Appointments

Stephen J. Bury has been appointed Andrew W. Mellon chief librarian at The Frick Collection’s Frick Art Reference Library. For the past ten years, Bury has been at the British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, where he is a deputy director and head of European and American Collections, as well as Maps, Music, and Philatelic Collections. Previously, Bury was head of learning resources at the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London. Bury joined the British Library in 2000 as head of Modern English Collections, and he was promoted in 2002 to head of European and American Collections. Bury is also chair of ARLIS (Art Libraries Society) UK & Ireland National Co-ordination Committee, and he is a member of the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Peer Review College. At the British Library he leads the Mellon-funded 21st Century Curator Project, a program that encourages staff to remain engaged in learning and to take advantage of new technologies entering the field, while helping them pass along traditional skills that are disappearing from the library school curriculum

Posie Aagaard has been named assistant dean for collections and assessment at the University of Texas-San Antonio.

Caroline Barratt is now responsible for library operations at the Miller Learning Center at the University of Georgia.

Kossivi (Jean-Paul) Bessou is the new systems librarian for the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University.

Sean Bird has joined the instruction team at Washburn University’s Mabee Library as instructional librarian.

Michelle Reed Canipe has joined the instruction team at Washburn University’s Mabee Library as distance education librarian.

Jenny McCraw Dale has joined the University Libraries at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro as the first-year instruction coordinator and reference librarian.

Kimberly Detterbeck has been appointed reference librarian and coordinator of library instruction for first-year students at Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.

Audra Eagle has been appointed librarian, project archivist at Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library.

P. Toby Graham, director of the Digital Library of Georgia at the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, has also become the deputy university librarian at the University of Georgia.

Amy Harper has been appointed clinical librarian at the University of Washington-Seattle’s Health Sciences Libraries.

Gary Hausman has joined Princeton University’s Firestone Library as South Asia librarian.

Molly Keener is now as the scholarly communication librarian of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University.

Bill Landis is now head of special collections research and instructional services at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Jennifer Oenning is the new library development director at Portland State University Library.

Joan Petit has been named humanities and social sciences librarian at Portland State University.

Regina Roberts is now subject bibliographer for anthropology and sociology at Stanford University.

Lisa Carlucci Thomas has been named digital services librarian at Southern Connecticut State University.

Retirements

William N. Nelson has retired as the director of Augusta State University’s (ASU) Reese Library after 17 years of service. Nelson has held leadership roles in the Georgia Library Association (GLA), ACRL, Southeastern Library Association, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. He has also served on the Regents Academic Committee on Libraries, as well as GALILEO Georgia’s Virtual Library and GALILEO Interconnected Libraries committees. He was the recipient of GLA’s Nix-Jones Award for his distinguished service to Georgia librarianship. The award recognizes substantial contributions to the library profession and outstanding support of Georgia libraries. He also received the GLA Lifetime Membership Award.

Diane Wheeler Strauss

Diane Wheeler Strauss, associate university librarian for collections and services at the University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill, has retired after more than 36 years of service with the library. Strauss joined the library staff in 1973 as the social sciences reference librarian in what was then the Business Administration/Social Sciences Reference Department. In 1976, she became head of the department, which has since been integrated with the library’s other reference and research services. She became associate university librarian for public services in 1992, and additionally took on administrative responsibility for library collections in 2004. Strauss is the author of the Handbook of Business Information (Libraries Unlimited, 1988), which was reissued in 2003 as Strauss’s Handbook of Business Information: A Guide for Librarians, Students, and Researchers Second Edition. In 1990, she received the Gale Research Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship from the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of ALA’s Reference and User Services Association. Along with her service at the UNC Library, Strauss taught the Business Information Sources and Services class at UNC’s School of Information and Library Science from 1986 through 2001. Prior to joining the UNC Library, she held positions at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland; the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies; the May Memorial Library in Burlington, North Carolina; and the U.S. Department of Labor Library in Washington, D.C.

Deaths

Sylvia Ann McDowell, who was honored by the Mayor of Boston who proclaimed Saturday, March 6, 2010, to be Sylvia Ann McDowell Day, died March 11. McDowell worked as a librarian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlesex Community College, Boston University, and Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library. She was one of the founders of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail and served many years as president and vice president. McDowell was awarded the Crystal Staircase Award from the Simmons College African American Alumnae Association in 1966. She also received the Simmons College Alumnae Association’s Golden Shark Award in 2006.

Monty L. Montee, 71, retired head of the catalog department and first chief catalog librarian at the Yale University Libraries, died October 30, 2009. He began his professional career as music cataloger at Cornell University in 1963, and in 1966 he joined the staff of the Yale University Library as assistant head of the descriptive cataloging division. He remained at Yale for the rest of his library career, retiring in 1996. Montee became the submission editor for the Poisoned Pen Press, retiring from that position in 2007.