Luba Pendzey retires from University of Toronto Library (05/17/98)

Luba Pendzey retires from University of Toronto Library

by Dr. Marta Dyczok

TORONTO - Luba Pendzey has retired from the University of Toronto Library after 30 years of dedicated work. Anyone who has used the Ukrainian and Slavic collections or come across Mrs. Pendzey will know what a loss this is for the library.

Most people's experiences in libraries are pretty straightforward - you go in, look in the catalogue, find the reference you are looking for and then retrieve it from the shelf. If you run into difficulties you turn to a librarian, who seemingly effortlessly solves even the most complicated of problems.

What most of us rarely see is what goes on behind the scenes. Mrs. Pendzey was one of those people who made things go smoothly for library users. Her work made it easy for people to find information on Ukrainian subjects.

The University of Toronto Library has one of the best collection of Ukrainian materials in North America. The Slavic holdings grew from less than 12,000 volumes in the 1960s to become the largest in Canada, now totalling over 450,000 books, 18,000 serial subscriptions and countless special collections. Among them are approximately 35,000 Ukrainian books. Many people contributed to developing the collection through the years. They include faculty members such as Profs. Bohdan Budurowycz, George S. N. Luckyj, D. H. Struk and Paul R. Magocsi. Equally important were benefactors, such as Peter Jacyk, who provided money for purchases.

Without librarians, however, valuable materials would not be accessible to the public. Mrs. Pendzey was one of the people whose efforts have made the Ukrainian and Slavic collections user-friendly. During her long and active career Mrs. Pendzey had numerous responsibilities. At different times she was responsible for bibliographic control, and for supervising the integration of cataloguing systems so that, for example, a name such as "Khmelnytskyi" was spelled identically in all places.

Mrs. Pendzey also served as a resource person, facilitator and Slavic cataloguing specialist, and eventually supervised a staff of five. Shortly after retiring, she told The Weekly, "Having worked here for 30 years I have gone through all the changes with the library, the latest one being putting the collections on-line." After a moment she added, "But the basic principles of cataloguing are still the same: to provide bibliographic access to all this material."

On the eve of her retirement in June 1997 she was praised by the director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University, Prof. Robert E. Johnson. "Luba Pendzey has done an outstanding job of developing special collections and connections with other libraries in the world," said Prof. Johnson at an end-of-term reception held in her honor.

Such praise was well-earned. In addition to her immediate library duties, Mrs. Pendzey put in a lot of extra time to build networks with other libraries. She was the University of Toronto representative to the Slavic and East European Microform Project (SEEMP) at the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago. In the recent era of cutbacks, downsizing and fiscal restraint, she secured many outside grants to enable programs to continue developing. The latest success was obtaining funding in July 1997 to microfilm the Luczkyj Collection on Ukrainian Displaced Persons and Refugees at the end of World War II.

The Luczkyj Collection is only one of many special collections with which Mrs. Pendzey worked; they make the University of Toronto Library's holdings unique. Other collections include the Peter Jacyk Collection of Ukrainian Serials, the largest North American collection of Ukrainian serials from the Habsburg period (1848-1918), and the Millennium Collection of Old Ukrainian Books, acquired in 1984. Two recent acquisitions are the Petro Potichnyj Ukrainian World War II Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency Collection, which brings Western and Soviet archival materials on this topic together for the first time, and the Iroida Wynnyckyj Collection of Ukrainian Canadian Drama, donated to the Thomas Fisher Rare Books library in December 1997.

When political changes swept Eastern Europe, Mrs. Pendzey's energy focused eastward. In 1994 she became the coordinator of International Library Programs with Central and Eastern Europe. Through this program she has worked towards developing links with libraries and librarians in the region, in order to assist them in their efforts to integrate with international bibliographic networks.

In the last two years alone she organized a visit from a consultant on International Library Relations from the Vernadsky Central Scientific Library in Kyiv, a bibliographer on an indexing project from the National Library of Serbia, a work exchange of two reference librarians between the University of Toronto Library and the National Library in Prague, and a training exchange in preservation microfilming of two librarians from the Lviv Stefanyk Scientific Library.

Throughout her career, in her mission to make information accessible, Mrs. Pendzey was active also in organizing exhibits to bring information to the non-Slavic specialist, the wider public.

In 1976 she organized the Ukrainian portion of the Dissent in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe held at the University of Toronto Robarts Library. At a time when few knew of the situation in Ukraine, the exhibit featured photos and literary works of Ukrainian political prisoners, including women. "It was an opportunity to show underground literature in Ukraine," she explained.

The same effort was expended to bring the issue of Ukrainian Displaced Persons to the attention of the entire university community. In 1983, Mrs. Pendzey organized and curated a major library exhibit on the topic to coincide with a conference being held at the university.

Often Mrs. Pendzey's energy took her outside the university library. In October 1977 she coordinated a monthlong event on Ukraine in Toronto's Parkdale Public Library. This included literature readings, children's programs, a costume night and exhibits of historical maps.

Mrs. Pendzey is not only an exceedingly talented and hard-working librarian, she is also personable.

Prof. Peter Potichnyj of McMaster University has worked closely with Mrs. Pendzey, who assisted in the processing his recent major donation of documents on Insurgency and Counter-Insurgency in Ukraine to the University of Toronto. When asked to describe Mrs. Pendzey, he said: "She is an absolutely great lady who has done a fantastic job not just in the Ukrainian but the entire Slavic collection. She is highly regarded both in scholarly circles and library circles as a professional librarian."

When she leaves the University of Toronto, Mrs. Pendzey will conclude a long relationship with the institution. Having come to Canada in 1948 as part of the DP immigration to Canada after World War II, Mrs. Pendzey obtained her professional training at the university where she was to later work. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in library science in 1967 and shortly after graduation began working in the Slavic Section. After beginning her career as a librarian, Mrs. Pendzey continued her studies on a part-time basis and eventually completed her a master's degree in library science. In 1976, she was promoted to head of the Campus Union Catalogue, where she worked until 1981.

When Vasyl Veryha retired in 1987, she replaced him as head of the Slavic Section, where she worked until her retirement. Throughout her career she took graduate courses and was a familiar face at seminars and conferences.

But as Prof. Johnson pointed out during his words of farewell, "Every ending is a beginning. As of June 30, 1997, Luba Pendzey is coming up to a transition."

Since retiring her position at the University of Toronto library, Mrs. Pendzey has devoted her attention to various new projects. She holds the position of national executive director of the Commission on Bibliography and Bibliology at the Canadian Branch of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh), of which she has been a member of since 1985. In that capacity Mrs. Pendzey is currently working on publishing a "Bibliography of Ukrainian Imprints of Canada" and creating a computerized database of the 7,000 entries.

In June 1997, at the annual Ukrainian conference hosted by the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, she was elected Canadian representative to the newly created World Council of Ukrainian Librarians. From that new post she will continue her work in coordinating Ukrainian library information and activities worldwide. She also remains an ad hoc consultant to the University of Toronto Library.