Presidential Column: 4

I first met Ian Mowat 32 years and three months ago when he, I and Mel Collier started work together at St Andrews University on the same day. We have told the story a thousand times. Of how we were young Turks together, of how we planned to change our professional world, of how we wanted to make a difference. And Ian did. Although Ian and I only actually worked together for a couple of years, our careers intertwined until a last e-mail sharing a joke, just before he left the office for the last time. Over the years we worked together, sat on committees, spoke at conferences, edited books, plotted, went to German classes, somewhat bizarrely went weight training, drank and talked til late in the night, bickered, were rivals for jobs, but always fast friends.

He was one of the best university librarians of several generations and had a glittering career. In his apparently effortless rise, he moved from post to post leaving a legacy of improvement and of service. But we all know that apparently effortless and stellar careers are based on enormous amounts of hard work and personal sacrifice, and Ian gave both unstintingly. As Ian Rankin once put it, it took years of work to become an overnight success.