NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 27 number 1 - Fall 2006

Library Development: Remembering Friends

By Anna Dahlstein, External Relations

Who are the Friends of the Library? They are individuals who have developed meaningful ties with the NCSU Libraries as students, faculty, staff, or enlightened citizens from the community. A variety of relationships brought these benefactors into the circle of Friends. In the second in a series of profiles, the Libraries has the opportunity to give an overview of the many ways NCSU faculty members and librarians have provided invaluable contributions to library collections, technologies, and facilities. The series will continue in subsequent issues with articles highlighting the creative venues of support this diverse group of library advocates has followed.

One way to honor deceased colleagues and friends is to make memorial gifts in their name to perpetuate the life's work of a scholar or to celebrate the vocation of a librarian. Two individuals who have been honored in this way at NC State are Lawrence S. Rudner and Marta A. Lange.

Larry Rudner was an acclaimed author and associate professor of English at NC State from 1978 until his death in 1995. Throughout his career, Rudner studied Holocaust stories and history, which he shared in his teaching and transformed into fiction. Both of his novels, The Magic We Do Here and Memory's Tailor, reflected his concern with preserving cultural memory. The author's family and colleagues—the Rudners, Greenbergs, Professor of English Thomas D. Lisk, and many more—felt that a fitting tribute to his life and accomplishments was to establish the Lawrence S. Rudner Holocaust Memorial Collection in the NCSU Libraries, consisting of Rudner's own papers, manuscripts, and 2,000 works of fiction and nonfiction.

Additional Judaica and Hebraica materials have been acquired in honor and memory of other family members and friends, including Holocaust survivors, thanks to an endowment nurtured by relatives, friends, and colleagues, with grant support from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation of New York. The collection is frequently used by students enrolled in English 246, "Literature of the Holocaust," a course created by Rudner that continues to be taught at NC State.

Marta A. Lange, head of the Reference Department at the NCSU Libraries, died in 1992 following an automobile accident. The loss was keenly felt both within and beyond the university because of Lange's work with the American Civil Liberties Union, the NCSU Faculty Senate, and several other organizations. A natural consensus-builder with a warm personality, she was highly respected and well liked.

Lange had managed the Reference Department for six years and built an innovative program of services and instruction, especially in the development of information literacy skills for students. During the weeks following Lange's memorial service, many associates asked the Libraries to accept contributions in her memory. In response to these requests, the Friends of the Library established the Marta A. Lange Incubator Endowment, which was designated for purchasing reference books and works in fields known to be of special interest to Lange. In July 1995 the Association of College and Research Libraries honored Lange's memory by instituting an annual award named after her to recognize achievement in law and political science librarianship. In January 2006 former NC State librarian Bryna Coonin and current NCSU librarian Jack McGeachy reserved an engraved brick for the walkway into the D. H. Hill Library to commemorate their good friend.

NC State Community Memorials

Whenever the NCSU Libraries learns of the loss of an NC State student, faculty, or staff member, a special memorial is prepared. Librarians purchase a title reflecting the academic or personal interests of the deceased individual, mark it with a bookplate in his or her memory, and include the person's name in the catalog record. In this way, the NC State community member is permanently honored and remembered in the Libraries' collections and the intellectual life of the campus. Between January and July 2006, the Libraries commemorated the following individuals:

Raul Eduardo Alvarez

Bernard Berkeley Blanchard

William "Bill" H. Bright III

Mark Brandon Davis

Jennings "Jim" Edwards

William Bobbit "Bob" Jenkins

Ralph "Trey" Burton Jones III

John Yonghak Lee

Julie Ann Leffler

Hubert V. Park

Harold Arch Ramsey

Randy Lynn Rose

Doug Sanders

Neil B. Webb

William Ansel Webb