Obituary: Pauline Collins, first librarian of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies

Pauline P. Collins, 92, of Amherst, retired librarian of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, died April 4 at the Hospice at the Fisher Home in North Amherst.

Born on April 4 in Sylva, N.C., she graduated from Cullowhee High School in 1938. She developed an early interest in Spanish and Spanish-American literature at Western Carolina University and Duke University, which led to a master’s degree at Duke and a doctorate in romance languages at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While studying for her doctorate, she was awarded the Association of University Women’s Colton Fellowship, which enabled her to spend a year and a half working in the archives and libraries of Mexico, Peru and Chile. She also spent a year in the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress.

In 1941, she married to Denver Bryson, also of Cullowhee. He was killed in Italy during World War II.

In 1955, she married Dan Stead Collins and they moved to Amherst, where he was a professor in the English Department at the University. She served 11 years as director of the Hampshire Inter-Library Center (HILC), a cooperative facility owned jointly by the Five Colleges. During that time she was awarded a second master’s degree from the Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies.   

In 1968, she joined the Library staff, and shortly afterward was named to the steering committee of the Latin American Studies Program. She taught a course in Latin American Bibliography, which she continued to teach for 20 years. Due to her stewardship, the Latin American Collection more than tripled in both size and quality to more than 180,000 volumes, the third largest collection in New England.

She served a three-year term as executive secretary of the Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), 1973-76, in addition to her regular duties. During the time the SALALM secretariat was at UMass, she carried out a sizeable publications program and assisted in planning three annual conferences.

Dan Collins died in 1995 and Pauline retired the following year. To honor to her, the Library named its Latin American collection in her honor.

She leaves a sister, Sarah Ruth Catlapp, a niece, Constance Catlapp, both of Anaheim, Calif., nieces Catherine Hunt of Franklinville, N.C., and Margaret Taylor of Dearborn, Mich., nephews Hanson [Mike] M. Pressley, III of Clyde, NC., and Denver Bryson Cashatt of Mt. Pleasant, Texas, and her godson, Dylan Savage, of Charlotte, N.C.

The Douglass Funeral Home in Amherst is in charge of arrangements. Burial, beside her husband, will be at the convenience of the family, in the Wildwood Cemetery in Williamsport, Pa. There are no calling hours. A memorial service will be held in Amherst at a date and place to be announced.

Memorial contributions may be made to he Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies, 650 East Pleasant St., Amherst 01002, or the South Congregational Church, 1066 South East St., Amherst 01002, or to the Latin American Collection, Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts, 154 Hicks Way, Amherst 01003.

Photo: Pauine Collins and Peter Stern, her successor as librarian of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, at a 1996 ceremony naming the Library’s Latin American collection in her honor. (Campus Chronicle/Stan Sherer)