Obituaries
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Dylan Kowaleski, 40, founder and editor of Monster Librarian, a website to support horror fiction collection development and encourage horror fiction reading, died April 17 of heart disease.
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Ernie DiMattia, 74, president of the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Connecticut, for 38 years, died of cancer June 26. Under his leadership, Ferguson Library was the first public library in Connecticut to provide public internet access. He held a number of leadership positions in the American Library Association and the Connecticut Library Association, including chairing ALA’s Publishing Committee. He also recently served on the board of the Connecticut State Library, as well as many local organizations, and he was a visiting lecturer at several library schools.
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Ruth P. Ronning, 86, longtime librarian/media specialist at Prescott School in Lincoln, Nebraska, died February 10. She had taught in schools in South Dakota, Ohio, and California before moving to Nebraska.
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Jeannette Glynn, 86, died February 2 in Berkeley, California. Glynn founded Oakland (Calif.) Public Library’s Business and Government Library and published the original Who Knows Who: Networking Through the Corporate Boards. Her career also included stints at Atlanta-Fulton Public Library Library System, Inyo (Calif.) County Free Library, Alameda County (Calif.) Library, and Bank of America.
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Linda McPherson, manager of Darrington (Wash.) branch of Sno-Isle Libraries until her retirement in 2007, died in the March 22 Oso mudslide. McPherson had also served for 19 years on the Darrington school board and volunteered in classrooms.
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Carol Kinne, a teacher and librarian at Park School in Baltimore for 36 years, died of cancer March 9. Kinne was a long-time diversity advocate who organized school trips to historic sites in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Birmingham, Alabama, and most recently served as coordinator of service days for students at the school.
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Olga Nadia Pobutsky, a librarian for many years in the Detroit Public Library system, died March 19.
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Elaine Ciarkowski, 84, director of the Medical Library and Information Resource Center at the Florida Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale from 1991 to her retirement in 1997, died January 20. From 1970 to 1990, she served as assistant librarian for user services at Harvard University’s Francis Countway Library of Medicine in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Helen Naomi Taliaferro, 92, who served as chief of the Reader Services Division at the Air University Library at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1982 until her 1994 retirement, died February 23. She had previously worked for many years as command librarian for the United States Air Force Military Airlift Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. After her retirement, she made significant donations to library school scholarships, ultimately establishing a scholarship endowment fund at Texas Woman’s University, her alma mater, in 2008.
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Mary Ann Jensen, former curator of the Seymour Theatre Collection at Princeton (N.J.) University’s Firestone Library, died March 5.
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Paula Morgan, 79, music librarian at Princeton (N.J.) University’s Mendel Music Library for 36 years until retiring in July 2000, died January 22.
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Sheila Walsh Bankhead, 79, passed away February 15. Bankhead was head of reference for Northwest Regional Library System in Panama City, Florida, from 1986 until her retirement in 2009.