The ILA Board voted unanimously to approve Kate Boyle’s nomination as an ILA Luminary. SWAN’s Executive Director, Aaron Skog, submitted the nomination letter on behalf of our SWAN membership.

Our next step in honoring Kate is to request donations in her name to support the ILA Endowment. To donate:

1. Go to https://www.ila.org/donate/submit
2. In the Contributions Section, select Illinois Library Luminaries
3. In the Dedication or additional information box, please enter “In Honor of Kate Boyle, ILA Luminary”

Kathleen (Kate) Boyle, 1952-2018

• 2009-2018:  Member Services Manager, System Wide Automated Network (SWAN)
• 2004-2011:  Resource Sharing Manager, Metropolitan Library System
• 1979-2004:  Resource Sharing Manager, Suburban Library System

Kate Boyle’s name is synonymous with resource sharing in Illinois. Serving on the ILLINET Interlibrary Loan Code Revision Committee multiple times, as well as statewide development teams for VIC (Virtual Illinois Catalog), SILC (Statewide Illinois Library Catalog), and SILO (Serials of Illinois Libraries Online), her energy, creativity, and expertise helped Illinois libraries garner a leadership role in library automation and resource sharing. Kate was the person to ask if you needed help completing the ILLINET Interlibrary Loan Traffic Survey as she understood every metric requested and how to obtain the data. She was lead analyst in development of the Library Learning (L2) Resource Sharing Policy Directory.  Her advocacy on behalf of libraries and the communities they serve created strong participation in both reciprocal borrowing and interlibrary loan. She led SWAN Member Services for the past nine years supporting annual ILL loans of 1.2 million items and reciprocal borrowing checkouts of 1.4 million.

Colleagues, co-workers, and library staff she met throughout her career define Kate as a mentor who always searched for solutions to make service better for our communities and work more fun for those who serve them. Kate studied archaeology at the University of Arizona, which prepared her with the research skills needed to connect people and information.