Jan Merrill-Oldham

1947 - 2011

Jan Merrill-Oldham was my longtime friend and colleague.  We met in 1980 in San Francisco at the first ALA meeting we both had to chance to attend.  We were soon working together on projects from the Pre-Conference on Library Binding that met in Los Angeles in 1983, to our co-editing of the 8th Edition of the LBI Standard for Library Binding, 1986, to the first edition of the Librarian's Guide to the LBI Standard for Library Binding, 1991 and the second edition in 2008.  We worked in 1989 on a video on Library Binding produced by the Library of Congress. We both were speakers at international conferences on binding in Nancy, France in 1993 and in Stockholm, Sweden in 1997. 

I was fortunate to have known Jan and to have had the chance to work so closely with her.  I learned so much.  I also got the chance to meet Jan's husband Pete and to work with Pete at Acme Bookbinding for 18 years, until he retired to care for Jan as she fought cancer.

Jan will be missed.  There simply will be a hole where Jan's bright smile and deep knowledge long served the library community.  But her work will live on in the stacks and archives, both print and digital, and in the community of students who learned so much from this consummate teacher.

Paul Parisi

Obituary for Jan Merrill-Oldham

Jan Merrill-Oldham died peacefully at her home in Cambridge  Massachusetts on October 5, 2011 . She is survived by her husband Peter Merrill-Oldham of Cambridge, her mother and father, Alice Cecarelli Merrill and James Hershy Merrill of Milford, CT, and her brother James Wallace Merrill of West Haven, CT.

Janice Elaine Merrill was born on May 10, 1947 in Milford, Connecticut and lived there until she went to college, spending most of her summers with her grandparents Ed and Esther Trask in East Sumner, ME. She graduated from Jonathan Law High School in Milford in 1965 and from the University of Connecticut in Storrs in 1969. She married Peter Oldham in 1976 in Ashford, CT, and in 1978 they changed their last names to Merrill-Oldham.

As the Malloy-Rabinowitz Preservation Librarian at Harvard University, Jan directed the Weissman Preservation Center in the Harvard University Library and the Preservation & Imaging Services Department in the Harvard College Library from November 1995 to February 2010. She created and administered a comprehensive program to preserve and enhance access to the 16.5 million volumes and extensive special collections and archives held in Harvard’s more than 70 libraries.

Jan became interested in the preservation of library collections while working in the bindery at the University of Connecticut Library. In 1979, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Yale University Library allowed Jan to undertake formal training in library and archives preservation. She went on to earn a Masters in Library Science from the University of Rhode Island and to establish the University of Connecticut Libraries’ Preservation Department.

Over the course of 30 years, Jan became a recognized national and international leader in the field of library and archives preservation. Eager to learn and insatiably curious, she was an extraordinary teacher, mentor, author and administrator. Early on, her vision for libraries led her to move beyond the work of simply preserving collections to reformatting them for access via the Internet. Jan exercised her formidable powers of persuasion with university administrators, commercial suppliers, and by serving on key committees within the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries, the Council on Library and Information Resources, the National Information Standards Organization and many others. She authored and edited more than 40 publications.

Jan’s powerful influence within her profession was widely recognized. In 2011, the Association of Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) and the Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS) of ALA created a professional development grant in her honor. She also received the ALA/ALCTS Ross Atkinson Lifetime Achievement Award (2011), the ALA/PARS Banks Harris Award (1994), a University of Connecticut Distinguished Service Award (1994) and the ALA/PARS Esther Piercy Award (1990).

Jan was one of those rare people who not only changed her profession but also the lives of the many family members, friends and colleagues who came to love and respect her. A memorial ceremony will be held at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Saturday October 15 the at 1 pm in the Storey Chapel, followed by a reception celebrating her life at Pete and Jan’s home in Cambridge.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Jan’s memory may be made to the Circle of Caring at Hospice of the Good Shepherd 617.969.6130   http://www.hospicegoodshepherd.org/