Obituaries

Jim Rettig, 71, 2008–2009 ALA president, died August 17. Rettig worked in libraries in six states, including as assistant dean of university libraries at Earl Gregg Swem Library at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and most recently as dean of libraries at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he served until retiring in 2017. Rettig was an active ALA member and held several leadership positions throughout his career, including chair of the Committee on Organization, president of the Reference and User Services Association, and a member of ALA’s Executive Board. He was also a strong advocate for the Spectrum Scholarship Program to promote diversity in the LIS profession.

Guy A. Marco, 94, who previously served as dean of Kent (Ohio) State University’s library school from 1966 to 1977, died April 5. Marco also worked as chief of general reference and bibliography at the Library of Congress and chief of library services for the US Army at Fort Dix in New Jersey. He published several music reference books, as well as The American Public Library Handbook. He was active in the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, editing the journal Third World Libraries (now known as World Libraries) for seven years and working as a consultant in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. He served as an ALA councilor and on several ALA committees.

Kathryn Luther Henderson, 99, professor emerita at University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) School of Information Sciences, died August 18. She joined the faculty in 1965 after holding positions at the UIUC library and at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. She received UIUC’s Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching in 1991, ALA’s 1993 Beta Phi Mu Award, and the Association for Library and Information Science Education Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995. She served on and chaired several committees related to technical services, cataloging, and classification, and served on the editorial board of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly.

Roberto Carlos Delgadillo, student services librarian at University of California, Davis, died October 30. Delgadillo received ALA’s I Love My Librarian Award in 2012, partially in recognition of his support for students from historically underserved communities. He created a program of embedded librarianship with UC Davis’ Center for Latinx and Chicanx Academic Student Success in 2017. Delgadillo was a longtime ALA councilor, 2013–2014 president of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, and an active member of Reforma, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking.

Betty Joan Blackman, 90, a founder of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) and former ALA councilor, died October 4. Blackman served as dean of libraries at California State University, Dominguez Hills, from 1986 until her 1999 retirement. She had previously worked at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and California State University, Long Beach. She received BCALA’s Leadership Award in 1994 and was interviewed as part of the California Library Leader Memory Project in 2014.