“Blessed be our God! Our sister, Phyllis Petre, has been called to an everlasting dwelling place with the saints at the age of 83. She died on December 12, 2023 in Buffalo, NY. Let us thank God for the gift of her life; let us thank Mary Our Mother for the gift of her service. Together, let us pray that she may rest in the peace of Christ.”

Online obituary, including a photo: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/buffalonews/name/phyllis-petre-obituary?id=53862706

The Catholic Library World Editorial Committee has selected Zachary Lewis, Student Success Librarian at the University of Dayton’s Roesch Library, as the recipient of the John Brubaker Memorial Award for 2022-2023. The award was established in 1978 to recognize an outstanding work of literary merit published in Catholic Library World. Lewis is recognized for his article, “Committing to the Common Good: Reframing Student Success Using Catholic Social Teaching,” which appeared in the September 2022 issue. Lewis moves beyond measures of academic achievement to take a more holistic view of student success. He begins with the University of Dayton’s Commitment to Community (C2C), which each student is required to pledge and sign. Lewis then shows how the C2C aligns with Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as outlined by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He further links CST with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practices. In order to put these ideas and concepts into practice, Lewis describes his engagement with various campus communities, including BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) students, international students, and first-generation students. Lewis admits that “this more subjective outlook makes quantifying and assessing student success more difficult, but gauging students’ feeling of belonging and support, their sense of community and solidarity, and their understanding and acceptance of others’ differences could prove worthwhile. By incorporating social values into their work,” he concludes, “libraries can better align their goals with the mission of their universities, and set students up to succeed as people, not just as students.” For this creative application of CST to librarianship, the Catholic Library World Editorial Committee is pleased to bestow the John Brubaker Memorial Award on Zachary Lewis.

Patricia Wittberg is a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati, Ohio. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago and is emerita professor of Sociology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. Presently, she is a Research Associate with the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. She has published widely on Catholicism, especially on Catholic religious orders and Catholic parishes.

Pam Muñoz Ryan is an American author and the 2018 U.S. nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award. She is the author of ECHO, a Newbery Honor book and the recipient of the Kirkus Prize. She has written over forty books, which include picture books, early readers and the novels ESPERANZA RISING, BECOMING NAOMI LEÓN, RIDING FREEDOM, PAINT THE WIND, THE DREAMER, ECHO, MAÑANALAND, and SOLIMAR. She is the author recipient of the National Education Association’s Civil and Human Rights Award, the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for Multicultural Literature, and is twice the recipient of the Pura Belpré Medal and the Willa Cather Award.

Other selected honors include the PEN USA Award, the Américas Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, and the Orbis Pictus Award. She was born and raised in Bakersfield, California, holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree from San Diego State University and lives near San Diego with her family. For more information: www.pammunozryan.com

Thomas M. (Tom) Dousa is the Metadata Analyst Librarian at the University of Chicago Library, where he has worked since October 2014. Born in Prague and raised in Minnesota, he holds a BA in Classical Languages and Literatures and an MA in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures (specialization: Egyptology) from the University of Chicago; an MLS from Indiana University Bloomington; and a PhD in Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he specialized in the history and theory of knowledge organization (i.e., cataloging, indexing, and classification). In his day job, Tom is responsible for original cataloging of monographic materials – primarily those written in Western Slavic, non-Cyrillic South Slavic and non-Slavic Eastern European languages – and for developing metadata application profiles for the University of Chicago Library’s digital collections. Outside work hours, he likes to read, study languages, listen to music (preferably Baroque), and go for walks. He is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Hyde Park, Chicago, where he serves as an usher and a minister of care, and participates in the local Knights of Columbus chapter.

Tom has been an active member of the Catholic Library Association since 2013 and, over the last eight years, has been involved in a number of activities within the organization. He Is chair of the Cataloging and Classification Roundtable and, in this function, serves as the CLA liaison to the American Library Association’s Committee on Cataloging Description and Access (CC:DA). In tandem with this, he compiles and edits the quarterly Oliver Leonard Kapsner, O.S.B. Cataloging Bulletin. Tom also sits on the editorial board of the Catholic Library World, for which he writes a regular column about little-known figures in the history of Catholic print culture and reviews books. He is grateful to the CLA for providing him with these opportunities for service in areas that dovetail nicely with his own strengths and interests.