Dália M. Leonardo died October 31, 2012 after a months-long struggle with cancer. Dália was a colleague beloved and admired by the entire Mina Rees Library staff. She is greatly missed.
Dália earned a Ph.D. in History in 1998 from Fordham University. She earned her M.L.S. in 2007 from CUNY Queens College and her B.A. in History from University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth in 1987.
Dália joined the staff of the CUNY Graduate Center Mina Rees Library in 2008 as an Assistant Professor, Metadata Librarian. She was responsible for description of CUNY dissertations and acquisitions in electronic and print formats; she trained and supervised Graduate Center cataloging staff; she worked on CUNY-wide committees to codify and to change cataloging practice. She was a primary curator and metadata librarian for the Graduate Center’s 2009-10 digital project Remember Me to Herald Square: 34th Street from River to River.
She served as President of the Library Association of CUNY (LACUNY) July 2011- July 2012, and she headed the June 1, 2012 LACUNY Institute Library Technology and the Future of Libraries at the Graduate Center. Her scholarship reflected her interests in early modern European history and the library sciences (digitization, description, and organization). She was awarded a 2009-10 fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library from which she produced work yet to be published about the changing political landscape of 16th century France. This year Dália published “Google Books: Primary Sources in the Public Domain” Collection Building, 31: 3, and she launched the website The Natural World in Early Modern Texts. She was a steady reviewer of academic works on early modern Europe, and she contributed several biographical sketches to the African American National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2012). Her earlier scholarship includes “Cut off this rotten member:’ the Rhetoric of Heresy, Sin, and Disease in the Ideology of the French Catholic League” The Catholic Historical Review, 88 (2), 2002. She was a fluent speaker of Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English. She was an ardent fan of the Boston Bruins.
Dália was the first recipient, in 1994, of the Loomie Prize, offered by Fordham University's Department of History. Her paper, "League Polemics and Monarchical Crisis During the Reign of Henry III (1588-1589),” was held up as "a model of the historian's craft". The Leonardo family requests donations to "Loomie Prize Fund in Memory ofDália Leonardo,” mailed to:
Robert I. Smith, Jr.
Senior Director of Development for Stewardship
Development and University Relations
Fordham University
888 Seventh Avenue, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10019
