On March 20 eva efron, 66, school library services supervisor at the Nassau Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) in Westbury, New York, died from pancreatic cancer. Prior to Nassau BOCES, efron—who spelled her name in lower case—served as an assistant to the school library system director at Eastern Suffolk BOCES and was a high school librarian at Brentwood (N.Y.) High School.

Barbara Klump, 78, former director of the Schultz-Holmes Memorial Library in Blissfield, Michigan, died March 17. She worked at the library from 1978 until her retirement in 2003. Klump attended Wheaton (Ill.) College and Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. 

Karen Simmons, 62, director of the Douglas County Library (Minn.), died on February 26 in a car crash in central Minnesota. She was hired as library director in January 2011, but had been serving as interim director since October 2009. Simmons had over 20 years of service at the library, which also included working as assistant library director and children’s librarian.

Gordon M. Marshall Jr., 70, died from cancer on February 13.

Marshall held a master's degree in early American history from Clark University in Worcester, Mass. and taught history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute from 1969 to 1970. From 1971 to 1993, Gordon was assistant librarian at the Library Company of Philadelphia, where he revived the exhibition program and designed notable shows, including “The Larder Invaded,” a cook's tour of 300 years of local culinaria. During the early 1990s, Marshall led a $1 million renovation that transformed the library into a modern research center. In 2002, he was invited back to the library as a board trustee. After serving three three-year terms, he was named an emeritus trustee in 2012.

Connie Van Fleet

Connie Van Fleet, 62, professor at the School of Library and Information Studies at University of Oklahoma in Norman and author of multiple books on library science, died February 5 after a brief illness.

Van Fleet received an MLIS from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and PhD from Indiana University in Bloomington. Prior to joining the University of Oklahoma faculty, she was assistant professor at Louisiana State University and Kent (Ohio) State University.

She was actively involved in library leadership, serving on ALA’s Conference Planning Committee (2008–2009) and was elected to Council in 2012. Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) leadership positions included serving as cochair of the RQ Editorial Advisory Board (1991–1997), cochair of the Reference & User Services Association Quarterly Editorial Board  (2000–2006), being an ex-officio member of RUSA’s Board of Directors (1991-1997 and 2000-2006), and RUSA CODES Readers’ Advisory Research and Trends Forum since 2009. She was also 2006–2007 president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education.

Karen Veramay

Karen Veramay, 61, died February 11 of cancer. She served as manager of Jackson District Library’s Concord (Mich.) branch  for 15 years.

Janet Kunkle Bell, 87, former children’s librarian at Montgomery County (Md.) public libraries for more than 20 years, died January 26 of Alzheimer’s disease.

Gabriele Sieg, 95, who retired in 2001 after serving two decades as head librarian at the German School in Potomac, Maryland, died January 12 after complications from a fall. Sieg immigrated to the United States in 1958 and became a US citizen in 1963. Before working at the German School, she was cataloguer and classifier for the Byzantine Studies program at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. She was past president of the American Goethe Society of Washington, D.C.

Evelyn Johnson, 54, a librarian at Watauga County (N.C.) Public Library for more than 36 years, died January 14 of a heart attack.

Isaac Ramirez, 65, library technical associate at Pleasant Valley State Prison libraries in Coalinga, California, died December 18 after a brief illness.

Charlotte Wright, 79, former librarian at the Erie branch of the Monroe County (Ohio) Library System, died January 12 of cancer. She retired in 1998 after serving nearly 30 years with the library system.

Joseph Branin

Joseph Branin, 65, director of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Library in Saudi Arabia, died on December 30 of cancer. Branin was director of Ohio State University Libraries from 2000-2009. A leader in the research library community, Branin served on the board of directors of the Association of Research Libraries and as editor of College & Research Libraries magazine.

William DeJohn

William DeJohn, 72, former director of Minitex at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, died December 31 of pancreatic cancer. He retired in 2012 after 27 years at Minitex, a network of academic, public, state government, and special libraries. During his career, DeJohn also served as senior consultant, library cooperation, for the Illinois State Library–Library Development Group in Springfield, Illinois, and director of the Pacific Northwest Bibliographic Center at the University of Washington Libraries in Seattle. He was named Academic Librarian of the Year by the Minnesota Library Association in 2006.

Charlesanna Fox

Charlesanna Fox, 102, former director of Randolph County (N.C.) Public Library, died November 14. She is credited with bringing seven Randolph County libraries together to form one countywide system. Fox also served as president of the North Carolina Library Association from 1953–1955.

Jean Wenger Scherr, 97, former librarian for Columbus (Ohio) Public Library, the Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus, and Ball State University Libraries in Muncie, Indiana, died July 6. Scherr also served as associate professor of library science and head of the processing division at Ball State, and as a cataloger for the State Library of Ohio in Columbus.

Bernadette G. Callery, 64, librarian at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, died on July 27. Callery earned her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences in 2002 and joined the school’s faculty in 2008.

Virginia Lee Close, 91, former head reference librarian at Dartmouth College Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, died November 1. She began her career at Dartmouth in 1945, serving until retirement in 1993. She was also bibliographer and editor of Dartmouth College Library Bulletin.

Kristin Weltzheimer, 63,  died November 29. She worked as a librarian at Westchester (N.Y.) Community College, State University of New York at Purchase, and the Ossining (N.Y.) Public Library. She also served as director of the Somers Library in Katonah, New York, and the Warner Library in Tarrytown, New York.

Barbara Ann Schmitt Webb, 66, retired assistant director of electronic resources and technology at Montgomery County (Md.) Public Libraries, died November 10.

Frances Tompson Rutter, 92, cofounder and publisher of the Shoe String Press, Inc., died September 13.