Vale Kevin Griffin

VALE KEVIN GRIFFIN

    We recently had the sad news that the RGSSA’s former librarian, Kevin Griffin, has died. He had been very ill for months and had had to give up his library work. The Royal Geographical Society of South Australia has been without a librarian since then and it has really brought home to us what a great deal of work Kevin did, even though he was only part-time.

    Kevin was a very modest person, so I won’t indulge in fulsome praise or post a photo of him. I shall just say, on a personal level, that it was a pleasure working with him. His work for the RGSSA will speak for him. He was instrumental in the decision to set up a computerised catalogue for the Society for the very first time and mount it on the Internet, a move which is giving scholars world-wide access to the RGSSA’s unique collection of works of exploration and travel. In-house, he produced a series of fascinating exhibitions, drawing on his wide knowledge of the collection. His expert work as a bibliographer is best seen in his catalogue for the big exhibition Terra Cognita: Four Hundred Years of European Exploration, Travel and Discovery, which was mounted in 2008 for the 100th anniversary of the opening of the York Gate Library collection in South Australia.

"Terra Cognita" title page (picture on navy mat)

The electronic version of this illustrated publication is available at :

http://www.rgssa.org.au/Terra_Cognita.pdf 

Below we see an extract which shows Kevin’s ability to write concise and telling annotations:

Thank you for your tireless and dedicated work for the RGSSA Library, Kevin.

We miss you.