Remembering Laurabelle Eakin
When Laurabelle Eakin was head of Reference and Circulation at Falk Library in the late 1960’s, MEDLARS, a predecessor of today’s MEDLINE, was introduced as a new-fangled way to automate library research. Prior to that, searching for research articles was a time-consuming activity that was done by paging through heavy volumes of Index Medicus, and copying citations by hand. Miss Eakin spent six months in residence at the National Library of Medicine for MEDLARS training. When computerized MEDLARS searches became available at the University of Pittsburgh in 1970 under Miss Eakin’s supervision, Falk Library was one of the first academic health sciences libraries to offer this advanced service to our users.
Laurabelle Eakin passed away on September 23, 2005 at the age of 88. She began at Falk Library as head of Reference & Circulation in January 1958, and subsequently served as head of Readers’ Services, assistant director, and director from 1975-1985. Many Pittsburgh medical librarians remember the class in Medical Literature that Miss Eakin taught for many years at
what was then known as Pitt’s Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences.
Miss Eakin had a long and varied career in libraries. She received an AB Degree from Grove City College in 1938, and a BS degree in library science from Western Reserve University in 1946. She worked as librarian at Verona High School (Verona, Pa.) and East Deer Twp High School (Creighton, Pa.), and was chief librarian at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Pittsburgh from 1950-1957.
--Barbara Epstein
