Voigt, Melvin J. (Melvin John), 1911-2000

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Upland, California, on March 12, 1911, Melvin J. Voigt received an A.B. in mathematics from Bluffton College (Ohio) in 1933 and a masters of library science from the University of Michigan in 1938. Voigt held numerous positions in library administration, management and teaching during his career--librarian at the University of Michigan (1935-1942), librarian and professor of library science at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1946-1952), assistant librarian and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley (1952-1959), library director at Kansas State University (1959-1960), and university librarian at the University of California, San Diego (1960-1976).

Voigt's research interests included scientific information and an understanding of scientist's uses of information. He held a Senior Fulbright Research Fellowship at the University of Copenhagen (1958-1959) and at the Institut fur Dokumentation (1974-1975) in Frankfurt, Germany.

Voigt served as a library management and data processing consultant to a number of universities and government organizations. He was the American representative on UNESCO's Advisory Committee on Bibliography, Documentation and Terminology between 1961 and 1965, and member of the National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Review Committee from 1967 to 1971.

As the first University Librarian at the University of California, San Diego, Mel Voigt began in 1960 to build a library system for the campus. He developed a cost-saving plan to purchase core books for the three new UC campuses--San Diego, Irvine and Santa Cruz--and oversaw the acquisition of 1.2 million volumes for San Diego by his retirement in 1976. In 1973, Voigt developed a library acquisition policy model, known as the Voigt Model, for UC campuses other than UCB and UCLA based on requirements for general university programs, professional programs, level of undergraduate enrollment, and ease of access to the UCLA and Berkeley collections.

Mel Voigt died on February 4, 2000.

From the guide to the Melvin Voigt Papers, 1942-2000, (Mandeville Special Collections Library, UCSD)