Seoud Makram Matta, Dean Emeritus of the School of Library & Information Science (now the School of Information) at Pratt Institute, died November 24, 2020, at the age of 83 due to complications of COVID-19. Matta excelled as a scholar, consultant, and teacher. He was born in Egypt, where he completed his B.A. After studying at Moscow University, he was awarded a five-year scholarship to Columbia University. His work at Columbia culminated in his being awarded a Doctor of Library Service by the University’s School of Library Service. His 1965 dissertation, “The Card Catalog in a Large Research Library: Present Conditions and Future Possibilities in the New York Public Library,” created a blueprint for the automation of the New York Public Library’s Research Libraries card catalogs.

Matta provided consulting services for numerous governments and libraries in the Middle East and many libraries and consortia in the United States. His work for the New York Metropolitan Interlibrary Cooperative Services (1975), whose member libraries held more than 20 million titles, provided a mechanism by which hundreds of libraries had access to the resources of Metropolitan New York libraries.

Over the years, Matta was a strong supporter of Pratt’s School of Information, and he established the Seoud M. Matta Endowed Scholarship in Information Technology in 2000. The annual award provides support to a School of Information student.