The American Library Association’s (ALA) Library History Round Table maintains an ever-growing collection of memorial tributes to noteworthy library professionals who have passed away in the past 50 years. This project, known as “Librarians We Have Lost,” was conceived in celebration of the ALA’s sesquicentennial. In May, the project spotlighted the legacy of Carolyn Hixon Harris, an important figure in library history and an outstanding UT alumna.
Harris’s life (1947-1994) and achievements are well worth remembering, and we draw on the ALA’s well-researched tribute to better share with our community her story, especially as it pertains to UT and the iSchool.
Harris began and ended her career on the Forty Acres. She earned a B.A. in Art History from UT in 1969, and a Masters of Library Science in 1970 at what was then known as the UT Graduate School of Library Science – the institution that would later, after multiple name changes, come to be known as the iSchool. From 1973 to 1980, Harris worked as a manuscript cataloger at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, today known as the Harry Ransom Center.
Harris left UT for her first nationally prominent role, as head of preservation at Columbia University Libraries in New York City. She worked at Columbia from 1981-1992, eventually rising to the role of director of the university’s preservation and conservation programs in 1990. She also made key contributions to the ALA, serving as president of the Resources and Technical Services Division from 1998-1989.
In 1992, Harris moved back to UT, bringing Columbia’s preservation and conservation programs with her to what by then was known as the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. This was a big moment for UT’s reputation as a national leader in the library and archives field.
Sadly, Harris passed away in 1994, already at the top of her field at the age of 46. She is remembered as a beloved educator – indeed, as a pioneer in preservation education – and as an accomplished writer. She won multiple awards for her writing on conservation and preservation, where her influential articles touched on many facets of the field, from technical problems like deacidification and brittle books to institutional considerations like curator/conservator relations and cost models for preservation.
In the early 2000s, having lost funding from the National Endowment for Humanities, the preservation and conservation certificate program that Harris had brought to UT was discontinued. This was a painful decision still felt by many in the iSchool community. We remain in deep appreciation of Harris’s legacy, which is still felt at the iSchool today, where important and exciting work is still done by faculty and students who are new and rising leaders in the field she pioneered.
Harris’s legacy also lives on in the Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award, created in 2001 to honor accomplishment in preservation leadership.
”Carolyn was a leader in preservation administration, which is all about taking passive measures to create maximum benefit in prolonging the lifetime of cultural heritage collections. Her legacy is important now as the conservation field shifts to embrace preventive care as a central methodology. In this changing focus, we see echoes of Carolyn’s lasting influence.