Patricia Paylore |
| Posted 2009-10-14 by Judy Wight Branson |
| The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona April 29, 2003 Patricia Paylore a former assistant director of the University of Arizona Office of Arid Lands Studies, died earlier this month after suffering from Alzheimer's disease for several years. She was 93. Paylore, who died April 15, was born in Roswell, N.M., in 1909 while New Mexico was still a territory. She moved to Clarkdale, Ariz., at the age of 4 and moved to Tucson at age 16 to start her studies at the UA, said Virginia Rice, a retired librarian who worked with Paylore. As an undergraduate, Paylore worked at the library where she became assistant librarian in 1947, Rice said. "She was dedicated and a very bright person," she said about Paylore, who left the UA library in 1964. Paylore worked through the most difficult, frustrating years in Arizona library history, Rice said. The state was experiencing enormous growth and librarians fought hard to get federal and state funding to expand library services, including building new libraries, she said. Paylore tried hard to get library services into growing areas by giving speeches and writing articles, Rice said. From 1965 to 1986, Paylore was a faculty member in the Office of Arid Lands Studies and held the positions of research associate, bibliographer, acting director, editor of the Arid Lands Newsletter and assistant director, said Ken Foster, Arid Lands Studies Office director. One of her best editorial works was a collection of articles discussing research in the physical and biological environments of worldwide deserts, which became the basis for the founding of the UA Office of Arid Lands Studies, Foster said. Paylore went around the world collecting information about places that had centers of arid lands studies and came back to the university to put that information into bibliographies and computer systems, Rice said. She said Paylore's career in arid lands was amazing because as a UA student she received no training in that field. Foster said Paylore's true interest, other than her cats, was the Arid Lands Newsletter, which continues today through Internet distribution. |
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