By LJ Staff

William (Bill) Katz, a former professor at the School of Information Science and Policy (SISP), State University of New York at Albany, and an internationally known expert and teacher of reference work in libraries, died on September 12, according to an October 11 announcement on the web site of SISP. Close friends of the family reported that Katz asked that there be no memorials, no services, and no obituaries. In addition to the two-volume Introduction to Reference Work, Katz was the author of Magazines for Libraries and Reference and On-line Services: A Handbook. He compiled a second edition of The Columbia Granger's Guide to Poetry Anthologies and edited a series on the history of the book for Scarecrow Press, including his own, A History of Book Illustration and Dahl's History of the Book.

Katz was editor of the Magazines column in Library Journal for many years. He also edited RQ, the journal of the Reference and Adult Services Division of the American Library Association (ALA), and the Haworth Press publications The Acquisitions Librarian and The Reference Librarian. Katz served as a librarian at the King County Library System, Issaquah, WA, for four years and worked in the editorial department of ALA. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.