COLUMBUS, Ohio — Like most inventions, the name of the person who created the device goes unnoticed. Such is the case with Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, unless you live in the library world.
“The prominence of this library rose significantly under his leadership,” said Janet Hulm, interim Dean of University Libraries at Ohio University. It’s the same position Lee held during his tenure at OU from 1978-1999.
Lee, a Fulbright Scholar, also saw an opportunity to modernize how higher education could provide students, faculty, researchers and staff with access to valuable digital research. In 1992, Lee became the founding director of OhioLINK which today connects 117 libraries at 88 institutions plus the State Library of Ohio.
“It brought all our records to a single catalog,” said Hulm. “We can write easier, the user can easily request an item from another library, that library will respond and ship it and get it within days.”
Bob Lee, the youngest of six children, said he didn’t realize the significance of his father’s contributions until later in his adult life.
“I think it's safe to say from the 60s up and through the 90s, he was the preeminent Asian librarian in the Western world,” Lee told 10TV’s Angela An inside the library of Columbus Academy where he now works as Director of Communications and Marketing.
Lee recalls growing up with countless international students who came to OU to learn library and information science.
“He had established an exchange program at Ohio University,” said Lee. “So many librarians from the East came through that program and even lived in our house, sometimes. We had lots of parties where they all came over to our house, and then they all went out into the world and lead libraries themselves now.”
Before he retired from OU, Lee made sure OU would become home to one of five library depositories in the state of Ohio. It’s a building that holds more than 600,000 books, journals, VHS, film reels and more. Items deemed so unique are worthy of preservation but need a special, climate-controlled building for storage.
“He had gone away to China to take folks on a tour for 3 weeks and when he came back he learned they had named the annex after him,” said Hulm. “A huge tribute to his legacy and in addition, they installed white marble Chinese lions and put them outside as a surprise.”
In 2003, Lee was coaxed out of retirement. The Library of Congress in Washington DC asked him to serve as the Asian Division Chief, the highest leadership position of any Asian American librarian.
“He started to give them some names of people he thought would be good,” said his son Bob. “And they're like, ‘No, Dr. Lee, we want you to be the head of the Asian Division’. So, he became the first Asian to be the head of the Asian Division at the Library of Congress.”
In 2015, Lee was given the Melvil Dewey Medal Award, the highest achievement for any librarian. When he passed away in December 2023, people from around the world attended his memorial service months later to pay their respects.
“You could walk into any library, in our country or in any library throughout Asia, and they will know your father,” said his son. “They will want to appreciate him and want to do something for you because of what he did for them.”