Oberlin College Library Perspectives

Number 11, February, 1995

Friends Honorary and Life Members

One honorary and two life memberships in the Friends of the Library were awarded at the organization's annual dinner on November 5. Honorary membership, the Friends' highest award, is given in recognition of extraordinary contributions or outstanding service to the Library or the Friends of the Library, while life membership recognizes individuals who have made generous contributions to the Library or to the Friends.

William A. Moffett, former Director of Libraries, was designated an honorary member. During his distinguished eleven-year tenure (from 1979 to 1990), the quality of the Oberlin College Library's collections and services was firmly reestablished. Major accomplishments resulting from his leadership included the development of a library professional staff of exceptional quality, computerization of basic library functions, the reestablishment of strong institutional support for library acquisitions, the renovation and expansion of the Conservatory Library, and marked expansion of library services in support of Oberlin's academic program. Moffett also brought great recognition to Oberlin and its Library by advocating the importance of college libraries within the library profession, by founding the "Oberlin Group" of liberal arts college library directors (which first met in Oberlin in 1986), and by capturing a notorious book thief and in the process creating greater knowledge and awareness of the problem of theft in libraries. He has gone on from Oberlin to become one of the nation's most prominent library figures as the director of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

Mimi Halpern, Class of 1960, was awarded a life membership in recognition of her consistent advocacy for and support of the library, her service as a member of the Library Visiting Committee since its inception, and her generous donations to the library's capital fund-raising effort. Her contributions have in large part funded the library's CD-ROM network, which provides greatly improved computerized access through the campus network to basic bibliographical indices in numerous disciplines.

Robert and Betty Weinstock were designated life members in recognition of their strong support of the library over many years, their generous annual contributions to the Friends, their donation of a substantial portion of their personal and professional book collection, and their gift of one of the rarest and most valuable volumes the library has received in recent years--an 1867 first-edition of Mark Twain's The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Table of Contents Library Perspectives, no. 11

Return to What's New at the Oberlin College Library

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________