Charles W. Robinson, a former director of the Baltimore County Public Library who brought sweeping changes over a tenure of more than three decades, died Friday of complications from a stroke at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. He was 88.

“I know that ‘awesome' is an overused word, but Charlie really was awesome,” said Jean Barry Molz, a 33-year associate director of the library who retired the same year as Mr. Robinson. “He was very, very smart, and ideas were coming out of his mind all the time.”

She described Mr. Robinson as a “very kind man” who was able to work with library trustees and the county. “He was respected for his leadership,” she said.

The son of Dr. Hugh L. Robinson, a Congregational Church medical missionary, and Olga Olsen, a registered nurse, Charles Weld Robinson was born in Beijing and in 1941 moved to Newton, Mass., when his father went into private practice.

He was a 1946 graduate of the Hochkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and earned a bachelor's degree in 1950 from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he majored in history, economics and government.

He enrolled at the School of Library Science at Simmons College in Boston, where he earned a master's degree in 1951.

He enlisted in the Army and served as a sergeant with the 2nd Infantry Division, 38th Infantry Regiment, in Korea where he was in charge of battle casualty reporting, awards and decorations.

Of his decision to become a librarian, Mr. Robinson told The Evening Sun in a 1959 interview, “I guess it was a flash decision. I can't even remember my motives now. Perhaps it was because I was always interested in books and reading.”

Mr. Robinson began his career in 1953 at the Free Library of Philadelphia as an administrative assistant to Emerson Greenaway, who had been director of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.

In 1959, he joined the Baltimore County library system as staff assistant to director Richard D. Minnich. Following Mr. Minnich's death in 1963, Mr. Robinson was appointed as his replacement.

“I go along with the Greenaway idea — that's it's more fun to go into a system and help it grow than to get into one that's already the best in the world,” said Mr. Robinson in The Evening Sun interview.

Throughout his 33-year career, Mr. Robinson evoked the quintessential bookman — horn-rimmed glasses and ever-present pipe, sporting conservatively cut suits and sport coats.

He transformed the Baltimore County system from a 50-employee organization with 10 branches to one with 700 employees and 24 branches.

He envisioned the sweeping changes that digital technology would bring when applied to administrative record-keeping, author and subject catalogs, and informational retrieval.

“He was at the forefront of library automation in the country,” said Peter K. Adler of Vienna, Va., who was a regional sales manager for Auto-Graphics Inc., a pioneer in library automation. “We did a portion of the authors' catalogs that were used by users and library patrons.”

During Mr. Robinson's tenure, the library became the “most successful in the United States in terms of book circulation per capita,” reported The Evening Sun in 1979.

“In overall circulation it is exceeded only by the library systems in New York, Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, political entities far larger in population than Baltimore County,” the paper wrote.

A hot-button issue that developed was Mr. Robinson's “give 'em what they want to read” philosophy when it came to purchasing books for the system.

“We buy books people want to read rather than books librarians think people should read. There is a big difference,” he told The Sun in 1990.

“The public successfully resists borrowing books they don't want to read, but librarians keep on buying the books anyway, and then they keep on building bigger and bigger edifices to house the books nobody reads,” he said.

“A lot of people think that because your circulation is high, you must be circulating best-sellers and trash, but that's not true,” he said. “We buy 8,000 titles a year, and less than 200 of them are best-sellers. The last time I checked, we had 63 copies of ‘The Odyssey' in 13 translations.”

Mr. Robinson's way of selecting books was initially denounced as ‘the Towson heresy.” Years later, it is a common practice among the nation's public libraries.

Mr. Robinson said in the 1990 interview that he always spoke his mind. “I say things in a controversial manner because that gets people's attention,” he said.

“?‘Outspoken' is the mildest word you could have used to describe Charlie,” said Ms. Molz. “You could hear his voice all over the place, and he had opinions on all sorts of subjects — and I've never known him to be wrong.”

“He always had a huge panoply of ideas at any given moment; he'd throw out 90 and keep 10. He was always definite and confident in his decision-making,” said Mr. Adler.

“Occasionally, he tangled with state senators over his unorthodox ideas, and while he wasn't loved by everybody, he was respected by the library community,” he said.

More than a decade ago, Mr. Robinson sparked another controversy when he suggested that “public libraries have no future” because many of their traditional functions would be subsumed by electronic information systems.

“In the last 10 to 15 years, libraries have changed services more than in the previous 100,” Mr. Robinson told The Sun in 2007. “People do a lot more stuff on electronic media, and that trend will continue.

“Libraries will be much changed in future years,” he said, “but I'll never see it. I'll be dead and gone.”

He retired in 1996 but maintained an office at the library's administrative headquarters in Towson, which he visited twice daily. There he smoked his pipe and mingled with staff.

He also was a volunteer editor, writer and publisher of “Library Administrator's Digest,” a national trade publication.

A former longtime resident of Morris Avenue in Lutherville, Mr. Robinson's nonprofessional interests included American and British naval history, building ship models and collecting antiques.

He restored a black 1938 Studebaker Commander two-door coupe.

“He drove it once in the Towson July Fourth Parade and then gave it away,” said his son, Hugh L. Robinson 2nd of Stoneleigh.

For years, he vacationed at Warren's Point on Deer Isle, Maine, where he built several cabins. “He liked to build things,” his son said.

Mr. Robinson was a longtime active communicant of Holy Comforter Episcopal church, 130 W. Seminary Ave., Lutherville, where a memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. May 13.

In addition to his son, he is survived by his wife of 59 years, the former Martha Rowley; a daughter, Kate Howe of Ocean Park, Maine; a brother, John S. Robinson of Westwood, Mass.; two sisters, Sigrid Robinson Turman of Falls Church, Va., and Godrun Robinson Spaulding of Oakland, Calif.; and three grandchildren.

frasmussen@baltsun.com