Neil M. Ratliff, 58, A Music Librarian

Neil M. Ratliff, a music librarian and expert on Greek music, died on Saturday at the Hospice of Washington. He was 58 and lived in Washington.

The cause was AIDS, said Herb Scher, a spokesman for the New York Public Library.

As the head of the music library at the University of Maryland in College Park, Mr. Ratliff also directed the International Piano Archives at Maryland, which under his leadership became a major center for the study and preservation of historic piano performances. He had previously spent 17 years as a music librarian of the performing-arts collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center.

Mr. Ratliff was an expert on Greek music and was awarded a Fulbright grant this year to establish a music library for the recently built Athens Concert Hall. He became too ill to begin the assignment.

Mr. Ratliff was a native of Louisiana. He received a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Southeastern Louisiana and a master's degree in library science from Columbia University. He also did graduate work in musicology at Indiana University. In addition to his position at the University of Maryland, he was a lecturer at Catholic University, and from 1983 to 1987 he was the secretary general of the International Association of Music Libraries.

He is survived by a brother, John, of Falls Church, Va., and a sister, Joy, of Huntington, W.Va.

(New York Times, September 23, 1994, Friday, Late Edition - Final)

Return to Columbia AIDS Memorial List