CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- U.S. library innovator Fred Kilgour has died at the University of North Carolina Medical Center in Chapel Hill at age 92.
Kilgour, who came up with the concept of library databases and online search engines in the early 1970s, died Monday of a brain hemorrhage, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
In 1967 Kilgour founded a library center at Ohio State University with an idea to take reference resources out of their traditional brick-and-mortar housing and make them accessible to anyone in Ohio, the Times said.
The Ohio College Library Center -- now the Online Computer Library Center -- linked 54 Ohio colleges and universities in 1971, creating a shared online cataloging system for academic libraries.
The alliance grew into an international library network that encompasses 55,000 institutions in 110 countries, the Times says.
"Kilgour had as much to do with the advent of online information systems as anybody in the last 50 years," said Brian Schottlaender, university librarian at the University of California, San Diego. "And he had as much to do with the disappearance of the card catalog as anybody in the last 50 years."
Kilgour is survived by his wife, three daughters, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
