People

John William Ellison, 76, a faculty member at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo for 38 years, died September 11. Ellison served as a Fulbright professor at University of the West Indies’ Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago campuses, the National Library of Jamaica, and University of Cape Coast in Ghana. He was the first professor at SUNY Buffalo to deliver long-distance education via the internet.

Patricia Senn Breivik, 79, who held a variety of leadership positions in academic libraries over a 38-year career, died September 15. Breivik served as dean of university libraries at Wayne State University in Detroit; associate vice president for information resources at Towson (Md.) State University; director of Auraria Library at University of Colorado in Denver; dean of library services at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois; and most recently dean of San José (Calif.) State University Library. She was 1995–1996 president of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), chair of the National Forum on Information Literacy, and a member of the American Association for Higher Education board. Breivik published several books and articles, and received ACRL’s Miriam Dudley Instruction Librarian Award in 1997, among other awards.

Edwin M. Cortez, 66, professor in the School of Information Sciences at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, until his 2016 retirement, died October 6. He also taught at University of Wisconsin–Madison; Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.; Pratt Institute in New York City; and University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He chaired several American Library Association (ALA) committees, particularly those related to accreditation.

Anne C. Edmonds, 93, college librarian for 30 years at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, until her 1994 retirement, died October 30. Upon her retirement, the college awarded her an honorary doctorate. Prior to joining Mount Holyoke, she worked as children’s assistant at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore; reference librarian at the City College of New York and Goucher College in Towson, Maryland; and library director at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey. She also worked for a year as an exchange librarian at the European Services Library of the BBC in London, and for six months as a consultant at University of the North in South Africa.

Beverly Goldberg, 65, an editor for American Libraries from 1982 until her retirement in 2015, died October 5. Goldberg began as editor of the classified advertising section in American Libraries, then expanded her duties to include news and features as an associate editor in 1988. She started writing editorial content full-time in 1990 and was promoted to senior editor in 1996. Goldberg, who did not have a library degree, said upon her retirement that she “learned the lingo right away” and felt like an “honorary librarian.”