LILLIA M. D. TRASK, 1873-1952

摘要

Miss Lillia M.- D. Trask, Librarian of the Rockefeller Institute- for Medical Research, New York, from 1911 to 1938, died at Vineyard Haven, Mass., on- February 8, 1952, following a cerebral vascular accident. Miss Trask would have celebrated her 79th birthday on February 12. In the light of today's highly specialized training, Miss Trask's preparation for a career outstanding in two fields of library work was short. She attended Bryn Mawr College in 1892/93 and in 1906 took a short apprentice's training course at the Orange Free Library, Orange, New Jersey. She started her library career, at the age of 33, in the Children's Room of that library, but word of the exceptional job that she was doing reached the head of the Children's Department of the New York Public Library who invited Miss Trask to join the staff. In New York her work was almost exclusively with children on the Lower East Side, at the Chatham Square and the Seward Park Branch Libraries. In 1911 she was approached by Dr. Simon Flexner, the Director of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, to become its librarian. With apparently grave misgivings as to her ability to succeed in a field so far removed from her experience she did accept and on August 28, 1911, entered upon her second career, that of a medical librarian.