In Memoriam: Barbara Jeanne Brown (1941-2011)

Barbara Jeanne Brown, professor emerita at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, died yesterday at the age of 69.

A native of Charles City, Iowa, Brown earned a bachelor’s degree in English at Iowa State University and went on to receive a master of library science degree at Columbia University.

She began her academic career in 1964 at the John M. Olin Library at Cornell. From 1971 to 1976 she was head of the reference division at the Washington and Lee University library. She then served as assistant university librarian at Princeton University and as associate director of the Research Libraries Group at Stanford University.

Brown returned to Washington and Lee in 1985 as University Librarian. She served in that post until her retirement in 2003. During her tenure, the holdings of the Washington and Lee library doubled and she automated the library’s catalog and systems.