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Librarian Helen Huguenor Lyman dies at 92
Helen Huguenor Lyman, who was still teaching a course in library science at UB at the age of 89, died on Nov. 4 in Buffalo General Hospital. She was 92.
Lyman, who was called "a pioneer" in the adult library-services field by George Bobinski, then dean of the School of Information and Library Studies, in a 1994 profile of Lyman in the Reporter, was an adjunct faculty member at UB for 17 years.
Born in Hornell and raised in Niagara County, Lyman graduated from UB in 1932 and earned a degree in library science from the university in 1940.
She 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.
She moved back to Buffalo and worked in 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.
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 on the subject 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."
Lyman again moved back to the Buffalo area—settling into a farmhouse in Orchard Park—and became an adjunct faculty member at UB in 1982, teaching at least one course each year in the School of Information and Library Studies until 1999.
The American Library Association recognized her contributions by awarding her the Henry Lippincott Award in 1979 and the Margaret E. Monroe Library Adult Services Award in 1986. She received the UB Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987.