Reporter Volume 26, No.8 October 27, 1994

By LISA WILEY
News Bureau Staff
At an age when many would retreat to the solitude of their garden or
be content sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, Helen
Huguenor Lyman continues to actively follow a career she has pursued
for more than 60 years.
	The 84-year-old librarian, an adjunct faculty member at UB
since 1982, teaches at least one course each year in the UB School of
Information and Library Studies (SILS).
	In addition, Lyman, described by SILS Dean George B
obinski as "a pioneer" in the adult library-services field, is working
on a new book on adult library services. The book comes on the heels
of the more than 80 articles Lyman already has published on adult
services and adult literacy.
	"She's such a dynamic person. She doesn't look her age. She
doesn't act her age," says Bobinski, who believes Lyman is the
university's oldest active faculty member. "Students have been very
fortunate to have her."
	This past summer, she taught the UB graduate seminar,
"Resources and Services for Adults."
	"We do a great deal of discussion," she says, explaining that
her teaching philosophy is that students have a lot to learn from one
another and that she doesn't want to burden them with tedious
lectures.
	Those who have been lucky enough to be in the classroom with
her are unanimous in their praise. 
	"She's a real jewel," notes Gwen Kistner, a librarian at the
Audubon Public Library.
	Lyman maintains "a very strong service ethic" and "a noble
view of what librarians can and should do," adds Timothy Roberts, a
member of this summer's class.
	"She created a great enthusiasm in me," says Elizabeth
Higgins, who also took Lyman's class this summer. "She let us know
that we have a great potential. She's on top of things. I would love
to have her charm and wisdom."
	Higgins occasionally visits Lyman's Orchard Park farmhouse,
where they meet for tea. The house is surrounded by three major
gardens "both for flowers and food," explains Lyman, who uses leaves
from her herbal garden to brew tea.
	The shelves of her reading room are lined with the works of
the Brontes, Colette and Gertrude Stein, among others. "I discovered
that I have quite a collection of women authors," she notes. "Nowadays
we talk so much about women."
	Born in Hornell, Lyman was raised in Niagara County, but
hesitates to say that she "grew-up" there. "We are growing up always,"
she adds. "That's part of living."
	Books have always been a part of her life. "We always read in
my family," she recalls. "I had a grandmother who read to her children
before they were born," she laughs.
	Lyman, who graduated from UB in 1932, earned a bachelor's
degree in library science in 1940.
	"She's been a very loyal and devoted alumna" who has
contributed to the SILS 25th Anniversary Campaign and annual appeals,
Bobinski says.
	She received the UB Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987.
	Lyman began her career at the Buffalo Public Library, where
she worked from 1932-52 as a circulation assistant, the co-head of the
readers' bureau, an administrative assistant and the head of the adult
education department.
	She then moved to Chicago, where she served as the
adult-services librarian at the Chicago Public Library from 1953-59.
She directed the "benchmark" study on adult library services in public
libraries, published in 1954.
	"That was moving to the unknown," Lyman says, noting that hers
was the first research ever conducted in the field.
	She moved back to Buffalo and worked in UB's Lockwood Memorial
Library, serving as reference-department director from 1964-65. From
1966-77, she was on the library faculty of the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, which named her a professor emerita in 1978.
	Lyman describes her research as "one thing leading to
another." While serving as public library specialist for adult
services in the Library Services Branch in the Office of Education in
the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare from 1965-67, she
observed a need for adult literacy programs. Her research prompted the
publication of instructional material for adults and two landmark
books: "Reading and the Adult New Reader" and "Literacy and the
Nation's Libraries."
	"I take a person-oriented view of looking at the library's
mission," says Lyman, who believes the most exciting part of
librarianship is creating programs and teaching librarians how to make
their institutions more proactive through programming. She has been
recognized for her contributions by the Margaret E. Monroe Library
Adult Services Award from the Reference and Adult Services Division of
the American Library Association.
	Lyman is not overwhelmed by the increase in electronic
information, nor does she fear that books will go out of style. "I
think libraries have a great potential. In the future, they should not
be written off. I think we're going to need more assistance, not less.
We talk about the library as the 'history of man,' but it's also the
center of the future."