Obituaries
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Catherine Sheldrick Ross, 75, dean of what is now the Faculty of Informa- tion and Media Studies at University of Western Ontario from 1996 to 1998 during its formation, and again from 2000 to 2007, died September 11. Ross was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. She coauthored scholarly works, including Reading Still Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community and Conducting the Reference Interview: A How-to-Do-It Manual for Librarians. She also wrote four children’s books.
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Ronald V. Stoch, 70, director of Eisenhower Public Library District in Harwood Heights, Illinois, for 34 years until retiring in 2014, died October 6. Under his leadership, the library was one of the first in Illinois to automate its catalog and circulation processes, and it pioneered instituting patron-driven acquisition. After retirement, Stoch remained active in ALA, the Illinois Library Association, and the Polish American Librarians Association.
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Saul Amdursky, 76, longtime director of Kalamazoo (Mich.) Public Library (KPL), died July 30. He oversaw the renovation of all KPL branches in the 1990s. Amdursky later served at libraries in British Columbia and Iowa.
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James L. Godwin, 78, former chief of the Automated Systems Office (now Information Technology Services Office) of the Library of Congress (LC), died September 13. Godwin joined LC in 1970 and worked there for more than 30 years, providing vision and leadership in developing and implementing its first online cataloging and information retrieval system. He served on the Library and Information Technology Association’s Technical Standards for Library Automation Committee and the Committee for the Coordination of National Bibliographic Control, and he supported automation of governmental libraries in France and Bulgaria.
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Barbara Immroth, 79, faculty member at the University of Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Science (now iSchool) in Austin for 35 years until her retirement in 2015, died September 6. A specialist in children’s services, she served as 1989-1990 president of the Association for Library Service to Children. She also served as 1997-1998 president of the Texas Library Association (TLA) and received ALA’s Beta Phi Mu Award for Distinguished Service to Education for Librarianship in 2007 and TLA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.
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Donald C. Adcock, 86, director of library services at Glen Ellyn (Ill.) School District 41 from 1963 to 1989, died July 15. He served as coordinator for program support of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) and later as interim director. After leaving AASL, he became university supervisor and then interim director for the school library media program at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois.
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Richard “Rich” Hines, 74, librarian emeritus at University of Portland in Oregon and dean for information services until his 2006 retirement, died May 11. Hines worked in academic libraries for more than 20 years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; Duke University in Durham, North Carolina; and Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
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Patricia Muir, 91, longtime executive secretary at the American Library Association (ALA) until her 1997 retirement, died February 12.
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Linda Pletzke, 79, retired assistant chief of the Library of Congress Acquisition Division, died July 10. Pletzke was an active member of ALA and served on and chaired several committees. Her career included time as a children’s librarian at Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Public Library, reference librarian at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library, acquisitions librarian at Northwestern University Libraries in Evanston, Illinois, and head of the Special Order Section at the Library of Congress.
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Don Reynolds, 79, director of Nolichucky Regional Library Center in Morristown, Tennessee, until his 2010 retirement, died August 16. Reynolds was founding director and 2007–2008 president of the Association for Rural and Small Libraries. In retirement he remained an advocate for libraries, staying active in Friends of Tennessee Libraries and serving as its president 2014–2017.
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William Streamer Jr., 82, retired reference librarian at Montgomery College, Rockville (Md.) Campus, died June 23. Streamer also worked for more than 15 years for the Maryland State Department of Education Division of Library Development and Services.
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J. Maurice Travillian, 83, former state librarian of Maryland, died July 14. He previously worked for the state’s Division of Library Development and Services in the Department of Education for two decades, as library consultant, chief of public libraries, and, ultimately, state librarian. In the early 1990s, he envisioned and led the development of Sailor, a statewide network that brought internet access to underserved populations, which received the James Madison Award from the Coalition on Government Information in 1995. He also led development of MILO, the statewide interlibrary loan system. He had previously served as state librarian of Iowa; director of Marshalltown (Iowa) Public Library; a librarian at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa; and bookmobile driver at Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia, Missouri.