Secretariat

Obituary: Ms Patricia Brewster

Members will be very sorry to learn of the death, on 13 December 2003, of Ms Patricia Brewster, former Assistant Librarian.

Pat Brewster was a Leeds graduate (English, 1963), who, after graduation, gained experience of working in medical libraries in posts at Makerere University, Uganda, and the Postgraduate Medical Centre at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Librarianship at the then Leeds Polytechnic in 1971 and became a Chartered Member of the Library Association in 1972. In the latter year, Pat was appointed as Senior Library Assistant at Leeds, responsible for the day-to-day running of the newly-established Medical Library at St Jamess University Hospital, providing library and information services to both University staff and students and to NHS employees based on the site. Pat responded very successfully and effectively to the needs of the Librarys wide range of users, winning their confidence and respect and also maintaining close relationships with the other hospitals in the area. Coinciding with the move of the Library into its permanent home in the Clinical Sciences Building, a new post of Assistant Librarian was instituted in 1979, for which Pat successfully applied. The move to new premises afforded opportunities, under Pats aegis, for the further development of the Medical Library to support the expansion of teaching at St Jamess and the provision of additional facilities for NHS employees.

In 1995, Pat decided to reduce her working hours and transferred to the Medical and Dental Library in the Worsley Building, where she was employed on a half-time basis focussing on collection development for the library. She took early retirement in May 2000. An accomplished hospital librarian, Pat was an invariably friendly and co-operative colleague, just one example of this being the amount of time she was willing to spend with students from Leeds Metropolitan University with a potential interest in medical librarianship after they qualified. The funeral has taken place.

Published: 14 January 2004