Ann Kenney, a pioneer in the digitization of library archives who was university librarian at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from 2007 to 2017, died on February 5 at a hospice facility in Ithaca. She was 72 years old.
A native of Washington, D.C., she was a member of a military family who moved several times while she was young. Kenney attended high school in Anchorage, Alaska, before earning her bachelor’s degree at Duke University. She went on to earn a master’s degree in history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, before changing her academic focus to library and information science. She earned a master’s degree in the field at the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Kenney first joined Cornell University Library in 1987 as associate director in the department of preservation and conservation. She became the associate university librarian for instruction, research, and information services in 2006. Kenney served as the interim university librarian in 2007 and was selected the following year as the 11th Carl A. Kroch University Librarian.
Kenney was the co-author of Women’s Suffrage, Social Politics, and the French Third Republic (Princeton University Press, 1984), Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives (Research Libraries Group, 2000), among others. She was a former president of the Society of American Archivists.