My mother, Juliet Congreve, who has died aged 76, was a pioneer in library automation and later had a successful university teaching career specialising in human-computer interaction. For most of her professional life, she worked at Middlesex University.
In the early 1980s, at Middlesex, she introduced one of the first uses of email in a UK university, enabling librarians to support inter-library loans. She quickly noticed colleagues using it to share updates, ideas and build community – not just to speed up book requests. She led the transition from paper index cards to an electronic catalogue – a complex operation across six university sites and diverse disciplines, including teacher training, art, law and engineering.
