Dr Kerr, the university's special collections librarian, has won a $5000 Winston Churchill Memorial Award to further his research into Dr Thomas Hocken, the Dunedin doctor who donated his personal collection of about 4300 books and 5500 other historical items to the university in 1907.
Dr Kerr is writing a bio-bibliography - a systematic study of Dr Hocken's life and collecting - and has 19 of the 22 chapters drafted.
"I'm really pleased to get this award. It enables me to get to the UK and it was vital for the book to be able to do that."
Dr Hocken was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire, in 1836 and arrived in Dunedin in 1862.
As well as running a general practice, he was Dunedin's coroner for 22 years, honorary physician and surgeon to Dunedin Hospital and honorary surgeon to the Otago Benevolent Society.
Dr Kerr's journey in May will include visits to Dr Hocken's birthplace, to Newcastle where he was an apprentice chemist, and to Dublin where he trained as a surgeon.
He will also visit several libraries and universities to view correspondence between Dr Hocken and other prominent men of his era.
It will be the second bio-bibliography Dr Kerr has written.
His first work, on the third governor of New Zealand and noted collector, Sir George Grey, was published in 2006.
