Longtime USC librarian Marion Schulman passed away on May 2 in Los Angeles after a brief period of hospitalization at the age of 89. Schulman was born on July 25, 1920, in New Haven, Connecticut. Hired by the USC shortly after World War II, she retired in October 2009, two weeks before the 64th anniversary of her first day at the university.
Here's Dan Knapp's article for the USC News Web site:
In Memoriam: Marion Schulman, 89
Longtime USC librarian Marion Schulman died May 2 in Los Angeles after a brief hospitalization. She was 89.
Born July 25, 1920 in New Haven, Conn., Schulman was hired by USC shortly after the end of World War II. She retired in October 2009, two weeks short of her 64th anniversary at the university.
“Marion lived for and loved her work as a librarian at USC,” said Lynn Sipe, USC Libraries’ associate dean for collections. “She played a fundamental role in the development of the library’s research holdings over many, many years. As a result, she had an extraordinary knowledge and recall of the collections.”
“This knowledge, combined with her extraordinary bibliographic talents, made her a superlative reference librarian in the days before the advent of modern information technologies,” Sipe said.
Schulman graduated from Boston’s Simmons College in 1942 with a bachelor’s degree in library science. Upon graduation, she accepted a position at Brown University as a circulation and reference librarian.
Three years later, she relocated to Los Angeles due to her father’s health.
Hired during USC President Rufus B. von KleinSmid’s administration with an annual salary of $1,800, Schulman quickly distinguished herself as one of the Libraries’ most tenacious reference experts in solving the most challenging inquiries.
“If faculty members needed some obscure piece of information which might exist somewhere in printed form, Marion Schulman was the person to whom they turned and very rarely were they disappointed,” Sipe recalled.
“She relished tackling the most difficult, arcane questions that required consulting obscure sources whether available here at USC or elsewhere,” added colleague and friend Anne Lynch, head of USC’s Science and Engineering Library.
From 1945 to 1973, Schulman worked as a reference librarian in Doheny Memorial Library. In 1956, she earned a Masters of Library Science degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Later, Schulman worked as a cataloguer in the fields of political science, law and English history.
In 1980 — at the age of 60, when most people are contemplating retirement — Schulman took on a new role in the USC Libraries when she accepted the position of general bibliographer, responsible for the organization’s retrospective collection development. She held this position until her retirement.
Schulman was an active member of the American Trust for the British Library, the Society of California Archivists, the Friends of the Huntington Library and the California Academic and Research Libraries Association.
A campus memorial service is planned. Please contact Lynn Sipe at lsipe@usc.edu or Anne Lynch at annelync@usc.edu for more information.