Sir Frank Francis of the British Museum, 1901-1988

Sir Frank Francis was the most important figure in the history of the British Museum Department of Printed Books in the twentieth century. While he was one of the Keepers of the Department (1948–1959) he modernized many of the procedures which had remained virtually unchanged since the mid-nineteenth century. His greatest achievements were to devise a new method of producing very rapidly an updated version of the General Catalogue of Printed Books, and to initiate the process which led to the creation of the National Library of Science and Invention as part of the British Museum Library. During his time as Director of the Museum (1959–1968) there were many improvements to the buildings, and the British Museum Act of 1963 transformed the constitution of the Museum. He extended the opening hours of the reading rooms and began detailed planning of a new building for the library to the south of the Museum; this latter work was vitiated as a result of a volte-face by the Wilson Government in 1967.