Doug Spence, former photo files manager at DC Thomson in Dundee, has died at the age of 83.
Mr Spence was a mine of information for facts about the area and its people and was renowned among staff for being able to quickly recall relevant details to answer queries.
He maintained his interest long into his retirement and was a regular contributor to The Courier’s Craigie column.
His job involved managing the extensive cuttings and photographs library in the company’s offices on Bank Street and then at Kingsway.
He guided the major modernisation exercise from a paper information storage system to an electronic database to serve all the newspapers, magazines and children’s papers published by the firm.
As the person in charge of the company’s archives which hold newspapers back to 1801, Mr Spence was instrumental in recovering and restoring the oldest film of the printing of a newspaper in Britain entitled “The Courier in 1911”.
His expertise was also used by authors and television programmes such as BBC Scotland’s SuperScot.
He was an authority on old Dundee and appeared on the former Grampian TV’s The Way It Was.
Mr Spence, a former pupil of Morgan Academy, joined the company in 1952 after a spell with the Dundee Savings Bank, whose Wormit branch he managed.
He began work in the photo and cuttings library and progressed to take over as manager in 1963.
A keen sportsman, he had competed in the Scottish Boys Golf Championship and was a long-time member of Downfield Golf Club.
He also played hockey and rugby for his school and then also for Morgan FP teams.
Mr Spence retired in 1995 but maintained an active involvement in sports, golfing at Downfield up to 2012 and continuing to play badminton with former DC Thomson colleagues.
He was a regular attender at Morgan FPs’ monthly lunches and he and his wife Margaret also enjoyed travelling.
Mr Spence was an elder of St Andrew’s Parish Church and also served as clerk to its congregational board.
In addition to Mrs Spence, he is survived by a son and daughter and four grandchildren.
Mr Spence’s funeral takes place at Dundee Crematorium on Thursday.