Frank Francis

Sir Frank Chalton Francis (5 October 1901 – 15 September 1988) was an English academic librarian and curator. Almost all his working life was at the British Museum, first as an Assistant Keeper in the Department of Printed Books, and later as Secretary of the museum, Keeper of Printed Books and, from 1959 to 1968, Director and Principal Librarian of the museum.

As director, Francis worked to modernise and expand the museum, and his ideas contributed to the establishment of a separate British Library after his retirement. He was a well-known bibliographer, lecturing in the subject at University College, London, and serving as secretary, and later president, of the Bibliographical Society. He was one of the pioneers of computerised bibliography for libraries.

Life and career

Early years and first posts Francis was born in Liverpool, the only child of Frank William Francis, a provision broker, and his wife, Elizabeth née Chalton. He was educated at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and Liverpool University, where he took a first class degree in Classics. From 1923 to 1925, he undertook post-graduate studies at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he specialised in early Greek philosophy. At the museum, Francis was put in charge of Swedish books. He paid several visits to Sweden, studied Swedish and Icelandic and became the museum's leading expert in Scandinavian languages. From 1930 he also took a leading role in the revision of the museum's general catalogue, acquiring a reputation as a bibliographer. From 1948 to 1959 he also held the post of lecturer in bibliography at University College London. an embarrassing event kept secret from the general public for many years, due to fears that this would affect the British Museum's continued ownership claim given the long controversy regarding the Marbles' removal from Athens. The museum adopted the practice of importing exhibitions from other museums and galleries.

Francis took radical steps to modernise and rationalise the organisation and responsibilities of the museum and other organisations for which it was nominally responsible. He was largely responsible for the contents of the British Museum Act of 1963, which gave the Natural History Museum complete independence from the British Museum for the first time, authorised the museum to dispose of duplicate items, and allowed it to store and even display items away from the main building at Bloomsbury. but he later developed plans for a new library building, which after his retirement came to fruition as the British Library. Roberts later wrote a short biography of Francis for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In 1966, the new complete British Museum catalogue was completed. Francis had drastically streamlined the production of its 263 volumes by deciding that instead of preparing a new catalogue manually, the working copy of the catalogue in the Reading Room of the museum would be tidied up and then photographed and reproduced with minimal editorial changes.

Honours and last years Francis was appointed CB in 1958 and KCB in 1960.

Francis retired in 1968, and moved to Nether Winchendon near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. He died on 15 September 1988 at Chilton House, Chilton, Buckinghamshire, aged 87, and was buried at Nether Winchendon.

Publications Francis's publications were "Historical Bibliography" in The Year's Work in Librarianship, 1929–38; and Robert Copland: Sixteenth Century Printer and Translator, (1961); and as editor, The Bibliographical Society, 1892–1942: Studies in Retrospect (1945); Facsimile of The Compleat Catalogue 1680 (1956); and Treasures of the British Museum (1971).