Ronald Albert Hagler, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia

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Dr. Ronald Albert Hagler, UBC faculty photo, September 1961
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In memoriam

Dr. Ronald Albert Hagler (1934-2022), B.A., A.M., A.M.L.S., PhD, UBC Professor Emeritus, founding faculty member of UBC's School of Librarianship, later School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Born in Kitchener, Ontario on 15 May 1934; died in Vancouver, BC on 20 May 2022, at the age of 88.

After moving to Vancouver in 1961, Ronald began a long association with UBC's School of Librarianship as one of its original faculty in a new degree program in librarianship. For almost 60 years, his Point Grey home was a meeting place for friends and colleagues who gathered to enjoy good food, wine and lively conversation. His dinner parties were always fun, noisy affairs, due in part to the operas and symphonies that he'd play for his guests at full volume on two Tannoy speakers. Well into his 80s, he could be seen doing laps at the UBC pool, shopping on West 10th, and enjoying walks with friends in the Endowment Lands.

Ronald grew up in Kitchener as the only child of immigrant parents, Marie and Albert, from Gotsche (Goče), the German-speaking part of Slovenia in central Europe. He attended St. Jerome's Catholic School where his academic potential was encouraged by his teachers. In 1955, he earned his bachelor of arts (B.A.) degree at St. Jerome's College (University of Ottawa). While he pursued graduate studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he worked in the technical services department of the University library and, during summer breaks, at the Kitchener Public Library. He completed a master of library science (A.M.L.S.) degree in 1957, a master of arts degree in Greek and Latin in 1958, and a PhD in library science in 1961.

In 1961, at only 27, Ronald was offered a teaching position at UBC. The School's original director, Dr. Sam Rothstein, wanted to hire lecturers who students would enjoy and learn from, according to the 40th anniversary monograph of the School. Ronald accepted Sam's offer to teach at UBC, and fit into the faculty right from the beginning. Although hired to teach cataloguing he soon ventured into other areas befitting his wide-ranging curiosity; these included book history, which was just then establishing itself as a discipline. His scholarly interests were an extension of his teaching and he published widely. In the mid-1960s, Ronald was invited to sit on the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR), taking on a key role as a member of the Canadian committee, and as an editor of its two subsequent editions.

By 1980, Ronald had decided to write a text for students on the impact of the computer on creating and maintaining a library's electronic records. The monograph, published by ALA in 1982, was entitled The Bibliographic Record and Information Technology. BRIT1 was written for prospective reference librarians and cataloguers needing a better understanding of the changes to the bibliographic record in the computer era. It was published in its second edition in 1991, and its third edition in 1997. Long regarded as an important textbook, BRIT continues to be cited to this day. In 1990, in recognition of outstanding professional achievement, Ronald was awarded the Margaret Mann Citation by the ALA Cataloging and Metadata Management Section.

Throughout his long career, Ronald was invited to speak on Canadian publishing (the topic of his dissertation), history of the book and printing, and taught courses on those subjects. At international conferences, he taught workshops on topics related to cataloguing, and was prominent in organizations such as the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the International Federation of Library Associations. He participated on the juries of the The Alcuin Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada for many years. Ronald took several sabbaticals as an excuse to travel while sharing his knowledge with librarians in many countries.

Former students remember him as an excellent teacher, and lecturer. In class, he would speak in complete sentences, and paragraphs, for long periods without notes. On occasion, he would digress on several topics at once, and someone would sheepishly ask, "Dr. Hagler, is this going to be on the exam?" - causing us all to laugh, including Ronald. Despite his gifts as a public speaker, he truly was a shy, private man who avoided the limelight.

Ronald retired in 1999, after serving as an instructor, assistant professor and full professor for 38 years. In retirement, he supported many charities and causes, attended every possible opera, symphony and chamber music concert, and took several memorable trips to Bayreuth, Seattle and San Francisco to see Wagner's epic Ring Cycle. Ronald spent his final years living at Crofton Manor in Kerrisdale and, even though his prodigious memory gradually receded, his love of friends, good food and classical music remained until the end of his life. Ronald leaves no immediate family to mourn, but many close friends and former colleagues.

"Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil." – Cicero

- A memorial service will be announced soon. Donations to the arts organization of your choice.

A tribute from the UBC iSchool

Quotations in library publications

  • DR. RONALD HAGLER, senior instructor, is a young man who has compressed a maximum of study and library experience into a minimum of years. After undergraduate work and a tour of library duty at St. Jerome's College at Kitchener, Ontario, he put together A.M., A.M.L.S., and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Michigan while working concurrently in the technical service departments of the University of Michigan Library and the Kitchener Public Library. His research interests, as indicated by his recently published dissertation, are in the field of Canadian publishing. He will teach courses in cataloging and classification, the technical services, and the history of books and printing.

According to Ex Libris Association Newsletter (2004), the newly-formed UBC School of Librarianship was notable for getting its accreditation by 1963, only two years into its development:

"...The first faculty members, Rose Vainstein, Ronald Hagler, Sheila Egoff, and Bert Hamilton had to meet not only Director Rothstein’s high professional and scholastic expectations, but also a stricture “never [to be] boring and dull and inconsequential and niggling.” Most of the first faculty were practitioners, and did not, as Dr. Ronald Hagler has expressed it, “have the baggage of the old style library school..." - Ex Libris, 2004

Interviews

  • Hagler, Ronald. Interview by Judith Saltman and Maurizio Dattilo, March 12, 2001. Special Collections, Main UBC. Micro-cassette and transcript.

Photographs in archival collections

Finding aids to archival materials

Contributions as editor

  • Edwards, Gail, Saltman Judy. 2010. Picturing Canada: A history of Canadian children's illustrated books and publishing. University of Toronto Press.
  • Egoff, Sheila A; Hagler, Ronald A. 1992. Canadian children's books, 1799-1939, in the Special Collections and University Archives Division, the University of British Columbia : a bibliographical catalogue. — Compiled with the assistance of Margaret Burke, Ronald Hagler and Joan Pert. — Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library.
  • McGrath, Leslie. 2000. "Books that Shaped Our Minds, a Bibliographical Catalogue of Selections Chiefly from the Arkley Collection of Early and Historical Children's Literature in the Special Collections and University Archives Division, the University of British Columbia Library, by Sheila A. Egoff and Ronald Hagler, comp., with the assistance of Margaret Burke and Joan Pert." Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada 38, no. 1 (2000).
  • Preface to Stokes, Roy Bishop, and Romano Stephen Almagno. Esdaile's manual of bibliography. Scarecrow Press, 2001.

Articles

  • Hagler, Ronald. 1954. Waterloo Historical Society Museum. 042 1954 06
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1963. Local Autonomy. Libr Resourc Tech Serv. 7:340-49.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1966. "Ontario Libraries, a Province-wide Survey and Plan, 1965". (Book Review) College and Research Libraries 27(6): 488-489.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1975. "The Development of Cataloging Rules for Nonbook Materials." Library Resources and Technical Services 19(3):268-278.]
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1977. "Changes in cataloging codes: rules for description." Library Trends 1977:603-623.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1979. "Where's That Rule?: A Cross Index of the Two Edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules". Ottawa, Canada: Canadian Library Association.]
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1977. Access Points for Works. International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR Toronto, Canada, October 23-25, 1997.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1979. "Nonbook Materials." In The making of a code: the issues underlying AACR 2: papers given at the International Conference on AACR 2, held March 11-14, 1979 in Tallahassee, Florida. 1980.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1980. "Nonbook materials: chapters 7-11." The making of a code: The issues underlying AACR2 (1980): 7-11.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1980. "Nonbook Materials: chapters 7 through 11." The Making of a Code: the Issues Underlying AACR2: Papers given at the International Conference on AACR2 held March 11-14, 1979 in Tallahassee, Florida. Ed. Doris Hargrett Clack. Chicago: American Library Association, 1980. 72-87.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1985. "The Machine-readable bibliographic record in the fifth year of AACR2". Singapore Libraries 15: 11-18.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1989. "The Consequences of Integration" in The Conceptual Foundations of Descriptive Cataloging. Monograph edited by Elaine Svenonius, 197-218. New York: Academic Press.
  • Hagler, Ronald. 1994. "Professional reading." Emergency Librarian 21(5): 40.
  • Vainstein, Rose; Hagler, Ronald. 1966. Public libraries in British Columbia: A survey with recommendations. Public Libraries Research Study, British Columbia.

Chapters in monographs

Contributions to rules and standards

  • Anglo-American Cataloging Rules / prepared by the American Library Association, the Library of Congress, the Library Association, and the Canadian Library Association. – North American text. – Chicago : American Library Association, 1967.
  • Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules / prepared by the American Library Association, the British Library, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, the Library Association, the Library of Congress. – 2nd ed. / edited by Michael Gorman and Paul W. Winkler. – Chicago : American Library Association ; Ottawa : Canadian Library Association, 1978. [Note: Also published: London : Library Association, 1978]
  • Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules / prepared by the American Library Association, the British Library, the Canadian Committee on Cataloguing, the Library Association, the Library of Congress. – 2nd ed. revised / edited by Michael Gorman and Paul W. Winkler. – Chicago : American Library Association ; Ottawa : Canadian Library Association, 1992.
  • Canadian Task Group on Cataloguing Standards, G. C Burgis, Ronald Hagler, and National Library of Canada. 1972. Cataloguing Standards: The Report of the Canadian Task Group on Cataloguing Standards, with Recommendations to the National Librarian, Guy Sylvestre. Ottawa: National Library of Canada.

Monographs

WorldCat Entries

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