Howard Gotlieb, 79, BU curator of archives for 42 years

As founding curator, Howard Gotlieb presided over Boston University's department of special collections for 42 years, in the process acquiring the papers of about 2,000 public figures ranging from Martin Luther King Jr. to Bette Davis to Isaac Asimov.

Dr. Gotlieb died Thursday at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of complications following surgery. He was 79.

In 2003, BU renamed its special collections department the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in his honor. Largely because of his efforts, BU has in its archives 2,000 major collections, including 150,000 rare books and 60 million manuscripts, worth close to $100 million.

Former BU president John Silber said in a statement yesterday that he was moved by Dr. Gotlieb's ''imagination and daring."

''Howard Gotlieb's death is an irreparable loss and brings to an end the phenomenal achievements of a very great man," Silber said. ''Howard Gotlieb came to Boston University with the magnificent but highly improbable ambition to develop a major archive of important manuscripts and artifacts relating to the history of the 20th century."

''Boston University has been enriched by his spirit and industry," said Silber. ''Speaking personally, I have lost one of my dearest friends."

A key to Dr. Gotlieb's success was his willingness to define ''papers" loosely. If an item shed light on its owner's career, then he wanted it. Gotlieb Center holdings ranged from Fred Astaire's dancing shoes to Dan Rather's Emmy Awards. The former CBS anchorman, who donated his papers in the 1960s, had his secretary clear off his desk every Friday afternoon and send off whatever she had gathered to BU.

Libraries and universities had long acquired papers of the eminent, but they tended to take their time in deciding what to acquire and had highly traditional ideas of what constituted eminence.

Dr. Gotlieb thought otherwise. He realized that, with the increasing importance of popular culture in the postwar years, the nature of what archives collected should change. Eminence was a relative thing.

Furthermore, he realized that asking public figures to donate their papers while they were still alive, rather than waiting for their heirs to determine where they should go, offered advantages to both BU and the donor.

Dr. Gotlieb's eclectic taste and proactive solicitation became a model for other libraries and archives.

''We're not a museum, we're a research library," Dr. Gotlieb said in a 1983 Globe interview. ''My role, in part, is to anticipate who to approach in relation to how valuable their personal papers will be to scholars well into the next century."

Dr. Gotlieb contacted King in early 1964 about giving his papers to BU, where he had obtained his doctorate. King agreed to do so, and BU has about 93,000 King documents in its holdings. Two decades after his death, King's family sued BU, seeking the return of his papers. A jury ruled in BU's favor in 1993.

It was also in 1964 that Dr. Gotlieb successfully sought author David Halberstam's papers. Halberstam, who was still a New York Times correspondent and had yet to write his first book, was startled. ''I thought he was kidding at first," Halberstam recalled in a 1996 Globe interview. ''But he is so enthusiastic. I don't know anyone whose own kinetic energy seems to dovetail so perfectly with what he does."

As a journalist, Halberstam belongs to one of the three groups of donors Dr. Gotlieb had a special fondness for. Among the journalists whose papers he snagged were Stewart Alsop, Alistair Cooke, and Nat Hentoff. The other two groups were mystery writers, including Mignon Eberhart, Sue Grafton, and Donald Westlake, and Hollywood figures, such as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Fontaine, and Rex Harrison.

''Howard's a flatterer," Fontaine said affectionately in a 1985 Globe interview.

Not all his ministrations met with success. Among those who turned down Dr. Gotlieb were Joan Baez, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Richard M. Nixon. ''I've done so much begging over the years that my knees are covered with calluses," he liked to joke.

Dr. Gotlieb did more than get down on his knees. He had Bette Davis's couches reupholstered and supervised the arrangement of Harrison's room at the Ritz-Carlton. Dr. Gotlieb would write letters of protest when donors' works received harsh reviews (with copies going to the donors).

''I feel very much a part of the lives of the people I collect," he said in a 2000 Globe interview. ''To have their memorabilia surrounding me makes me feel they, too, are here." Indeed, portraits of Davis and Fairbanks hung in Dr. Gotlieb's office.

''If you're a curator, you sublimate yourself to the people you collect," he said in a 1990 Globe interview. ''You have to be a different person to different people. I work by instinct and intuition. I'm asking people for their papers. Papers are personal possessions."

Howard Bernard Gotlieb was born in Bangor on Oct. 24, 1926. He was the son of Maurice Gotlieb and Eva (Goldstein) Gotlieb.

Dr. Gotlieb did not recall his hometown fondly. ''Nothing has induced me to go back to look at the house in which I happened," Dr. Gotlieb said in the 1990 interview. ''I doubt that anything will ever induce me to return."

Dr. Gotlieb became interested in archival work while serving in the Army Signal Corps, gathering Nazi documents in postwar Germany. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from George Washington University in 1948, a master's degree in modern European history from Columbia University in 1949, and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford University in 1953.

He also studied at the National Archives Institute, Heidelberg University, and the London School of Economics.

From 1953 to 1955, Dr. Gotlieb was a foreign correspondent in Europe. He held various archival posts at Yale University, including curator of the Edward M. House Collection, librarian of historical manuscripts, and university archivist, from 1955 to 1963. Yale University Press published his ''William Beckford of Fonthill" (1960), a biography of an 18th-century English novelist and eccentric.

The most-used papers at BU belong to King. The most extensive belong to former House speaker John W. McCormack, Democrat of Massachusetts. But Dr. Gotlieb considered Davis to be his greatest catch. He spent 10 years pursuing her papers. Asked in the 1990 interview why she finally gave in, Dr. Gotlieb had a ready answer: ''I offered her the best curator in the country."

Dr. Gotlieb leaves no survivors.

A memorial service will be held at BU's Marsh Chapel on Jan. 6.