Barbara Semonche (1932-2015)
June 15, 2015
Barbara Semonche, retired director of the Park Library with more than 30 years of experience, passed away May 13, 2015, at the age of 82. A remembrance celebration was held Saturday, June 13, at the home she shared with her husband John in Durham.
She was heralded as a librarian’s librarian, having pioneered the idea of news libraries. She developed the reference and archive library for the Durham Herald-Sun in the 1970s and joined the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 1990. For two decades, she brought library and technology innovation to the school, beginning in a small space in the school’s former home in Howell Hall, to the grander Park Library in Carroll Hall.
Read more about Barbara’s life and legacy in an obituary that her former employer, the Herald-Sun, ran on May 15, 2015.
Please add your remembrances of Barbara below.