JOHN SIMMONS, with his upright bearing and neat moustache, could appear at first to be a solemn and conventional English gentleman. He was in fact an adventurous man of many parts, with a gentle wit and a quirky sense of humour. He planned to subtitle his memoirs (never written) “Recollections of a librarian-lecturerbibliographer-buccaneer”.

He spent most of his long career in Oxford libraries, as librarian-lecturer in charge of Slavonic books at Oxford University (1949-69), Reader in Russian and Slavonic bibliography (1969-70); librarian and Senior Research Fellow, All Souls College (1970-1982) and deputy archivist (1982-89). Yet his influence extended far beyond Oxford.

Born in Birmingham in 1915, John Simon Gabriel Simmons joined Birmingham University Library as a “library boy” in 1932 and in 1934 began to study Russian under Professor Konovalov. His excellent, though to Soviet ears old-fashioned, spoken Russian proved itself on his first visit to Russia in 1934 when he was called upon to interpret for a member of his student group who went down with appendicitis. It was on the ship from Tilbury to Leningrad that he met Fanny, whom he was to marry in 1944.

After gaining his BA in Spanish and Russian in 1937, he stayed on at Birmingham as an assistant librarian, beginning a D Phil on the history of Russian printing, interrupted by the outbreak of war. This topic combined his interests in matters Slavonic and in bibliology, which he considered “one of the major themes of any civilised society”.

His Sandars lectures, given in Cambridge in 1974 and based on his uncompleted doctoral dissertation, are still the only serious English-language history of Russian printing. Birmingham awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1987.

After war service and three more years at Birmingham, Simmons was invited to Oxford to fill the post of librarian-lecturer in charge of Slavonic books, created for him by Konovalov. His buccaneering spirit showed itself in August 1953 when he flabbergasted the director of the Lenin Library, Moscow, by turning up unannounced, armed with a list of desiderata and the catalogues of Oxford University Press, to propose a book exchange. In return for OUP publications, scientific material and two runs of Punch, Oxford received thousands of valuable, out-of-print Russian publications.

Simmons’s proudest achievements were his part in building up the retrospective collections of Russian books in the Taylorian and Bodleian libraries and the creation in Bodley of the only specialised Slavonic reading room in the country. He considered, with justification, that it was these library collections, together with the remarkable group of Russian academic teachers recruited by Konovalov, Maurice Bowra and Isaiah Berlin, that led to the establishment of Oxford as a unique centre for Slavonic studies.

Among the 36 lectures a year which formed part of Simmons’s duties, dearest to his heart was a course designed to enlighten “bibliographically innocent” graduate students.

Another of his missions was to act as a conduit of learning through the Iron Curtain. From the 1960s onwards he sent letters, offprints and books to scholars in the Soviet Union, as well as publishing his finds of rare, early-printed Cyrillic books in Western libraries and incunabula in Soviet collections, and reviews, translations and articles publicising the work of colleagues in Eastern Europe.

During these years he made firm friends with many of the great postwar Russian bibliographers and historians of the book, some of whom were living in extreme poverty. He felt quite rightly that his celebration of these unsung heroes helped to validate their achievements and raise their status.

In 1985 he founded a characteristically serio-comic institution, the 4Cs Club. He presented scholars whom he deemed to share his attitude to the book (and his sense of humour) with club ties (brooches for women were a later innovation), bearing the interlocking 4Cs emblem that represented his four “categoricals” — Conserve, Consider, Contribute, Co-operate. Members, now numbering some 200 in 19 countries, were encouraged to wear the insignia on New Year’s Day, April Fool’s Day and at any bookish occasion.

Simmons had a horror of festschrifts but was delighted by the issue of the journal Solanus, published in July 2005 in honour of his 90th birthday, with contributions on topics close to his heart by 4Cs members.

At All Souls, which became his second home, he was a genial host, an inspiring guide, and a fount of knowledge on college history, Oxford’s libraries, and a host of other subjects which he gladly put at the disposal of resident and visiting Fellows. He was a regular visitor to the Codrington Library; he sometimes came in to read The Times, and would inquire of former colleagues: “Has anybody interesting died recently?” His hundreds of publications are listed in his Autobibliography (1975, with two later supplements), one of several samizdat publications composed on his typewriter and reproduced in limited editions. Others were “memorials” of Russian scholars in his field and a list of Russians awarded Oxford honorary doctorates.

A world authority on the study of paper, Simmons translated and edited the Russian classic watermark albums and acted as general secretary of the Paper Publications Society. In later years he published on the history of All Souls and its building.

His contribution to scholarship is also reflected in numerous expressions of gratitude to him in books on a huge range of subjects, witness to his erudition and the help he gave to two generations of scholars.

Always laconic about his own achievements, Simmons was generous in his praise of others. He called Isaiah Berlin an “incalculable force for good”, and the qualities he so admired in the selfless Russian bibliographers of his generation, who passed on their scholarly traditions and moral values to their pupils, may equally be applied to him. He lives on in the work of scholars of many countries, especially in Russia.

His wife predeceased him in 1999.

John Simmons, OBE, librarian and Slavonic scholar, was born on July 8, 1915. He died on September 22, 2005, aged 90.