Yesterday was a special day at Dewey Manor, as we celebrated the retirement of two irreplaceable colleagues in the Library of Congress's Decimal Classification Division (DCD): Nobuko Ohashi, and Ruth Freitag. We wish Nobuko and Ruth all the very best of health and happiness as they begin their years in retirement; but it's with great sadness that we wave goodbye. Both have given sterling service over long periods to the DDC.
Nobuko began work at the
Library in 1977, as a descriptive cataloger in the Japanese section of the
Shared Cataloging Division, and had spells in the Asian Materials Section of the
Subject Cataloging Division and the German Language Section of the Shared
Cataloging Division before joining the DCD in 1985. Nobuko became an expert in
the areas of art, architecture, history, literature, political science, and law,
and a most valued teacher of the DDC, providing initial instruction in the
complexities of the scheme to a generation of classifiers. She introduced Dewey
to a team at Die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB) in a week-long seminar in Frankfurt,
and attendees at yesterday's celebration heard a reading of a message of
congratulation sent by Magda Heiner-Freiling and colleagues at
DDB.
Ruth's fifty-five years of
federal service began when she enlisted in the Women's Army Corps in June 1945.
Ruth joined the Foreign Service in 1949, and was stationed as a communications
specialist in London and Hong Kong, before she began work at the Library of
Congress in 1960, in the Bibliography and Reference Correspondence Section of
the General Reference and Bibliography Division. Ruth soon became one of the
Library's foremost experts in reference work, sought after in particular for her
encyclopedic knowledge of resources in science and technology. After moving to
the Science and Technology Division, Ruth turned her attention to classification
by joining the DCD in 1998. In her congratulatory message, Dewey editor-in-chief
Joan Mitchell told Ruth: "Your knowledge of all things astronomical has helped
us enormously -- I don't think I'll ever think about the phases of the moon
without also thinking of you!"
The last word goes to pun-pundit Cosmo Tassone, and this toast (which wasn't written with the Dewey blog in mind, but could so easily have been):
Nobuko Ohashi has been such a fixture in Dewey that people find it hard to believe that she has retired. I would say to someone, "Nobuko has retired, you know." And the surprised response would be, "Oh -- has she?" Yes, she has, and may her retirement years be as happy and successful as were her years in Dewey. As for Ruth Freitag, her success in the Science Reading Room and in Dewey has been astronomical. But who could know that she could so align the stars as to reflect the trajectory of her retirement. Ruth has arranged things so that she will retire on Friday -- that is, Freitag. To Nobuko and Ruth!
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