Peter Johan Lor

Peter Johan Lor is a South African librarian and library and information science scholar specialising in international librarianship.

He was the Director of the State Library in Pretoria from 1992 and served as the first National Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the National Library of South Africa from 2000 to 2003 following the consolidation of the State Library (Pretoria) and South African Library in 1999. He was Secretary General of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions from 2005 to 2008. He served as an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria from 1998 to 2016.

Career Lor was born in the Netherlands in 1946 and emigrated to South Africa in 1952. He completed studies in Librarianship and Library Science at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Pretoria in South Africa and at the University of Caen in France. He received an Honours degree in Library Science from the University of Stellenbosch as well as a Masters in Library Science from the University of Pretoria. He earned a D.Phil. in Library and Information Science from the University of Pretoria in 1990.

As a librarian, Lor served in various libraries in South Africa as well as holding the position of senior librarian at the University of Pretoria (1976–80). Lor was director of the South African State Library for eight years. In 1999, the National Library of South Africa was created by merging the State Library in Pretoria and the South African Library in Cape Town. Lor became the first National Librarian.

Lor was active in the creation of the Library and Information Association of South Africa. This association replaced former library associations that had been segregated along racial lines. He was involved in developing national library policies for post-apartheid South Africa.

In addition to his active role in founding the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA) in its early years (1996–2000), Lor served in a variety of capacities in other organizations such as the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL).

Lor was Secretary General of IFLA from 2005–2008. He has also served as a consultant on library development and has worked as an advocate for libraries as a participant at the World Summit on the Information Society. From 1998 to 2016 he was an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria.

Publications

Peter Lor is the author of over 150 professional and research publications. In 2019 his book, International and Comparative Librarianship: a Thematic Approach was published as part of the IFLA series, Global Studies in Library and Information.

Lor's research interests include: 2008 - DPhil (honoris causa) 2020 - 2020 John Ames Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award