Requiescat in pace

Cathy Jordan was a medical librarian who cheerfully shared articles of interest on the MEDLIB-L list quite often. Today the sad news was shared on the list that she apparently died of a massive brain hemorrhage on Friday at her father's home. The coroner said that it would have happened quickly, that there was nothing that could have been done to save her, and that she would not have suffered. She was only 55.

She is survived by her father, a sister, and three brothers. She was from Portland, Oregon, had worked at the Walter Reed Army Hospital library in Washington, DC, but had returned home to Portland and was a librarian at the VA Medical Center there.

Her obituary is brief, and can be found here.

Condolences can be left here.

According to her obituary, a Mass of Christian burial will be at 11 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010, in St. Agatha Catholic Church.

Of all the various tributes to her that appeared on the list, I especially like a post Valerie Rankow dug up that Cathy wrote in 2001:

"While I was weeding some books recently, a book fell open to a section I thought you would all find interesting. The book is "House Officer Training" by Robert Moser, published by CC Thomas, 1970.

Page 42, last paragraph says "If you are not fortunate enough to have access to MEDLARS, you are obliged to employ traditional methods. Your ML can help you again..." I presumed ML meant Medical Librarian, however, backing up to the previous paragraph, I found: '...If you have access to the MEDLARS at the National Medical Library, select the key words with the help of your marvelous librarian (ML)....'

So, my title is now "Marvelous Librarian".

I did not know her personally, and only knew her from her posts, but I'm sure she was, indeed, a marvelous librarian. I think it wonderful that there has been such an outpouring of sympathy and remembrance from the list. We should all hope to be remembered this fondly.