A 150th anniversary memorial for librarians who advanced the field

Beginning as a series of posts on the American Library Association (ALA) Connect members discussion board in fall 2024, Librarians We Have Lost was created to celebrate the Association’s sesquicentennial. ALA members were asked to submit tributes through ALA Connect to honor the memory, service, and professional contributions of librarians, educators, and library workers we have lost over the past 50 years.

Arthur Curley (l.) and John N. Berry III (r.)

A Library History Round Table (LHRT) committee coordinated by David Brett Spencer, editor of Library History News and Notes, formalized “Librarians We Have Lost (1976–2026): A Sesquicentennial Memorial Project” as a librarian-crowdsourced initiative. Because the project attracted such great interest, Dr. Anita S. Coleman, LHRT committee member, wrote a resolution that ALA Council passed at the 2025 ALA Conference recognizing the initiative as an integral part of ALA’s sesquicentennial commemoration.

The committee worked with ALA Archivist Cara Setsu Bertram, ALA Librarian and Archivist Colleen Barbus, and ALA Interim Executive Director Melanie Welch to create a permanent site at the ALA Institutional Repository. LHRT Chair Jennifer Schatz Bartlett provided support and counsel for this formalized project.

Recently, the collection’s 150th tribute was submitted—a fitting milestone in both Library Journal and ALA’s 150th anniversary year. It recognizes Arthur Curley, director of the Boston Public Library, who served as ALA President in 1994–95 and of whom John N. Berry III (1933–2020), longtime editor of Library Journal, wrote in 1998, “From his career beginnings until its end, both at the Boston Public Library, Curley proudly professed the power of information, education, and the fundamental need of society for tax-supported, free public libraries to make that information and education accessible to all. Secondly, he proudly proclaimed his calling to and membership in the clan of librarians. It is a worthy pride we hide too often.”

In this anniversary year, we can take great pride in the work of the librarians who came before us and honor their legacy by carrying their work forward. Some of the many recognized in Librarians We Have Lost are featured here.

HENRIETTE AVRAM, Library of Congress, developed the MARC (Machine-Readable Cataloging) format, allowing catalog data to be stored and shared electronically instead of just on paper cards. In her obituary, the New York Times wrote, “Her work changed forever the relationship of a library to its users, making it possible, with the push of a button, to search the holdings of a library thousands of miles away.”

MEREDITH BLOSS, New Haven Free Public Library, CT, sharply questioned the future direction of national public library standards in his 1976 Library Journal article, “Quo Vadis.” His argument that traditional, rigid, input-based national standards had become outdated and largely irrelevant in an era of diverse communities and changing library roles became a flash point for shifting the direction of public library service and planning nationwide.

PAUL FASANA, director of the Research Libraries at the New York Public Library and chief archivist of the Stonewall National Museum & Archives (SNMAL) in Fort Lauderdale, FL, who, in addition to his work supporting the creation of AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition), has been recognized as instrumental in documenting queer history. In honor of Fasana and his partner Robert Graham, SNMAL’s collection is known as the Fasana/Graham Archive. 
 

CYNTHIA GRAHAM HURD, a beloved librarian and community leader in Charleston, SC—one of the Mother Emanuel Nine—who was murdered while at Bible study. In her tribute, Dr. Anita S. Coleman writes, “Guided by her conviction that ‘Libraries are always inclusive, never exclusive,’ [Hurd] devoted her life to fostering compassion, inclusion, and public service.”
 

CLARA STANTON JONES, director of Detroit Public Library, was the first Black ALA president. She was was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, serving from 1978 to 1982. In addition to her pioneering efforts to desegregate libraries, Jones was a leader in advocating for the critical role of information services in libraries.
 

TZE-CHUNG (RICHARD) LI, a Chinese American pioneer in library science education as dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University, director of the National Central Library in Taiwan, and founding president of the Chinese American Librarians Association (CALA). 
 

MARGARET E. MONROE, director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Library School, where she initiated the Ph.D program and an Advanced Studies Certificate. She is regarded as a national leader in advancing adult services in libraries. Her 1962 essay, “The Library’s Collection in a Time of Crisis,” was characterized by library historian Wayne Wiegand as “articulating a core principle grounding our current professional conviction that libraries serve as a cornerstone of democracy.” 
 

ANDREW VENABLE, director of Cleveland Public Library (CPL), coined the phrase “The People’s University” while leading CPL to many technological firsts, including the first public library contract with OverDrive and one of the first 24/7 public library online reference services, KnowItNow24x7.    

Kathleen de la Peña McCook, member of the ALA Library History Round Table Committee, is a professor at the University of South Florida School of Information.