Warwick Scott Cathro (born 8 March 1948) was pivotal in the development of

Trove Trove is an Australian online library database owned by the National Library of Australia in which it holds partnerships with source providers National and State Libraries Australia, an aggregator and service which includes full text documen ...

, an Australian online library database aggregator hosted by the

National Library of Australia The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the ''National Library Act 1960'' for "mainta ...

. The

Australian Library and Information Association The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), formerly the Australian Institute of Librarians and Library Association of Australia, is the peak professional organisation for the Australian library and information services sector. ...

(ALIA) says of him; "His extraordinary work in developing and implementing standards; advancing innovative solutions; championing national sectoral infrastructure and encouraging communication and debate in the profession, place Warwick Cathro among the most important Australian library and information practitioners of our time."

Early life

Cathro was born in

Newtown, New South Wales Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west, is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Inner West Council in the state of New So ...

and attended

Newington College , motto_translation = To Faith Add Knowledge , location = Inner West and Lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales , country = Australia , coordinates = , pushpin_map = A ...

(1957-1964) commencing as a preparatory school student in

Wyvern House , motto_translation = To Our Faith Add Knowledge , established = , type = Independent single-sex primary day school , denomination = Uniting Church in Australia , gender = Boys , educational_authority = NSW Department of Educat ...

. In 1959, he was the Dux of Wyvern and in 1964 he was Dux of the College and received the Halse Rogers and Schofield Prizes. Following school, he commenced study at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

and in 1969 graduated as a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

and was awarded his PhD in

physical chemistry Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistica ...

in 1975.

Library career

Cathro joined the staff of the

in January 1978 and on his retirement in 2011 held the position of Assistant Director-General, Resource Sharing and Innovation. During that time, Cathro played a leading role in the Library's delivery of innovative network services to the Australian library community including the Australian Bibliographic Network,

Australian National Bibliographic Database The Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD), formerly part of the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) and for some years renamed Kinetica, is a national shared library cataloguing network, hosted by the National Library of Australia. ...

, and Libraries Australia. Cathro is considered the founder of

, which is the National Library's discovery service and links Australians to resources available online, and in Australian libraries, cultural institutions and research collections. It highlights material collected by 1100 Australian institutions and links to more than 120,000,000 items, including full-text books, journal and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, websites, letters, archives, and biographies of prominent Australians. In 2010, the site received 3 million visits and now boasts an average of 25,000 unique visitors a day. Visitors to the site assist in correcting the machine-readable indexed text in the full-text newspaper section. In 1997, Cathro was one of the primary organizers of the fourth

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative 220px, Logo image of DCMI, which formulates Dublin Core The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen "core" elements (properties) for describing resources. This fifteen-element Dublin Core has ...

's workshop which was hosted by the National Library in Canberra.

Honours

Cathro was awarded the ''H.C.L. Anderson Award'' by ALIA in 2012 for his contribution to the development of Trove, the discovery service and national newspaper digitisation project. Other awards include the ''ALIA Library Manager of the Year'' (1991)Library Manager off the Year, 1991
Retrieved 5 December 2017. and the Victorian Association for Library Automation ''R.D. Williamson Award'' (1993).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cathro, Warwick Scott 1948 births Australian librarians Living people University of Sydney alumni People educated at Newington College Australian physical chemists National Library of Australia Council members