At the annual meeting of MELI, the Ex Libris Users Group - Israel,
held at the National Library of Israel on December 29th, the entire
afternoon session was devoted to an appreciation of the contribution
of Professor Elhanan Adler to the Israeli library community on the
occasion of his retirement as Deputy Director for Information
Technology of the National Library of Israel . Elhanan has
previously been presented with a certificate of appreciation for his
extraordinary contributions to Judaica Librarianship by AJL.
At the session Elhanan reviewed the beginnings of the computerization
of libraries in the world and then concentrated on the advances he
has seen (in many cases initiated) in Israel. As the first area
affected by online databases was that of periodicals, Professor
Yehudit Bar Ilan of Bar Ilan University made a presentation on the
changes in usage patterns of periodicals in the 21st century. Next
Yosef Branse, who worked as a computer programmer with Elhanan at the
Haifa University Library from 1981 until Elhanan's move to the
National Library in 1999, reviewed the accomplishments in library
computerization made at Haifa, which in many cases was the ground
breaking institution in computerization among Israeli university
libraries. To close the session Orly Simon, Head of IT and
Digitization at the National Library, reviewed Elhanan's life
accomplishments. She was allotted a fifteen minute slot for her
presentation and opened by saying that someone had asked her if she
(or the person who made the time allotments) was crazy. There is no
way to even list Elhanan's accomplishments in fifteen minutes, much
less say something about them. An apt summary of a very productive career.
Though officially retired, Elhanan will continue his career serving
as Chairman of the Information Science Program at David Yellin
Teachers College, Co-coordinator of the computer network of the
libraries in the national higher education system and advisor to the
libraries of the Hebrew University, among other things.
