Obituaries
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William Joseph Welsh, 92, died July 13. He worked for 41 years at the Library of Congress. When he retired in 1988, he had served for 12 years as Deputy Librarian of Congress, where he accomplished a great deal including his roles in the renovation of the historic Jefferson Building, the development of a process to lengthen the lifespan of books by deacidifying the paper on which they were printed, supporting an intern program to develop new leaders, and overseeing a pilot project on the use of optical disk technology to store pictorial and textual material in compact formats. In 1971 he was awarded the American Library Association’s Melvil Dewey Medal for his imaginative leadership and wide-ranging contributions to librarianship. In 1983, he was presented with LC’s Distinguished Service Award.
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Mary Lambdin, 97, former children’s librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, died July 15.
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Helen Armstrong, 95, former public school librarian, died June 21. She began in 1942 as a librarian at the University of Maryland, and later joined the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library. She held library positions in Florida, Philadelphia Public Library and in the 1970s moved to Vineland, N.J. and became a public school librarian.
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Hilda Beatrice Ash Riddle, 90, who began working at the Internal Revenue Service’s National Computer Center in 1962 as tape librarian, died July 12.
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Helen Harding, 101, former director of Gale Free Library in Holden, Massachusetts, for 25 years, died June 29.
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Hedwig Saucier, 89, died June 25 from complications related to pneumonia. Saucier was a US military librarian in Bremerhaven, Germany.
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Mabel Burklow, 101, former librarian and teacher, died July 11. Burklow served as librarian at the former Fleming-Neon High School in Kentucky for several years before moving to Hazard, Kentucky, in 1953. She then became teacher and librarian at Roy G. Eversole School in Hazard until her retirement in 1980.
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Margaret Goggin, 93, died June 10 after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She served the University of Florida in a number of positions from 1949 to 1968 including associate professor of library science, assistant director, and acting director of libraries. In 1968, the University of Denver hired Goggin as full professor and dean of the graduate school of librarianship. In 1980, she was the cofounder of what is today the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. In retirement, she served as interim director of collection management at Emory University from 1986 to 1988; coowner of Book Seminars, Inc. from 1986 to 1995; and owner of Margaret K. Goggin Books beginning in 1994.
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Carol Greenholz, 78, former director of technical services at the State University of New York at Farmingdale (known today as Farmingdale State College) where she worked for more than 40 years, died June 11 from lung cancer. She received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship at SUNY Farmingdale and served as chair of the Women’s Council.
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Peter C. Brown, 65, former librarian at University of California at Davis, died May 13. He was an early environmentalist who spent years developing organic gardening experiments designed to improve the soil.
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Vera Mitchell, retired library technical assistant, African Studies Library and African American Studies at the University of Illinois (UI), Champaign-Urbana, died June 6. She received the UI Chancellor’s Distinguished Staff Award in 2003.
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Charlotte Decker, 62, retired children’s department librarian at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County in Ohio died May 23 from metastatic breast cancer. She also served as librarian at Covington (Ky.) Latin School.