Condolences: Alastair Smith
Members from the library sector respond to Alastair’s passing below:
I am sad to report the passing of Alastair Smith, former Senior Lecturer at VUW’S Information Studies Programme.
A memorial service for Alastair was held at the Aro Community Centre, Aro Street on Friday 29th November.
Alastair began working at the then Department of Library and Information Studies in January 1989, retiring in 2014. Alastair’s research focused primarily on the evaluation of information sources, and on the use of web metrics to assess the impact of websites, which tied to his teaching of the programme’s reference courses. Before joining the staff at Victoria, Alastair worked at BANZ and at the National Library of New Zealand where he was one of the staff developing Kiwinet, New Zealand’s first online database hosting service. Alastair set up the family of library-related email discussion lists, including nz-libs, in the 1990s, and received a LIANZA Fellowship in 2002.
Alastair is remembered fondly by staff in the school for his connection with students, kindness and ability to find conferences in interesting countries, taking his bicycle with him to explore. Author of Everyday Cycling in Aotearoa New Zealand, Alastair will be remembered for his passion for IT, and his love of cycling and travel.
Our thoughts are with his family at this sad time.
Jennifer Campbell-meier
He was an “all round” academic, with an innovative approach to teaching and research. Alastair managed to combine academic travel to conferences in different countries with his love of cycling, taking his well-travelled bicycle to many countries so that he could fit in a cycle tour as well as the conference. Alastair’s specialist areas were reference services and database searching. He put his technical skills to good use in creating one of the earliest guides to online sources for New Zealand library and information studies professionals, South Seas Bulletin Board for Libraries (SSBUBL), archived at here.
Brenda Chawner, former colleague
Alastair was “[a]lways a good-humoured, generous and supportive colleague, well-liked by the students, and immensely practical. One of those salt of the earth people one is glad to have known and worked with, and who enjoyed great respect in the profession.”
Rowena Cullen, former colleague
Alastair’s memorial service was held on Friday 29 November at the Aro Valley Community Centre. Alastair was very well represented - his bicycle was on the stage, as was a squirty drink bottle (in case any of the speakers went on too long). This was a well known weapon which Alastair used when hosting political speakers.
Members of his family spoke very movingly, and Brenda Chawner shared her memories of Alastair on behalf of his colleagues from Victoria University of Wellington.
Friends and family came from all over the country. Other speakers included his lifelong friends from the climbing and tramping community, who sang well-remembered tramping songs (in which many in the audience joined). His passion for biking was remembered by speakers from the Wellington cycling network, and we also learnt of another unexpected interest: monitoring penguins in Island Bay.
As with any memorial service, this is also a chance to catch up with others who knew Alastair, and I was pleased to share some reminiscences with another of Alastair’s Victoria colleagues: Rowena Cullen. As I left, I took away a copy of his book: Everyday Cycling - a lasting memory of Alastair.