People in the News

Ann-Christe Galloway

Ed. note: To ensure that your personnel news is considered for publication, write to Ann-Christe Galloway, production editor, C&RL News, at email: agalloway@ala.org.

Elizabeth Dill has been appointed director of university libraries at the University of Hartford in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Annie Downey has been named librarian and director of the University of Washington-Tacoma Library and associate dean of university libraries at the University of Washington Libraries.

Appointments

Susan J. Breakenridge is now as the assistant dean for business and human resources at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.

Jina DuVernay has been appointed coordinator for African American Studies and Primary Source Literacy at Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library.

Katherine Heilman is now electronic resources librarian and assistant professor in the Department of Technical Services at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s University Libraries.

Anna Liss Jacobsen has been appointed senior assistant librarian and medicine and research services librarian at the University of Washington Libraries.

Juanita Thacker has been named information literacy lecturer in the Department of Research, Outreach and Instruction at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s University Libraries.

Sarah R. Ward has been appointed as Performing and Visual Arts librarian at Butler University

Retirements

Robert (Bob) Anthony has retired as curator of the North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Special Collections Library at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill University Libraries. Anthony first worked for the collection as a graduate student in 1989, then as a reference associate until 1985. After spending a year at the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, he returned in 1986 and became the North Carolina Collection’s fourth curator beginning in 1994. Anthony’s service has been marked by leadership roles in more than 20 organizations, including the Historical Society of North Carolina (past-president), the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association (past-president), the North Carolina Writers Conference (of which he coauthored a history, and which honored him for service to the state’s literary community), and the Thomas Wolfe Society, which awarded him a citation of merit. Anthony has been named a distinguished alumnus by the School of Information and Library Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. He received the University’s C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award in 2019. Anthony has contributed to books and journals including the North Carolina Historical Review, the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, and the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography.

Elliot H. Gertel has been named Irving M. Hermelin Curator Emeritus of Judaica and senior associate librarian emeritus by the Regents of the University of Michigan (UM). In his nearly 20 years of service, Gertel expanded the Judaica collection to well over 150,000 items. He acquired or facilitated donations of many important collections in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and Western languages. When the university library, in collaboration with the UM Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, acquired the Harris Jewish Heritage Collection in 2003, Gertel helped oversee the transfer of several thousand items and subsequently became the curator of this collection. Over the years, Gertel provided research and instruction services to faculty and curated Judaica exhibits on campus. His support for the Yiddish Program, as well as his tireless collecting efforts, played a significant role in establishing UM as a leading center of Yiddish studies. In addition to his university contributions, Gertel was a prominent figure in Jewish librarianship at the national level. He served in various leadership capacities in the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL), chaired the Jewish Information Committee of the ALA Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table, and served on the ALA Reference and User Services Association’s Sophie Brody Medal Committee. He vigorously worked on forging a strong connection between the AJL and the ALA.

Loring A. Prest, electronic resources librarian and library webmaster at Louis L. Manderino Library at California University of Pennsylvania, retired at the end of June 2021. In the 1990s, Prest changed careers and graduated from the library school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997. After an interim year at Illinois Wesleyan University, he was hired at California University. Over the next twenty-three years, he went from Instructor to full Professor, including nine years as Library Services Department chair. He has been an ALA and ACRL member for twenty-seven years. He especially valued the ACRL Conferences—attending all but one between 1999 and 2019.

Deaths

Katherine Bowes, senior academic librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, has died. On the staff of the Libraries since 2000, Bowes was most recently a member of User Services, providing research expertise for art, architecture, foreign languages, and the Honors College.

JoAnn Jacoby, former director of Tutt Library at Colorado College, has died. In 1998, she joined the staff of the University of Illinois as an assistant librarian at the Illinois Natural History Survey Library. Jacoby served in a variety of roles, taking on increasing responsibilities through the years (Anthropology and Sociology subject specialist [assistant professor, then associate professor], 2002–08; coordinator, New Service Model Programs [associate professor], 2008-12; head of Research and Information Services [associate professor], 2010–15; associate university librarian for user services and associate dean of libraries, 2015–17). Her professional career ended with a three years as the director of Tutt Library at Colorado College (2017–20), before retiring to Washington in coastal North Carolina with her husband.

Rachel A. McCaskill, 2013 Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Program Fellow, has died. McCaskill completed a summer fellowship at the University of Arizona’s Main Library before accepting her first professional position as a two-year resident librarian at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries in 2013. Following her residency, McCaskill worked as learning technologies librarian at the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries before accepting a position at St. Norbert College in 2019. McCaskill’s chief research interests included equity and justice in academic libraries, advancing technology and innovation in teaching, and accessibility.