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Appointments & Retirements

Ashby, Judy

Judy Ashby became head of reference services for Bangor (Maine) Public Library May 20.

September 4, 2019
Cosby, Michelle

Temple University in Philadelphia named Michelle Cosby director of its law library, effective June.

September 4, 2019
St. Oegger-Menn, Vanessa

Syracuse (N.Y.) University Libraries promoted Vanessa St. Oegger-Menn, assistant university archivist and Pan Am 103 archivist, to associate librarian July 1.

September 4, 2019
Gyamfi, Teddy

Teddy Gyamfi was named evening access services manager at SUNY Geneseo’s Milne Library in March.

September 4, 2019
Jackson, Petrina

June 3 Petrina Jackson became director of the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse (N.Y.) University.

September 4, 2019

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At ALA

Kendall, George

June 10 George Kendall began as Booklist editor and publisher.

September 4, 2019
Price, Kerri

Kerri Price, associate director of the Office for Accreditation, left ALA July 12.

September 4, 2019
Sievers, David

David Sievers, library assistant in the ALA Library, left ALA June 12 to become acquisitions and serials assistant at DePaul University’s Richardson Library in Chicago.

September 4, 2019
Walling, Melissa Kay

June 17 Melissa Kay Walling joined ALA as director of Membership Development and Customer Service.

September 4, 2019
Ali, Abdullah

Staff Accountant Abdullah Ali left ALA June 19.

September 4, 2019

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Cited

Hendricks, Martha

Martha Hendricks, director of Clarksville-Montgomery County (Tenn.) Public Library, received the Tennessee Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award April 25. Hendricks allowed Equality Clarksville to use the library’s meeting space in August 2018 to hold a drag queen storytime despite protests and personal attacks.

September 4, 2019
Olivieri, Blynne

In June the University of West Georgia in Carrollton named Ingram Library Head of Special Collections and Associate Professor Blynne Olivieri Faculty Member of the Year for the 2018-2019 academic year.

September 4, 2019
Owen Intermediate School Library Media Center

Owen Intermediate School Library Media Center in Belleville, Michigan, won the state’s Model 21st Century School Library award in June in recognition of its innovative collaborations with local educators.

September 4, 2019
Hester, Sandy

Sandy Hester, director of Coastal Plain Regional Library System in Tifton, Georgia, was named Public Librarian of the Year by Georgia Public Library Service.

June 3, 2019
Howell, Kim

Kim Howell, librarian at Stockwell Place Elementary School in Bossier City, Louisiana, was named School Librarian of the Year at the Louisiana Library Association conference March 14.

June 3, 2019

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Obituaries

Bogart, Gary

Gary Bogart, 75, who retired as assistant director of Pinellas Park (Fla.) Public Library in 2010, died June 19, 2018. He previously held administrative positions at New York Public Library and had been editor of the Standard Catalog Series published by H. W. Wilson Company.

September 4, 2019
Hillmer, Margaret

Margaret Patricia (Pat) Hillmer, 83, director ofTiffin-Seneca (Ohio) Public Library from 1981 until her 2008 retirement, died June 23. During her tenure, she expanded services and library systems automation, established a library Friends group and the Tiffin-Seneca Library Foundation, and was awarded the Ohio Library Association’s Librarian of the Year Award in 2004.

September 4, 2019
McMurry, Carol

Carol Jean McMurry, 74, who held positions at University of Wyoming’s Coe Library, Laramie County (Wyo.) Library System, and University of Wyoming Family Medicine Residency Clinic in Cheyenne, died June 1. McMurry was also a library philanthropist, making donations to University of Wyoming that funded a library reading room, a campus reading program, library staff development and recognition programs, library collections, an author series, and an endowed librarian position.

September 4, 2019
Miley, James

James A. Miley, 69, director of Kendallville (Ind.) Public Library 1979-1983 and Troy-Miami (Ohio) County Public Library from 1983 until his retirement in 2009, died June 16.

September 4, 2019
Thomas, Lucille

Lucille Cole Thomas, 97, died June 15. Thomas began her career as a librarian at Brooklyn (N.Y.) Public Library (BPL). She joined the New York City Board of Education as librarian 1956-1968; she served as supervisor of library services 1968-1977 and as assistant director of the office of library, media, and telecommunications 1977-1983. In 1993, she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of BPL. Thomas was an ALA Councilor for 22 years and served on the Executive Board 1985-1991. She was the first African-American president of the New York Library Association and the New York City School Librarians Association. Among her honors are the 1996 US National Commission on Libraries and Information Science Silver Award, the 1988 Grolier Foundation Award, ALA Honorary Membership in 2003, and the 1994 Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of School Librarians. BPL’s Excellence in Librarianship Award was named for her in 2017.

September 4, 2019

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

Latest Library Links

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Tor Haugan writes: “Outside a select group of researchers, demography nerds, genealogists, and dataphiles, the US census is often considered a staid and decidedly unsexy part of American civic life, like serving on a jury or paying taxes. But a richly detailed, incisive, and delightfully wonky new exhibit in the UC-Berkeley Doe Library is challenging that. ‘Power and the People: The US Census and Who Counts’ opened in September, providing an inside look at some of the fascinating stories and hidden gems relating to the nationwide decennial drive for data through maps, data, and other library treasures.”

UC Berkeley Library News, Sept. 24
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Patrons of the Millinocket (Maine) Memorial Library can not only check out the latest Stephen King book, they can borrow one of the library’s many mountain bikes, canoes, kayaks, stand-up paddleboards, or sets of cross-country skis and take them out for a spin in the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument or on the new Katahdin Area Trails. The equipment, which was donated to the library by the Outdoor Sport Institute, makes up the new Katahdin Gear Library, and is free and open to anyone. “If ecotourism and the outdoors is what’s going to save the Katahdin region, then that’s what we need to offer to our patrons,” said Director Matt DeLaney.

Bangor (Maine) Daily News, Sept. 23
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Barbara Fister writes: “Libraries are easy pickings for layoffs because librarians’ labor is almost by design fairly invisible. When you click on a database link and download an article, it may take only a second, but people did a lot of work to make that happen: They selected and negotiated a license annually for that database, put links to it in all the right places on the library website, changed them when the vendor randomly decided to rebrand, and did a ton of work to make sure the links to hundreds of thousands of individual articles actually work. When all goes well, it appears seamless. We want to save the time of the reader. But it’s a ton of labor that nobody sees.”

Inside Higher Ed: Library Babel Fish, Sept. 18
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Alexandra Alter writes: “In an era plagued by deep fakes and online disinformation campaigns, we still tend to trust what we read in books. But should we? In the past year alone, errors in books by several high-profile authors—including Naomi Wolf, Jill Abramson, Jared Diamond, Paul Dolan, and Michael Wolff—have ignited a debate over whether publishers should take more responsibility for the accuracy of their books. While in the fallout of each accuracy scandal everyone asks where the fact checkers are, but there isn’t broad agreement on who should be paying for what is a time-consuming, labor-intensive process in the low-margin publishing industry.”

New York Times, Sept. 22
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Mark Joseph Stern writes: “The Trump administration has threatened to withdraw federal funding from the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies because it does not portray Christianity or Judaism in a sufficiently positive light. A letter from the Department of Education—sent on September 17 and reported by the New York Times—directed the program to emphasize ‘positive aspects’ of these and other non-Islamic religions in the Middle East. If it refuses, the department may strip the program of hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Slate, Sept. 20
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Margaret Renkl writes: “When the Rev. Dan Reehil, a Catholic priest, ordered the removal of all Harry Potter books from the St. Edward parish school library in Nashville, Tennessee, in August, the community demanded an explanation. Reehil responded by email, noting that he had ‘consulted several exorcists, both in the United States and in Rome,’ and had been assured that the ‘curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text.’ Harry Potter and his friends don’t exist in real life, but they wrestle with real-life challenges: bullies, rejection, loneliness, fear, grief—and, yes, with clueless adults whose behavior is patently ludicrous.”

New York Times, Sept. 23
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Librarians at the Homewood (Ill.) Public Library celebrated Banned Books Week in 2017 by collaborating to create a parody music video titled Leer Despacito, a Banned Book Week parody of Despacito by Luis Fonsi with Justin Bieber. They adapted the visual look and music of Fonsi’s Spanish-language dancehall song. This black-and-white video shows young readers who encounter banned books by Hispanic authors.

Homewood Library YouTube channel, Sept. 24, 2017

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