Merle Boylan served as the director of the University of Washington Libraries from 1976 to 1988. Born in 1925 in Youngstown, Ohio to Merle and Alma Boylan, Merle Nelson Boylan obtained his Master’s Degree in Library Science at Carnegie-Mellon University in 1956. His positions included a tenure at the University of California Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore and at the NASA Ames Research Center. He then changed professional directions and served in positions as director of three major academic research libraries: the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (leaving in 1972); the University of Texas, Austin; and the University of Washington, Seattle. He died in 2017.