BALAY, Robert 1930-

PERSONAL:

Born October 6, 1930, in Wichita, KS; son of Loren (a heating-refrigeration specialist) and Gladys (Crites) Balay; married Harriette Anderson (a homemaker), December 23, 1961; children: Christopher, Anne, Jean. Education: Macalester College, B.A., 1952; University of Minnesota, M.A., 1954; Columbia University, M.S.L.S., 1959. Politics: "Democrat/Independent/Liberal."

ADDRESSES:

Office—Choice, 100 Riverview Center, Middletown, CT 06457. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp., Bethpage, NY, assistant librarian, 1959-62; General Precision Aerospace, Little Falls, NJ, senior librarian, 1962-64; Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, assistant science librarian, 1964-68, adjunct instructor in library science, 1966-67; Yale University, New Haven, CT, head of library reference department, 1968-86; Choice, Middletown, CT, reference editor, 1986—. Military service: U.S. Army, 1954-56.

MEMBER:

Mountain Plains Library Association, Center for Great Plains Studies.

WRITINGS:

(General editor) Guide to Reference Books, American Library Association, 10th edition supplement, 1992, 11th edition, 1996.

Early Periodical Indexes: Bibliographies and Indexes of Literature Published in Periodicals before 1900, Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD), 2000.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A bibliography of materials for the study of the Great Plains, tentatively titled Prairies and Plains.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert Balay told CA: "My publications are primarily of interest to the library profession, although I hope readers in other fields will find them useful. Guide to Reference Books is one of the best-known publications in the profession, and I had the luck to be in the right place when the editorship fell vacant. I developed the ideas for other publications during the course of working with readers in various libraries and at Choice magazine.

"I have tried my hand at what I regard as the highest profession, the writing of fiction, but without any success whatsoever. Writing fiction is of a much higher order of difficulty than any other writing, with the possible exception of poetry, and its principles elude me."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 1996, review of Guide to Reference Books, p. 1526.

Library Quarterly, July, 2002, Haynes McMullen, review of Early Periodical Indexes: Bibliographies and Indexes of Literature Published in Periodicals before 1900, p. 388.