Hwa-Wei Lee

Hwa-Wei Lee (January 25, 1931 - December 17, 2023) was Dean of Ohio University Libraries from 1978 to 1999 and chief of the Asian Division at the Library of Congress from 2003 to 2008.

Early life and education Hwa-Wei Lee was born on January 25, 1931, in Guangzhou, China to his mother Xiao-Hui Wang and his father Kan-Chun Lee. He was the third born of seven children. At the time of his birth, his father was the governor of Shihui County in Guangdong Province. During the 1930s and 1940s he traveled and lived in multiple places due to war and natural disasters. Places he lived included Nanjing, Guilin, and Chongqing in China, Haiphong in Vietnam, and Taichung, Taiwan. In Taiwan he completed high school and graduated from the National Taiwan Normal University. Post graduation, he completed just over a year of ROTC training and was commissioned as a first lieutenant reserve officer. He took an examination to study abroad and he attended the University of Pittsburgh to complete his master's degree in education. It was there that he met his future wife Mary Kratochvil. Lee and Kratochvil married on March 14, 1959, in Jeannette, Pennsylvania. Lee advanced library technology when he spearheaded a proposal to establish an integrated computer-automated library system that would aid in cataloging library resources and circulation tasks and he was a founding member and advisor to the statewide system OhioLINK.

At Ohio University Lee developed international collections for Southeast Asian Studies and in 1979 he created an internship program that brought librarians from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Central America to Ohio University. He also founded the University Libraries’ Shao You-Bao Center for Overseas Chinese Documentation and Research. as was the first floor of the main library at Ohio University becoming the Hwa-Wei Lee Center for International Collections. and his biography titled “The Sage in the Cathedral of Books,” also published in 2011. In 2016 his biography was translated into English and re-published by the Ohio University Press.

Awards

Medal of Appreciation from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand (2018) Honorary Doctor of Letters Degree from Ohio University (2012) Ohio Hall of Fame Librarian (1999) ALA John Ames Humphrey Award for Contributions to International Librarianship (1991) APALA's Distinguished Services Award (1991) Ohio Librarian of the Year (1987) Outstanding Administrator of Ohio University (1983) CALA's Distinguished Services Award (1983)