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Appointments & Retirements

Coulbourne, Mark
Mark Coulbourne began as preservation librarian at University of Maryland, College Park, October 14.
January 8, 2020
De Leon, Stephanie
September 1 Stephanie De Leon became digital resource professional at Lone Star College University Park Digital Library in Houston.
January 8, 2020
Dias De Fazio, Diane
In July Diane Dias De Fazio was appointed curator of rare books and book arts in Special Collections at University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City.
January 8, 2020
Floyd, Joni
Joni Floyd became curator for Maryland and Historical Collections at University of Maryland, College Park, Libraries September 16.
January 8, 2020
Hutchison, Brock
October 7 Brock J. Hutchison started as director of Louisville (Ky.) Public Library.
January 8, 2020

At ALA

Dougherty, Megan
Megan Dougherty, program officer for continuing education for the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS), left ALA September 13.
January 8, 2020
Dubin, Jordan
The Association for Library Service to Children named Jordan Dubin as awards coordinator October 21.
January 8, 2020
Aleck, Nick
Nick Aleck joined the Information Technology department as user experience manager October 28.
January 8, 2020
Baker, Gavin
The Public Policy and Advocacy Office (PPAO) promoted Gavin Baker to deputy director, public policy and government relations, September 13.
January 8, 2020
Booth, Heather
Heather Booth joined Booklist as audio editor October 28.
January 8, 2020

Cited

Chicago Botanical Garden Lenhardt Library
In September, the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library in Glencoe, Illinois, received the American Institute of Conservation’s 2019 Ross Merrill Award for Outstanding Commitment to the Preservation and Care of Collections.
January 8, 2020
McLeod, Clara
The Geoscience Information Society recognized Clara McLeod, earth and planetary sciences librarian at Washington University in St. Louis, with its Mary B. Ansari Distinguished Service Award at its annual meeting September 24.
January 8, 2020
CLIR Postdoctoral Fellows
The Council on Library and Information Resources has named its 2019 cohort of postdoctoral fellows: Rebecca Y. Bayeck, focusing on abolition, transatlantic slavery, early black librarianship, and other topics at New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Mary Borgo Ton, developing pedagogy strategies for Archivo Mesoamericano at Indiana University in Bloomington; Andrew Brown, coordinating digital humanities workshops at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute; Maia Call, improving digital management and library science practices at the US Agency for International Development in Washington, D.C.; Guillaume Candela, developing a digital platform for the Indigenous Languages of the Americas collection at Brown University’s John Carter Brown Library in Providence, Rhode Island; Christian Casey, developing digital technology tools for the New York University Institute for the Study of the Ancient World; Alicia Cowart, creating a research support program for geospatial research at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Faithe Day, conducting data curation projects at the African American Studies and Research Center at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana; Zachary Furste, developing strategies for preserving and curating executable archival materials at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; Amani Morrison, transitioning the Colored Conventions Project at the University of Delaware in Newark to a new digital platform; Aditya Ranganath, expanding New York University’s infrastructure supporting geospatial research; Brian A. Robinson, developing web-based content for training teachers to use the Digital Library on American Slavery at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Azure Stewart, working at the intersection of engineering education, librarianship, and research at New York University Libraries; Sean Tennant, developing workflows for data creation, use, preservation, and retrieval at Union College Library in Schenectady, New York; Kimber Thomas, facilitating preservation and use of the Community-Driven Archives Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Kevin Winstead, implementing new partnerships for gathering documents and organizing research data for the Colored Conventions Project at the University of Delaware in Newark.
January 8, 2020
Holmes, Gerald
Gerald Holmes, associate professor and diversity coordinator at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Greensboro Libraries, received the UNC Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science Distinguished Alumni Award in recognition of his contributions to diversity and equity July 10.
November 1, 2019
Scobey, Sarah
The Colorado Association of Libraries named Sarah Scobey, nonprofit resources librarian at Poudre River Public Library District, as 2019 Colorado Librarian of the Year.
November 1, 2019

Obituaries

Cline, Helen
Helen Cline, 87, managing editor for the American Library Association’s (ALA) Books and Publishing Services from 1968 until her 1991 retirement, died October 9. After retiring, she lived in Hennessey, Oklahoma, where she founded the Friends of the Hennessey Library.
January 8, 2020
Clyburn, Emily
Emily England Clyburn, 80, a longtime school and Veterans Administration librarian in South Carolina until her 1994 retirement, died September 19. She served as a librarian at W. G. Sanders Middle School in Columbia, Charleston Naval Academy, Simonton Elementary School and Burke High School in Charleston, and at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Columbia. She was married to US Rep. Jim Clyburn and used that position to raise tens of thousands of dollars to help students afford college. South Carolina State University awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2010.
January 8, 2020
Kuhlmeier, Sylvia
Sylvia Darlene Kuhlmeier, 60, died June 28. She worked as a librarian at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, and as library director at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, and Missouri State University in West Plains.
January 8, 2020
Lukenbill, Willis
Willis Bernard “Bill” Lukenbill, 80, professor emeritus at University of Texas (UT) at Austin School of Information, died August 29. He taught library and information science at University of Maryland, College Park, 1972-1975 before joining UT in 1976; he retired in 2010. Lukenbill wrote eight books and more than 40 professional articles, and he presented his research at many international conferences. After retirement, he volunteered as an archivist at Metropolitan Community Church in Austin.
January 8, 2020
Mosley, Rose
Rose E. Mosley, 80, a member of the Maywood (Ill.) Public Library Board for 36 years, died September 10. Mosley was a member of the Illinois Library Trustee Forum starting in 1990 and held at various times the offices of secretary, vice president, and president. The Illinois Library Association awarded her its Outstanding Trustee Award and Citation in 1998. Mosley was a longtime ALA member and was one of the advocates for the merger of the Association for Library Trustees and Advocates with Friends of Libraries USA. In 2009, she became the 2009–2010 president of the merged organization, now known as United for Libraries.
January 8, 2020

Send notices and photos to Amy Carlton, acarlton@ala.org.

Latest Library Links

13h

The British scientist Alan Turing’s Princeton doctoral degree, OBE medal, and other items of memorabilia have been recovered in Colorado, 35 years after they were taken from Sherborne School in the UK. On January 17, federal officials said they had recovered and were seeking the forfeiture of Turing’s items, reports, and letters from his time at boarding school. The items were stolen in 1984, the filing said, after a woman asked to see the Turing archive at Sherborne. In 2018 a woman named Julia Turing (originally Schwinghamer) offered the items on loan to the University of Colorado Boulder, after which federal officials searched a home and recovered the items.
The Guardian (UK), Jan. 21
13h

Alan Inouye writes: “A tsunami hit the publisher-library ecosystem in the last half of 2019. Macmillan Publishers decided that a library system (whether in a town of a few hundred people or the Los Angeles Public Library) may purchase only one copy of a new ebook until the ninth week after release. Libraries and their communities vigorously opposed this new policy through a wave of letters to the company, op-eds, articles, TV news appearances, radio interviews, panel sessions, and a national petition. Communities lose when ebook sales to libraries are denied or delayed, especially people with low or fixed income and, disproportionately, people of color.”
ITI Newslink, Jan. 21
13h

In 1763, a mob of white settlers, the so-called “Paxton Boys,” murdered 20 unarmed Conestoga People in a genocidal campaign that reshaped Pennsylvania settlement politics. The Library Company of Philadelphia has published a graphic novel about the event, Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga, by Lee Francis 4, with art by Weshoyot Alvitre, and edited by Will Fenton, and is now hosting an exhibition on view at the library through April 10. The exhibition features Alvitre’s hand-painted artwork from the graphic novel, a wampum belt created by Wampanoag artist Elizabeth James-Perry, and a behind-the-scenes documentary.
Library Company of Philadelphia
14h

Unexpectedly finding a skeleton lounging in her office doesn’t rattle Beth M. Lander, college librarian at the Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. “That’s an excellent example of what it is like to work here,” she says. “You never know what might happen next.” The college shares its library with the Mütter Museum, an institution known for its macabre medical materials, which span centuries. The library holds more than 146,000 journals, monographs, photos, manuscripts, and other medical ephemera documenting more than 1,000 years of medical history. It also has five books bound in human skin.
American Libraries Bookend, Jan./Feb.
14h

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the world’s preeminent center for the study of the Yiddish language, culture, and history, has laid off all of its librarians. Four people were let go in the move, which was announced internally last week and confirmed by Executive Director Jonathan Brent in a statement on January 20. The four librarians were among 39 total employees of the 95-year-old organization, which reported $5.1 million in spending in its 2018 annual report. YIVO had a $550,000 revenue shortfall in 2019, Brent said, so the board and professional leadership decided to remove the librarians in order to “seek efficiencies in the organization.”
Forward, Jan. 20
14h

The Digital Public Library of America has released a new ebook, The Impeachment Papers, a compendium of 38 documents related to the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. The EPUB-format ebook consists of witness testimony, subpoenas, and other publicly available material in an easy-to-read format. Additions to the preliminary version of this ebook, originally released in December, include the report from the House Judiciary Committee, report from the House Intelligence Committee, and the review of four FISA applications and other aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, all of which were released to the public in December. A browser version is also available.
Digital Public Library of America, Jan. 21
15h

Clark Drieshen writes: “The British Library invites you to explore some of the wildlife that can be found in its heraldic manuscripts. Medieval and early modern coats of arms—visual designs symbolizing the heritage of individuals and families—are teeming with animal life. These animals are depicted according to heraldic conventions, but sometimes they also display fabulous features originating from medieval illustrated bestiaries. It can sometimes be difficult to understand what these borrowings from the bestiary tradition represent. Luckily, we have a guidebook at our disposal, namely the 15th-century Middle Scots Deidis of Armorie.”
British Library: Medieval Manuscripts Blog, Jan. 21

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