THE great spirit of generosity exhibited this past week by a number of individuals and institutions in tribute to the life and work of Dr Joyce Robinson, who made her transition last Sunday at the age of 87, is a welcome reminder that there still exists a warm light in the darkness of bile, mean-spiritedness and malice which now threaten to impoverish not only our public discourse but also our private relationships with one another.

The significance of this human quality to our way of life resides in the fact that it took someone of the calibre of a Joyce Robinson to get us around to feeling good about ourselves and to focus, if only briefly, on the great potential we still possess as a people in the creation of our own destiny.

But the truth is that feeling good about ourselves as a people, and our ultimate potential for greatness, was the enduring mantra of the dynamic husband-and-wife duo of Dr the Honourable Joyce Robinson and Professor the Honourable Leslie Robinson.

He was a founding member of the academic staff of the University College of the West Indies, pro-vice chancellor and the first principal of the Mona campus of the UWI. He predeceased her on April 4, 2007.

Significantly, it was this same quality which distinguished the important role she played for well over four decades in the growth and development of our society, by representing with distinction the seminal juices that have given the society form and purpose. By strategically positioning herself on the side of our multifaceted sources of energy, and nurturing her hold on its vibrancy, she managed to carve out for herself a lasting place in the social and cultural history of this country.

In hindsight, she was a tower of strength in the four areas of public service in which she stamped her influence, direction and vision. She helped to shape modern Jamaican society, whether it was in the building of the Jamaica Library Services, modernising the “each-one-teach-one” literacy campaign into a tool of national development through the empowerment of the individual, or the effective hands-on management of the Human Employment and Resource Training Trust (HEART/NTA).

The HEART Trust is one of Jamaica’s more progressive initiatives since Independence, providing a sense of personhood and accomplishment for its people.

When Dr Robinson went to the now defunct Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation (JBC) as general manager, the company benefited tremendously from her years in literacy and orchestrating public learning.

Yet, nothing in all of this should surprise any of us. For it is our women (again!) who have played a pivotal role in building the intellectual, social and cultural bedrock on which modern Jamaica rests. And Dr Robinson has been in the vanguard of creative response to the challenge of contradictions and ongoing change.

As such, she has left behind some outstanding achievements. For a start, her lifelong commitment to public learning, library management and literacy, have bequeathed to many thousands of Jamaicans the pride to engender respect for Jamaica as a place to live and have their being, and, moreover, the courage, caring and commitment to contribute to its growth and development.

She clearly understood, while she lived, the ramification inherent in the sentiment expressed some years ago by The Los Angeles Times: “No skill is more crucial to the future of a child, or to a democratic and prosperous society, than literacy”.

She was, without doubt, ahead of her time in assimilating to the realities of a modern and developing Jamaica, the principle of human resource development through the library system. Not only did she target youth groups, working adults and those who opted for self-chosen ignorance near and far to introduce them to books; she also encouraged along the way, a whole battalion of friends and acquaintances to join the profession she fell in love with by upgrading their skills through learning and education.

And soon, thereafter, she was able with credibility and authority, to convince the University of the West Indies to establish a School of Library Studies as a symbol of regional commitment to knowledge. She saw good libraries as part of good education; and the public library as the people’s university.

And even as she witnessed in later years the gradual relative decline of the library service she did so much to build, Dr Robinson never lost hope in the idea of its possible renewal to its former glory.

Given the quality of her intellect and indefatigable spirit, she would have appreciated that endemic to this crisis has been the onward march of the seemingly unstoppable developments in informatics, the entrenchment of cyber-space, electronic mail, social media and the information superhighway.

Much of this, at first glance, gives the impression that books and libraries have escaped to what has been described as the “technological jungle”. But I was left with the impression that she saw in much of this possibilities for renewal by focusing on the realignment of the image of libraries and their democratisation to accommodate all forms of learning — inclusive of the use of the information superhighway — and those seeking knowledge.

Joyce Robinson was good for Jamaica. Her connecting thread to her fellow countrymen and women was her stout belief that learning was worth pursuing at all costs because, once acquired, no one can take it away from you. Her extraordinariness was her great facility with, and love for, the empowerment of the individual through literacy.

This was to take on special significance for a country and its people who must navigate intelligently the contradictions of Independence following on the experience of slavery, colonialism and the struggle for self-government.

This is why her contribution to Jamaica’s modern development cannot be denied. And neither can her greatness.