Hans Wellisch

Hans Hanan Wellisch (April 25, 1920 – February 6, 2004) was a librarian, LIS educator, and indexer known for his work with the International Federation for Documentation (later International Federation for Information and Documentation), contributing to the Universal Decimal Classification.^[1] He headed the committee which translated the abridgement of the UDC into Hebrew and was the compiler of the index to the system.^[2]

Wellisch graduated from high school and was arrested in November 1938, and sent to Dachau concentration camp.^[1][3] When arrested he already had a visa to Sweden, so he was sent there after two and a half months.^[1] There he briefly worked in the special library of the Swedish Cooperative Federation which gave him some training in librarianship.^[1] He emigrated to Israel in 1949 where he was the librarian of the Signal Corps of the Israel Defense Forces.^[1] He received a grant from the United Nations to study at the University of Maryland in 1967. The university invited him to join the School of Library Science as a visiting lecturer two years later.^[2] He worked there for the rest of his professional career, and earned a Masters in Library Science in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1975.^[2] He retired from UMD in 1989 as a full professor.^[2]

He was the first recipient of the American Society for Indexing Award for the index to his book, The Conversion of Scripts: Its Nature, History and Utilization.^[2] He also won the Hines Award for "continuous dedicated and exceptional service" to the ASI where he was president from 1984 to 1985.^[2]