Obituaries
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Lisle G. Brown, 69, curator of special collections at Marshall University Libraries in Huntington, West Virginia, died June 14.
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Virginia C. Grigg, 89, who retired as chief of the State Library of Florida’s Bureau of Library Development in 1989, died at her home in Tallahassee, Florida, on June 4. Grigg began her career serving in the public libraries of Providence, Rhode Island, and Leon County, Florida. She went on to become an instructor at the library schools of both the University of North Carolina and Florida State University before joining the State Library of Florida as a consultant in 1963, and served as acting Florida state librarian in 1972. In 1976, she received the Public Administrator of the Year Award from the North Florida Chapter of the American Society for Public Administration and was honored by the American Library Association’s Washington Office in 1995 for her contributions toward library legislative success and improvement of library services for the American people.
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Edith Harwell, 66, former director of Homewood (Ala.) Public Library, died from complications of an extended illness on April 4. She began her library career in 1969 as a library assistant at Birmingham Public Library (BPL) and worked in public libraries until she retired in 2009. At BPL, she served in many capacities, including regional branch coordinator, department head, branch head, and bookmobile head. From 1988 to 1995 she was the director of North Shelby County Library. Active in the Jefferson County Public Library Association, the Alabama Library Association, and the American Library Association, Harwell won the Alabama Library Association’s Eminent Librarian Award in 2004, the most prestigious award in the State of Alabama.
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Ellen V. Libretto, 66, died May 4 after a brief illness. After holding managerial positions in New York City libraries, coordinating Young Adult services, LiBrertto she joined Random House as library marketing manager for Ballantine Books, where she worked with such authors as Ray Bradbury, Elizabeth Berg, Anne Perry, and Colin Powell. After leaving Random House, she consulted on library marketing for several independent publishers.
As an author, she wrote the YA nonfiction book The General Slocum Ferryboat Fire of 1904, as well as books in the library field including New Directions for Young Adult Services and the much-referenced High/Low Handbook: Best Books and Web Sites for Reluctant Teen Readers.
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Caroline Feller Bauer, 77, children’s librarian, educator, and author died April 15, in Miami, Florida. She received her PhD from the University of Oregon, where she also was an associate professor of library science. In addition, she worked as a children’s librarian at New York Public Library and as a school librarian for the Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale.
Bauer was known for her presentations with the Bureau of Education and Research (BER) that demonstrated how to bring children and books together. Bauer was also the author of several books on promoting children’s literature and library programming, including Handbook for Storytellers (ALA, 1995), This Way to Books (HW Wilson, 1983), and The Poetry Break: An Annotated Anthology With Ideas for Introducing Children to Poetry (HW Wilson, 1994). In recent years she lived in Bhattiary, Bangladesh where she established a play park, library, and arts and crafts center for children.
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On March 20 eva efron, 66, school library services supervisor at the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in Westbury, New York, died from pancreatic cancer. Prior to Nassau BOCES, efron—who spelled her name in lower case—served as an assistant to the school library system director at Eastern Suffolk BOCES and was a high school librarian at Brentwood (N.Y.) High School.
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Barbara Klump, 78, former director of the Schultz-Holmes Memorial Library in Blissfield, Michigan, died March 17. She worked at the library from 1978 until her retirement in 2003. Klump attended Wheaton (Ill.) College and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
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Susan Gilroy, online librarian for American Public University System, died March 13. Her work over the last six years supported schools of Education and Public Service and Health. Gilroy came to APUS libraries after serving as library director at Travis Air Force Base near Fairfield, California, and was library director of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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Michael Cohen, 67, died February 2, after a long battle with prostate cancer. Cohen was Professor Emeritus and a founding faculty member at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor School of Information. He had retired in 2012. Cohen was also Professor Emeritus in the university’s Ford School of Public Policy.
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Leon L. Bram, 81, died February 11 of Parkinsen’s disease. Bram retired in 1997 as vice president and editorial director of Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. He was born in Chicago where he began his career in encyclopedia publishing before moving to New York in the 1970s to take an editorial position with Funk & Wagnalls. Before retiring, he worked with Microsoft to create the first online encyclopedia, Encarta.
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Kate Ragsdale, 73, was found murdered in her home in Alberta, Alabama on February 24. Ragsdale worked at the University of Alabama for more than 25 years until retiring in 2006.
She started out in a clerical position, then joined the UA Libraries in 1983 and worked for the Business Library. Ragsdale was appointed a planning officer with the library association in 1987 and oversaw several library construction and renovation projects, according to a spokesperson for UA.
Authorities are calling the cause of death to be “sharp force injury,” meaning she was stabbed to death. The case is considered a home invasion homicide.
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Karen Simmons, 62, director of the Douglas County Library (Minn.), died on February 26 in a car crash in central Minnesota. She was hired as library director in January 2011, but had been serving as interim director since October 2009. Simmons had over 20 years of service at the library, which also included working as assistant library director and children’s librarian.