Russell Shank dies at 86; former head librarian at UCLA

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The onetime headmistress of an elite girls’ school fatally shot Dr. Herman Tarnower, her lover and the creator of the famous “Scarsdale Diet.” The killing generated front-page headlines and national debates about whether she was a feminist martyr or vengeful murderer. She was 89. Full obituary
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Though already a television star for his role on 1960s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie,” Hagman is best known for playing villainous patriarch J.R. Ewing in the TV soap “Dallas.” In 1980, an estimated 300 million viewers in 57 countries saw J.R. get shot. Hagman was 81. Full obituary
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Former boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho fought a who’s who of legendary opponents stretching from Ray Mancini to Oscar De La Hoya. Known for flamboyance in the ring, he showed he understood the importance of selling a fight and employing some mental warfare. He was 50. Full obituary
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A three-term U.S. senator from South Dakota, McGovern won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Though he lost in a landslide against Richard M. Nixon, his campaign left a significant legacy, including his proposals, since fulfilled, that women be appointed to the Supreme Court and nominated for the vice presidency. He was 90. Full obituary
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Writer of the bestselling 1962 book “Sex and the Single Girl,” Brown broke ground by discussing the sex life of single women. The book led to led to a syndicated newspaper column, a movie of the same name and, in 1965, to Brown’s role as editor of Cosmopolitan. She was 90. Full obituary

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The prolific composer won three Academy Awards for “The Way We Were” and “The Sting,” a Tony and a Pulitzer for “A Chorus Line” and four Emmys. Charming audiences with his improvisational agility, he was principal pops conductor for several major symphonies, including the Pasadena Symphony and Pops and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. He was 68. Full obituary

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A rare author and screenwriter whose works appealed to highbrow readers and mainstream movie-goers, Ephron wrote fiction that was distinguished by characters who seemed simultaneously normal and extraordinary. Her hit movies include “Sleepless in Seattle,” “When Harry Met Sally...” and “Julie & Julia.” She was 71. Full obituary

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Best known for her Oscar-nominated supporting role as a blowsy barfly in the 1972 movie “Fat City,” Tyrrell’s film credits also included “Islands in the Stream,” “Angel,” and “Cry-Baby.” Critics “hailed her as one of the best screen drunks they’d ever seen,” Roderick Mann later wrote in The Times. She was 67. Full obituary

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Dubbed “one of the true powerhouses of the pop music business” by Fortune magazine in 1986, the year she became BMI’s president and chief executive, Frances Williams Preston was a key figure in Nashville’s growth as a major music center, and nurtured the careers of numerous songwriters. She was 83. Full obituary

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The South African paleoanthropologist, nominated three times for a Nobel Prize, excavated the Sterkfontein Caves, one of his nation’s most important fossil sites. He was also part of the research on hominids in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, collaborating with a British archaeologist on the identification of one the early hominids, Homo habilis, in 1964. Tobias was 86. Full obituary

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The Fleetwood Mac guitarist and singer was with the band in the early 1970s when it was making the transition from British blues rock band to commercial powerhouse. His work on early albums such as “Future Games,” “Bare Trees” and “Heroes Are Hard to Find” with band mates who included Mick Fleetwood and John and Christie McVie set the tone for what was to come. He was 66. Full obituary

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The in-your-face rapper and bass player Adam Yauch, center, found fame in the transgressive, boundary-breaking trio the Beastie Boys. In later years, Yauch became a leading advocate for Tibetan independence. He was 47. Full obituary

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The star linebacker at USC and for his hometown San Diego Chargers made the Pro Bowl 12 years in a row and was voted All-Pro 10 times. He apparently ended his life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 43. Full obituary

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Born Thomas Austin Preston Jr., the colorful and quotable Amarillo Slim won the World Series of Poker in 1972 and began promoting the game on TV and in books. He brought the game “out of the back alleys,” one expert said. He was 83. Full obituary

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By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

July 14, 2012 12 AM PT

Russell Shank, the chief librarian at UCLA from 1977 to 1989 who was known as a staunch supporter of 1st Amendment rights in all libraries and an early proponent of technology as a way to enhance library services, has died. He was 86.

Shank, a professor emeritus in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the 1970s, died June 26 at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, said his daughter, Susan.

A former president of the American Library Assn., Shanks died three days after he tipped over in his electric scooter and hit his head on concrete while attending the group’s convention in Anaheim. Although he showed no signs of trauma, his daughter said, he lapsed into a coma in his hotel room later that night.

“He always looked forward to that convention,” said Susan Shank, who accompanied her father. “What better way for a librarian to go out, at an ALA convention after talking to his cronies and buddies.”

Before being named university librarian at UCLA, Shank spent a decade as the first director of libraries at the Smithsonian Institution, where he began to automate operations and created the first centralized catalog for its more than 80 separate libraries.

As chief librarian at UCLA, he oversaw some 19 libraries on campus.

Shank, who had an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, had a great interest in computers, said Gloria Werner, who worked with him at UCLA before succeeding him as university librarian.

“That’s why we automated a lot of the library functions,” Werner said. “A lot of other people were not so eager to get their feet wet in the computer world. He had a major impact on trends in libraries that we now take for granted. He was progressive, and that isn’t always easy to be when you’re running a huge library system.”

Barbara Jones, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Assn., said Shank was “one of the real giants in the field of academic libraries.”

“He stood for good management practice in research libraries,” she said. “He promoted research libraries in this country as the backbone of America’s preeminence in the sciences, the social sciences and the arts.”

After a fire damaged Los Angeles’ historic Central Library in 1986, Shank invited two groups of reference librarians that had been housed there to move into the Powell Library at UCLA.

“As a young librarian, I thought that was such a tremendously generous thing to do,” Jones said. “Instead of a turf war between academic and public libraries, Russell Shank had the information needs of the entire community in mind.”

In 1990, Shank received the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements by academic librarians who have contributed significantly to improvements in library automation, library management and library development and research.

The same year he received the Freedom to Read Foundation Roll of Honor award.

“He really believed in free speech and libraries — and that libraries were places where there would be no restrictions on what people could read or what kind of research they could do,” said Jones, who is also executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, the library association’s legal arm.

Shank was born Sept. 2, 1925, in Spokane, Wash., and served in the Navy during World War II.

He didn’t intend to become a librarian.

While studying electrical engineering at the University of Washington after the war, he needed a few more credits to complete his degree. So he signed up for a course in library science.

It “just appealed to me — the right kind of people, the program,” Shank told American Libraries magazine in 1977.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1946, he received a bachelor’s in librarianship in 1949. He later received a master’s in business administration from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in library science from Columbia University.

Early in his career Shank was an assistant university librarian at UC Berkeley and served on the faculty of the Columbia University library school.

Shank was divorced. Besides his daughter Susan, he is survived by his other children, Peter Shank and Judith Twist; and three grandchildren.

dennis.mclellan@latimes.com