In remembrance – Lois Kane

It is with sadness I share the news of the passing of Lois Kane on October 6, 2022. Lois was with the Oberlin Conservatory Library for 46 years, before retiring from the position of sound recordings cataloger in October 2019. Following her retirement, she enjoyed being able to spend time with family including combining grandmother and ‘pandemic teacher’ roles. Details of a celebration of life are not yet available.

In recognition of Lois’s long career at the Libraries, I share the following from the Spring/Fall 2020 issue of Library Perspectives in celebration of her time at Oberlin:

Lois Kane retired in October following a 46-year career in the Oberlin Conservatory Library. Her first job in the library included typing up a final master of the catalogers’ proofs, that she would later photocopy for card sets, and ordering card sets from LC as needed. She also typed filing headings onto the sets for interfiling them into the card catalogs, and was responsible for removing card sets to perform corrections and revisions. She was even then a virtuoso typist and commanded our only IBM “Executive” model typewriter, whose specialized features and spacing tricks were advanced and known only by a select few! “Whiteout” was not permitted; perfection needed to be attained using an electric eraser. She also typed Oberlin-created cataloging onto special cards to submit to the National Union Catalog. When the practice changed to online cataloging and ordering of cards, Lois found herself with free time. Lois enjoys keeping busy, so Jack Knapp, her then supervisor, began teaching her to catalog score materials, and she was a scores cataloger for many years. Because she was a quick study, Knapp asked her to learn recordings cataloging. A recordings backlog had started to develop, and Lois was tasked with working through those recordings.

Lois was an excellent trainer, supervisor, and record keeper for a large number of students over many years. She also was responsible for processing discs in our large, separate, ethnomusicological collection. Of all the materials she cataloged, she favored the ethno recordings. She enjoyed learning new things from this collection and increasing her understanding of the evolution of music. Despite limitations in being able to quantify the number of recordings Lois cataloged, Rebecca Belford, Conservatory Library Technical Services Librarian, found Lois’s initials on well over 30,000 records, many of which have found their way into catalogs near and far. According to Belford, “all of these support discovery and use of our collection here at Oberlin and throughout the WorldCat universe.” In retirement, Lois is settling into her new home and enjoying spending more time with family. She always has a book nearby, and says, “I’ve been so busy that I have no empty spaces to fill, just a general: Eat, pray, love (good book, by the way).”