(photo courtesy of Humayun Rashid)
Humayun Rashid is known as one of the experts and main proponents of the KF Modified classification system used by libraries across the country
By Gian Medves, Chief Law Librarian, Bora Laskin Law Library
Humayun Rashid is retiring from the University of Toronto after 40 years of dedicated service. "Rashid" to all his colleagues, has been the head of the Cataloguing Department at the Bora Laskin Law Library since 1980. He started his law library career in the early 1970s working as a library assistant at the McGill Law Library.
Rashid came to Canada with a BA, MA and LLB from Punjab University in Pakistan, planning to practice law. He took a part time library job at McGill while sorting out his accreditation. McGill's Chief Law Librarian, seeing his educational background together with his obvious facility for library work encouraged him to enrol in library school. After graduation, his first professional position was as a cataloguer at Algonquin College in Ottawa. Mr. Rashid went on to catalogue at Bishops University and the University of Saskatchewan Law Library before being persuades to come to Toronto by the Hon. Frank Iacobucci, then Dean of University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, to become the Law Library's Head of Cataloguing. He has had a remarkable career at U of T managing the Cataloguing Department and undertaking several large special projects including reclassification of large parts of the law library collection.
While his contribution to the U of T's Law Library is notable, he is better known in the law library world as being one of the experts and main proponents of the KF Modified classification system used by libraries across the country. Rashid is a co-author of KF Classification for Use in Canadian Law Libraries and continues to work on new classifications for the KF scheme. Since 2002, he has been an advisor to the National Library's Cataloguing in Publication program for KF Modified. In addition to his book, he has authored a number of articles and chapters in books on cataloguing Canadian legal materials
Rashid has been a dedicated member of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries/Association Canadienne des Biblioteques de Droit since 1978 and in 2012 the Association bestowed him with Honoured Member status for his years of dedicated service.
Rashid has devoted his career to an area of librarianship that while rarely in the spotlight, underpins all we do, and in doing so has made a significant and lasting impact on law librarianship.
He will be deeply missed by his colleagues at Bora Laskin and the Faculty of Law. Wishing Rashid a happy and very well deserved retirement!
