DISCUSSION BOARD AND COMMUNITY - EST. 1996
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I don't know how to fix old.
That sounds freaky! We've had cicadas and now falling frogs!
Thank you Matt..
What an amazing lady. I feel privileged to have known her.
Kathie Coblentz, 73, Dies; Not Your Ordinary Librarian
A Yankees fan, marathon runner, cinephile, editor, and, yes, a cataloger, she was the New York Public Library's third-longest serving employee.
Kathie Coblentz, a Renaissance woman who read or spoke 13 languages; collaborated on books about the directors Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Alfred Hitchcock; and, during her day job, cataloged rare books for more than 50 years at The New York Public Library, died on April 3 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 73.
She was apparently grazed by a car pulling out of an underground garage as she was walking home to her apartment on West 58th Street, fell and hit her head and never regained consciousness, her friend and former colleague Jane Greenlaw said.
In that home, of 900 square feet, were some 3,600 books of her own, all having served as inspiration in her writing The New York Public Library Guide to Organizing a Home Library (2003).
Ms. Coblentz was recruited for a library job in 1969 even before she graduated from the University of Michigan, said Anthony W. Marx, the library's president and CEO. "She thought she'd work at The New York Public Library until she figured out what to do next," he said. "Well, she never left."
She was the library's third-longest serving employee, working most recently in the 42nd Street research library's special formats processing department of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
Her supervisor, Deirdre Donohue, described her as the "matriarch of our work family," who cataloged hundreds of items "that were the products of detective work, deep research and skepticism about facts."
Ms. Coblentz was a bibliophile with interests that ranged well beyond the written word. Her blog on the library's website was full of eclectic arcana. She demystified a Wikipedia debate over whether the Syrian author of "Scala Paradisi" wrote in the sixth or seventh century. And she rhapsodized about photographs of the last "blue blood moon" seen over North America in 1866.
As a rare materials cataloger for the Spencer Collection -- it "surveys the illustrated word and book bindings of all periods and all countries and cultures," the library says -- she conducted public tours of the steel stacks beneath what is now known as the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street, reminding visitors that browsing among those books was prohibited and that researchers had to order hard copies of materials from the card catalog, which was later digitized.
"That's why catalogers are the most important workers in this library," she would tell her tour group.
Ms. Coblentz was a true-blue Yankees fan (she and a friend were planning to go to a game being played two days after her death), and a committed cinephile.
She collaborated with her former teacher from the 1990s at the New School, Robert E. Kapsis, a professor emeritus of Sociology and Film Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on researching (including translating avant-garde European criticism into English), editing and indexing books.
She edited anthologies of interviews with contemporary filmmakers and was a contributing editor, writer and programmer for Professor Kapsis's interactive Multimedia Hitchcock project in 1999 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles.
And she ran in several New York City Marathons.
Kathie Lynn Coblentz was born on Nov. 4, 1947. Her father was Dr. Jacob Coblentz, an immigrant born in Riga, Latvia, who was a bacteriologist in Lansing, Mich., where she appears to have been born. He also worked in Tennessee and Ohio before settling in Frankfort, Mich., where he was employed by the Pet Evaporated Milk Company and the Michigan Department of Health; he died when she was 10. Her mother was Sidney Ellarea Coblentz, an art teacher and artist.
Even in high school in Frankfort, in northwest Michigan, Ms. Coblentz demonstrated a bent for cataloging, winning a mathematics award for a paper titled "Some Possible Systems of Numerical Notation."
She earned a degree in German from Michigan State University in 1968 and a master's of library science from the University of Michigan in 1969. She learned Danish, Norwegian and Swedish so that she could read her favorite Scandinavian authors of murder mysteries unaltered by translation.
She had no immediate survivors. Her older brother, Peter, died in 1969.
For a lifelong cataloger who wrote a high school paper on improving ways to sort things numerically, her system of classifying her own collection of books at home defied library science and was ripe for parody. Ms. Coblentz had 16 bookcases holding more than 200 feet of shelf space in her one-bedroom apartment. The books were arranged by country of origin, size, sentimentality and personal obsession.
"Your system doesn't have to be logical," she told The New York Times in 2005. "It just has to work for you."
Sam Roberts, an obituaries reporter, was previously The Times's urban affairs correspondent and is the host of "The New York Times Close Up," a weekly news and interview program on CUNY-TV. @samrob12
Those are really cool sets. Is that two Eastwoods in the For a Few Dollars More package? I wonder if they did/would do the same with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
"She was an astounding person with so much to give and so much intelligence and wit and humor," said library curator Madeleine Viljoen, who knew Coblentz for 10 years.
"It's tragic."
For those of you who might want to make a contribution in Kathie's memory: we haven't yet located Kathie's attorney or her will, so we don't know if she had any specific charities in mind, but I can offer a couple of informed opinions:
You might know that Kathie was a disciplined runner, covering three miles in Central Park each weeknight and ten miles on Sundays. The Central Park Conservancy maintains those paths, as well as the flowers, trees, playgrounds, etc. Their website is: https://www.centralparknyc.org/
Kathie was a breast cancer veteran. The website https://www.breastcancer.org/ is a terrific resource for anyone who finds herself (or himself: men can have BC also) diagnosed with it, or just has questions about it. Please consider helping them to keep getting information out and offering support.
I suggested Matt in a private message that we should have a movie night in her honor here. Unforgiven would be the right choice then.
Dear Colleagues,
I write to share some tragic news. Kathie Coblentz, a dedicated public servant and research librarian who worked at NYPL for over 51 years, passed away unexpectedly following a motor vehicle accident over the weekend. She was 73.
This is devastating news. To echo Kathie's supervisor Deirdre Donohue, our hearts are broken. Kathie was an institution here at NYPL. She truly loved the Library, and gave so much of her time, thought, and attention to advancing its mission. She spent her entire career here, starting in July of 1969--just weeks before the moon landing. She was recruited right out of library school at the University of Michigan, and, according to Deirdre, thought "she'd do that until she could figure out what is next." Well, over 50 years later, Kathie's love for and dedication to her job kept her at the Library, most recently in the 42nd Street library as part of the special formats processing department of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. She was known as an extremely thorough and vigorous cataloger who took very seriously the responsibility of connecting the public to our collections. As she meticulously did her job, she would make discoveries and observations that she would enthusiastically share with the public through thoughtful blog posts.
Deirdre, who called Kathie the "matriarch of our work family," described Kathie's work as "artisanally-crafted catalog and authority records that were the products of detective work, deep research, and skepticism about facts leading to truly rich description and access of items in the library's coffers of great value and importance. These metadata portraits will live on and remind us of some of what she loved about her job."
Kathie was also an active, vocal member of the research staff who cared deeply about the organization, its decisions, and its future. Deirdre shared that Kathie "was the most resilient in the pandemic, just got on with it. Cataloged throughout. Was among the first eager to pop in." That dedication to her work and to our patrons is remarkable. Also known for her quick wit (Deirdre said that "our check-ins were the absolute best"), Kathie was never shy about sharing her opinions, and I always appreciated that. I am grateful for her thoughts and expertise after five decades of experience here. I am also grateful that her love of the Library and its collections never faltered. For her 50th year at NYPL, her team had a silk scarf custom printed for her featuring the Columbus letter because she always said it was extremely beautiful and should be a scarf. She loved it.
Outside of work, Kathie, a Hell's Kitchen resident, read in many languages (she learned Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian to read murder mysteries), ran in Central Park every weekend, and was a die-hard Yankees fan. In fact, she was excited to attend last night's game, her first game since the world was turned upside down, and had gotten vaccinated well in advance to be ready for it (the Yankees clobbered the Orioles, and somewhere, Kathie is smiling). Kathie also had a secret cinephile life too, and was an indexer, editor, and researcher on several books about movie directors Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen.
She led a rich life, and we are all lucky to have known her. Kathie's energy and expertise will absolutely be missed. The Library will not feel the same without her. But we take comfort in knowing that patrons of the Library, an organization she cared about so deeply, will benefit from her hard work and contributions for generations to come. Thank you, Kathie.
Yours,
Tony
--
Anthony W. Marx
President
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
476 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
212.930.0736
nypl.org
