Dear friends and colleagues

I did not learn of the passing of Nancy Kandoian until recently, and hope the community won’t mind if I post a few thoughts.

I worked with Nancy at The New York Public Library Map Division from 1986 until 1994. I had worked with maps previously, at the Newark (NJ) Public Library, and cataloging collections of historical maps at the Morristown (NJ) Public Library and Rutgers University Libraries Special Collections Department. Based on this experience, I was hired for a one year, grant-funded project to catalog a collection of maps of Latin America at NYPL. I thought I knew how to catalog maps when I arrived at 5^th Avenue and 42^nd Street, and then I met Nancy, who taught me how to really catalog cartographic materials. Nancy was a generous and gracious teacher, and I owe much of the map cataloging knowledge I have used and passed on in my career to her. It wasn’t long before I became the map reference specialist and later the assistant chief of the Division, and it was a joy to work with Nancy, Alice Hudson, and our wonderful staff. Whenever I see the NYPL appear in the background of a movie or tv program, which is more often than you’d expect, I think of the days when my ‘office’ was next to one of those windows, and how remarkable that time was.

Nancy lived in New Jersey, as I did at the time, and we had enough in common to become friends as well as colleagues. For eight years, our lockers were next to each other, and I’d watch her put on her LL Bean boots and gather up her other LL Bean paraphernalia, and often we’d head to the PATH station on 33^rd Street together on our way to Hoboken to catch our different trains home. She would tell me about her love of Maine, and of her Armenian ancestry, along with her baking skills.

Without Nancy, I doubt I would have become the map cataloger I've been for many years on both sides of the Atlantic. As a teacher and librarian, she had the patience of a saint and the knowledge of a mastermind. As a friend she was always generous and humble. She worked hard not only for the users of the NYPL map collection, but for the profession as well, to which so many others have testified here. Nancy was devoted to the maps she catalogued, but more so to the readers who would be able to find and use them because of her efforts. The last time I heard from her, she told me that she was anxious to get back to the Library to deal with the everchanging stack of uncataloged maps that took up most of her desk in all the years I knew her. I’ll miss her, as will all those maps, as well as everyone who goes to the Map Division and finds the map that answers their question, even if they don’t know that they owe it to Nancy.

Take care all.

April Carlucci

Still in London, England