Katharine E.S. Donahue retires as Head of the History and Special Collections for the Sciences
8-8-08 was an auspicious date for a joyous celebration! Approximately 100 friends, family and colleagues from library and rare book communities throughout Los Angeles gathered to honor Katharine E.S. Donahue, retiring Head of the History and Special Collections for the Sciences in the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library after twenty-one years of enthusiastic service to the UCLA Libraries. During her years at UCLA, Kathy constantly worked to enrich the collections, to make them known, and to ensure their use. While building on traditional collecting strengths, she also was committed to creating new collecting areas which reflect the changing interests and needs of UCLA’s scholarly community. In addition, she reinvigorated the natural history collections (part of the “Bio” in “Biomedical Library”) with their strengths in vertebrate zoology, particularly ornithology, as well as expanding the collecting scope of the Division to include all of the physical sciences. With a strong commitment to service and access, she embraced the idea of making material available on the Web and participated actively in the UCLA Digital Library effort. Kathy was involved in implementing UCLA Programs in Medical Classics and planning a variety of major exhibitions, including The World from Here: Treasures of the Great Libraries of Los Angeles, held at the Hammer Museum, as well as UCLA Collects! Bodies of Knowledge, which focused on the extraordinary holdings of the museums and special collections on campus and at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History. In her retirement, she plans to continue her research into the Southern California naturalist Donald Ryder Dickey (whose field notebooks and photographic collections are held at the Biomedical Library) while continuing to pursue an active program of travel and exploration. Bon voyage, Kathy!
