People
The latest on people from the library world
-- Library Journal, 10/29/2009
LISHost has hired Karen A. Coombs as its Web Applications Specialist. She “will work with libraries and librarians to identify and implement open source web applications to meet their needs,” the vendor said. Coombs comes to LISHost from University of Houston Libraries, TX, where she served as the Head of Web Services. Coombs has more than eight years’ experience in libraries, beginning her career at the State University of New York at Cortland as Information Technology and Instruction Librarian and then as Electronic Services Librarian.Trina Purcell is now Library Director at the University of the Rockies, Colorado Springs. She comes to academe from the Denver Public Library.
J. Robert Verbesey has been named Executive Director of the Southwest Florida Library Network, Ft. Myers. He previously was founding Director of the Mastics-Moriches-Shirley Community Library, NY.
In Memoriam
Carma R. Leigh, former California State Librarian, died September 25 in San Diego. She was 104 years old. A graduate of the University of California–Berkeley School of Librarianship (1930), she was director of the Watsonville Public Library (1931–35), Orange County Free Library (1938–42), and San Bernardino County Free Library (1942–45). She was also Washington State Librarian (1945–51) before returning to California. She retired from the California State Library in 1972. In 1996, she was honored by the American Library Association as one of several “Legislative and Grass Roots Library Champions.”
Robert Francis Skinder, Science Librarian at the University of South Carolina’s Thomas Cooper Library, died September 5; he was 66. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Skinder served as a librarian at the Federal Aviation Administration Library, Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, and Johns Hopkins University.
