[Asis-l] Gerry Sopha, former ASIS&T President, passes away

[Richard Hill]

Gerry Sophar, President of ASIS in 1961, winner of the Watson Davis Award in
1976, passed away on Saturday, December 1, 2007

Funeral plans are not decided. Interment will be at the Veterans cemetery in
Upper Marlboro, Maryland.  The choice of funeral home has not been
finalized.

As the brief note in the History of Information Science Pioneers says, Gerry
"understood how organizations functioned and realized early that
documentation was a social science. He helped settle editorial crises at
American Documentation and brought it back under the control of the ADI"
(American Documentation Institute, now ASIS&T). 

Gerry had long interests in rural information services and copyright issues,
writing, with Larry Heilprin, another former ASIS&T President, "The
determination of legal facts and economic guideposts with respect to the
dissemination of scientific and educational information as it is affected by
copyright.: a status report [December 1967, NTIS PB 178463.  Washington,
D.C. U.S. Office of Education, Bureau of Research.]

Dick Hill
_____
Richard B. Hill
Executive Director
American Society for Information Science and Technology
1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 510
Silver Spring, MD  20910
Fax: (301) 495-0810
Voice: (301) 495-0900