Ruth Schluchter Smith, chief of the Office of Customer Services and Library Liaison for the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service until her 1987 retirement, died December 24. She had previously served as manager of technical information services for the Institute for Defense Analyses in Arlington, Virginia. During her career, she received the John Cotton Dana award for library public relations, and was named a Special Libraries Association Fellow and to the SLA Hall of Fame. She also wrote many publications on church librarianship, was a founding member of the Church Library Council of Greater Washington, and served as the first president of the Church and Synagogue Library Association.