Donnelly, Dolores Frances (1914-1987) : Francis Dolores Donnelly, librarian and library educator and member of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Halifax, was born Marie Dolores Lorraine Donnelly in St. John's Newfoundland in 1914. She received a B.A. degree in Modern Languages (1936) and in Library Science (1940) at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax. She obtained her Master of Library Science (1954) from the University of Toronto and her Ph.D. in Library Science from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana (1971). In 1936 she entered the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Halifax where she began her postulancy, then novitiate in 1937, and took her vows in 1939. Following this, Sister Donnelly began working as the librarian in the town of Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, where from 1940 to 1950, she worked in adult education and children's librarianship. Through her collaborative work with Father James Tompkins of the Antigonish Movement, both Tompkins and Donnelly are credited with the early development of Nova Scotia's regional library system.
In 1949, Sister Donnelly returned to Halifax from Cape Breton and over the next 17 years, was assistant librarian and then librarian of Mount Saint Vincent University and taught in the library school there. In 1971 she became a professor at the Faculty of Library Science at the University of Toronto where she taught for the next decade, until 1982. During these years as a professor, Donnelly taught several courses and seminars on research collections in Canadiana and the literature of the Canadian humanities. Her primary research interests concerned national library systems and long-range planning. Her 1973 book on the National Library of Canada was based on her 1971 dissertation, and led to other similar studies including her own study of the British Library in 1981. Sister Francis Dolores Donnelly died on 8 January 1987 in Halifax at the age of 72.
