known as Rona. They were married in 1947, and had two children – Frances, now head of the Chinese section of the British Library, and Stephen, a journalist.

Wood returned to the British Museum in July 1945 and was put in charge of the section dealing with the purchasing of foreign books and periodicals. He had first to re-establish the network of agents which had for a century supplied the library with publications from all over the world. There were, of course, particular problems regarding German publications and in 1949 Wood visited Germany to find new agents. In due course he was also made responsible for the replacement of the books and periodicals destroyed in 1941 (when one of the four main bookstacks was gutted during an air-raid); for the recording and acknowledging of gifts to the Department of Printed Books; and for the administration of the Copyright Receipt Office which dealt with legal deposit material.

When Wood was promoted Assistant Keeper in 1946 the Keeper of Printed Books praised him for having run his section almost single-handed for a year. The staff of the acquisitions division always remained small in number while Wood was in charge, because he had none of the instincts of an empire-builder. He never had a separate office but sat in the centre of the large room where his staff worked. Since the room was a main thoroughfare for the library, people frequently stopped to chat to Wood, who was often to be found with his chair tipped back and his feet on his desk.

His relaxed style disguised the fact that he was a hard worker. When the specialist Assistant Keepers who selected material to be acquired from foreign countries sent the bibliographies which they had marked to the acquisitions division, Wood went through them all and adjusted the recommendations to take account of the fact that funds for purchases were usually inadequate.

If it was necessary to search for items stored in the extensive (and dirty) basements he was quite prepared to come in on a Saturday, don a boiler suit, and hunt for the items required. In the different world of 50 years ago, there was a tradition of rolling up one's sleeves and getting on with a job in hand no matter what one's rank was.

His post was upgraded to Deputy Keeper in 1959 and in 1966 he was promoted to be one of the two Keepers who supported the Principal Keeper of Printed Books. He was in charge of services to the public and staff matters for the whole department. He was particularly well suited for these tasks because he was very good at dealing with difficult people.

In 1957 the Government withdrew permission to construct a new building for the library on a site to the south of the museum, and set up the Dainton Committee to consider the future of national library facilities: Wood helped with the preparation of evidence to be submitted to this committee.

When the British Library was set up in 1973 to absorb the library departments of the British Museum and other library bodies, Wood was involved in the birth pangs of the new institution. The British Library had a central administration composed of former members of Civil Service departments, who for the most part had little knowledge of a library like that of the British Museum. Wood established good relations with the newcomers and helped them to understand the nature and needs of the library.

The first Director General of the Reference Division of the British Library (which consisted of the former library departments of the British Museum) was the very able Don Richnell, who had a high opinion of Wood. The latter reached retirement age in 1976, at a time when Richnell was planning the major enterprise of cataloguing all material published in the English language in the 18th century. This Eighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) was to be under the direction of Robin Alston, who came from outside the library, and Richnell wanted him to have the help of someone who knew the library and its staff inside out. Wood was recruited for this task. which occupied him for the next few years. Apart from advising Alston on management problems, Wood became involved in the actual work of cataloguing, and in his late sixties learned how to cope with computers and machine-readable cataloguing.

He also edited Factotum, the newsletter of the ESTC. This contained valuable pieces of research concerning 18th-century English-language publications, some of which were contributed by Wood himself. In particular he traced a medical bibliography of 1686 which had been annotated to indicate the books owned by Sir Hans Sloane whose collections formed the basis of the British Museum when it was set up in 1753. Even after he ceased to work full-time for the ESTC Wood continued to help with the editing of Factotum until it ended in 1995.

Wood was an enthusiast for bookbinding and in his final retirement he devoted much of his time to this work, which he continued almost up to the time of his death.

Philip Harris