Thomas H. Reynolds

Thomas H. Reynolds was born in Oakland, California on April 20, 1932. He attended UC Berkeley, earning his Bachelor of Arts in 1955 and his Masters in Library Science in 1958. Tom spent his entire career at UC Berkeley’s Garret W. McEnerney Law Library, serving under four law library directors. When Professor Robert Berring J.D., M.L.S. ‘74, arrived in 1982 as director of the law library, Tom was already an internationally respected expert in foreign and comparative law research and had been instrumental in developing the Robbins Collection of religious and civil law. Tom often said, however, that it was the arrival of Professor Berring and Professor Laurent Mayali, who was appointed Director of the Robbins Collection in 1988, that made the last twenty years of his career the best years. Thanks to their leadership, Tom was able to flourish doing the work he loved: acquisitions, scholarship, and publishing. 

Tom’s remarkable achievements were well-recognized by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). His many awards include the Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award (1990), the American Association of Law Libraries Presidential Certificate of Appreciation for Dedicated Services as Editor of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (2001), and the coveted Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award (2004). In 2010, he was inducted into the AALL Hall of Fame.

When Tom entered UC Berkeley as a freshman in 1951, his place in the AALL Hall of Fame was not preordained. After graduating with a degree in history he enrolled at UC Berkeley’s law school, but had a less than amiable first year and was questioning his career choice. Tom’s uncle, head of the Santa Barbara County library system, encouraged him to consider librarianship, noting that Tom’s eidetic memory and aptitude for history and languages would be valued in the profession.

Tom took his uncle’s advice and enrolled in UC Berkeley’s School of Librarianship, where he found his classes, professors, and fellow students to be “engaging and fun.” Upon earning his MLS in 1958, Tom thought he had firmly closed the door on law, but then a position arose at UC Berkeley’s law library. Tom met briefly with Vernon Smith ‘28, LLB ‘31, a Berkeley alum who had swerved from his original career as an attorney to become Director of the Law Library in 1939.  Soon after their meeting, Smith asked Tom “when can you start?” Thus, in July 1958, Tom became a law librarian (duties TBD).

Six months later, Vernon Smith died suddenly. For 20 years Smith had not only been the director of the law library, but had taken on additional roles, including Endowment Counsel to the UC Regents. In this capacity he was responsible “for many important gifts to the University; and in his capacity as Law Librarian he was highly instrumental in obtaining many valuable contributions to the School and its Library.” 47 Calif. L. Rev 1 (1959).

Among the contributions Smith helped steward was one that would be career-changing for Tom—a gift from Lloyd Robbins that established the Robbins Collection. In 1952, Robbins had donated his own collection of canon and Roman law books, and when he died in 1955, his will provided money to be held in a fund for the law library to select, process, catalog, and maintain library materials in the areas of canon and civil law. Vernon Smith had maintained ties with Lloyd Robbins’s widow, Beatrice Clayton Robbins, and had given the Robbins Collection his personal attention. The new director, however, had other priorities, and so shifted much of the care and maintenance of the Robbins Collection to the newly-hired Tom Reynolds, who was challenged and inspired to develop expertise in religious and civil law bibliography.

Over the next ten years Tom became widely known for his expertise in foreign, civil, and religious law bibliography. Marlene Harmon ‘75, M.L.S., who later became Tom’s colleague, recalls working at a law firm library and needing laws from a foreign jurisdiction. Her director told her: “Call Tom Reynolds, he's the god of foreign legal research. If it can be found, he'll know where to find it.”

When Beatrice Clayton Robbins died in 1969, leaving the bulk of the estate left to her by her husband to Berkeley’s law school under the same terms as his original gift, the law school suddenly found itself the recipient of the largest single bequest in University of California history at the time. According to Tom, this gift transformed Berkeley’s law library, which he described as having been “nothing to write home about,” into a law library that could develop an unparalleled research collection of rare and modern religious, civil, and comparative law materials. (Thomas Reynolds, Interview. In An Oral History of Law Librarianship, interviewed by Patrick E. Kehoe, July 2, 2013, videorecording. HeinOnline.)

In 1983, it was the combination of the depth of the Robbins Collection and Tom’s expertise that persuaded AALL to move the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals (IFLP) from Cambridge University to Berkeley, choosing Berkeley over Harvard, which was the widely presumed heir to IFLP.  Tom became editor of IFLP in 1984. (As of 2024, IFLP remains at Berkeley. Editor, Marci Hoffman M.L.I.S. ’89, Berkeley Law Library Director, emerita.)

In 1989 Tom, with Arturo Flores M.L.I.S, J.D., published Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World, a groundbreaking, award-winning and essential publication for foreign law research. To encourage librarians to develop similar research tools Tom and Arturo created the Thomas H. Reynolds and Arturo A. Flores Publication Annual Award. Professor Berring sums up Tom’s enduring legacy: “Through his transformative editorship of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, and his co-authorship of Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World, Tom Reynolds was perhaps the most influential bibliographer of international and foreign law of his generation.”

Professor Richard Buxbaum says of Tom’s personality: “He was conservative in many respects, but in no way reactionary. He enjoyed playing. For instance, when I returned from my first trip to Indonesia in 1970, I gave him my impressions of Jakarta. He pretended to be dumbfounded, then lit up—"Ah, you mean Batavia, of course! Indonesia,” he mock-chided me, “really it is the Dutch East Indies. You shouldn't be using these neologisms.”  Buxbaum mentions that while traveling the world on the hunt for foreign law materials for the library, Tom also collected restaurant menus from the many places he dined. These were “interesting enough to use while on my own trips— there was nothing neologic (or moderate) about them.”

Professor Berring describes Tom as “erudite, funny and perhaps the only librarian one might call a boulevardier.” Tom loved his condominium overlooking Oakland’s Lake Merritt, was an avid supporter of the SF opera, ballet, and symphony, and a longtime member of the Women’s Faculty Club Board. Upon retiring, Tom sailed on the QE2 and when in London stayed at Claridge's or the Connaught. Tom often remarked on how fortunate he had been in his serendipitously chosen career. The law school was equally fortunate to have the benefit of Tom’s knowledge and dedication for more than 45 years. Tom died on December 23, 2021 in Oakland, California. He is survived by his sister, niece, and nephew.

Kathleen Vanden Heuvel