I learned this week of Fran’s passing, adding another sad event to a difficult time. Fran was a great colleague and first-class scholar, one of the few here I knew by reputation before I took a position at UT. His passion was information organization, a subject he explored with zeal and determination to get beneath the rather moribund manner of its treatment in LIS. I consider myself to have received an education on this from him just through conversation and reading some of his later work that was far better than I might received in any class.
As a new dean, Fran welcomed me to the school by taking me out for drinks at my first ALISE in New Orleans. At the time he liked bourbon and cigarettes, so we might have indulged a little that night as we got to know each other. It sealed a friendship that lasted until his retirement and I know how committed he was to helping us evolve into a modern information school that emphasized scholarship, ideas, and research as befits its location in this university. Along the way he might have ruffled a few feathers in his determination to improve the doctoral program and to hold colleagues accountable to higher standards of research productivity, but I found his company and his support invaluable throughout.
Fran did not have an easy life but he made my life easier and improved the world around him continually. Students who made it through his courses or who graduated under his supervision talked of ‘surviving Miksa’ as a badge of honor, and indeed some had it printed up on t-shirts! He was smart enough to intimidate some but witty enough to disarm anyone. I consider it an honor to have worked with him and to have known him. Adieu Fran.