JoAn Smyth Segal
was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., September 14, 1930, to John Patrick Smyth and Anna Catherine (Green). She graduated from New Jersey College for Women (later Douglass College), Rutgers University, in 1951 with a major in library science and a minor in German language. She earned a Masters Degree in Library Service from Columbia University in 1955 and a Ph.D. in communication and theater from the University of Colorado in 1978.

She married Willie Segal June 25, 1955. (He died January 30, 1999). Their two children are Harold Michael (Hal) Segal and Nora Alana Swanson. Hal and his wife Felicia have one daughter, Aurora Ellen.

Segal had a career in librarianship which included positions as librarian, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, and librarian at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education in Boulder. She served as assistant director and later executive director of BCR, a library networking agency in Denver, and as division director (Association of College and Research Libraries) and associate executive director for programs at the American Library Association (ALA). After her return to Boulder in 1993, Segal founded Vintage Ventures, providing library consulting, branch library management, and miscellaneous other services. She has been a long-time member of the ALA, the Special Libraries Association, and the Colorado Library Association.

Dr. Segal’s areas of special expertise include board/staff relations, financial management and planning – especially for non-profit organizations, and library networking and cooperation.

She also worked as an actor at theaters in the Denver-Boulder region, including Studio 29, Trident, Gaslight, Nomads, Changing Scene, and Boulder Repertory Company. She has performed as a story-teller and reader, particularly of poetry, in a variety of performing venues, including senior residences, festivals, concerts, and meetings of professional societies. Her one-woman show, One Old Broad Looks at Life and Death, has been successfully performed at venues in Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and New Brunswick, N.J.

Segal enjoys dancing, especially tap-dancing and some folk dancing. She is a choral singer with the Boulder Chorale. She also volunteers doing library/archive work at the American Music Research Center. She has served for some time on the Boards of Directors of the Boulder Chorale and of the Ars Nova Singers.