Sharon Hogan, university librarian and a national leader in the transformation of libraries into information retrieval systems, passed away April 27, 2002.

A champion of copyright, free speech, privacy, and other legislative issues affecting libraries and information systems, Ms. Hogan testified before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on the E-Government Act of 2001 regarding technology and access issues. In February 2002, she received the Illinois Library Association's 2001 Intellectual Freedom Award for criticizing Internet filters and for opposing state legislation that would have let individual counties set obscenity standards, hampering interlibrary loans across county lines.

"Libraries play a very important role in safeguarding every citizen's right to read or hear diverse viewpoints and to make up his or her own mind about issues," Sharon Hogan said at the time of her award last year.