Lea Bohnert Papers (Mss. Gr. 92)

Biographical note

Lea Bohnert was born Mary Louise Lea Mallison in Nashville, Tennessee on January 8th, 1919. She received a BA in Political Science in 1942 and an MA in Public Administration in 1947 from the University of Chicago. Her husband was the late Dr. Herbert Bohnert, a linguist. She and Dr. Bohnert were amicably separated early in their careers.

During the 1950s and 1960s she worked in various capacities in the fields of record keeping and data retrieval. Primarily a teacher, Lea Bohnert became an educator in Library Science. She taught at the University of Maryland, SUNY Albany and the University of Rhode Island. She was assistant professor at URI from 1970 to her retirement in 1985. She enhanced her teaching by seeking out innovators in the field of information science and including them in classroom participation with her students.

Lea Bohnert was a member of the American Documentation Institute, which later became the American Society for Information Science (ASIS), from its opening to individual membership in 1952. She was quite active in committee activities and in gathering information on topics of importance in the field of information science. She remained active in ASIS until her death on December 22, 1990.

The information for this note was taken from the following source: Schultz, Claire K, "In Memoriam Lea M. Bohnert 1919-1990," Journal of the American Society for Information Science. 42(7): 467-468, 1991.