My wife, Christine Ball, who has died of cancer aged 65, was a tireless collector and distributor of knowledge. Just how tireless and prolific has only now become fully apparent.
Daughter of Ron and Kathleen Amis, Christine was born in Oldham and brought up in Saddleworth, which was then in West Yorkshire. Coming from a non-academic background, she decided to take herself off to Newcastle University, where she met and married me, obtained a degree in geography and then qualified, to her great pride, as a librarian. She worked briefly as a librarian on Tyneside before moving to take up a post running architecture and town planning libraries for Sheffield University.
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