Barbara Snetsinger Sevy, 84, Art Museum librarian

Barbara Snetsinger Sevy, 84, head librarian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1968 until she retired in 1988, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Wednesday, Nov. 3, at her home in Jenkintown.

She was a librarian at the American Philosophical Society from 1955 to 1957 in Philadelphia and, after her children were born, became an assistant librarian at the Art Museum in 1965.

In retirement, she was a volunteer weekend guide at the museum for more than 20 years, her daughter, Pamela Sevy, said. She was also a volunteer counselor at the Center for International Education near the United Nations in Manhattan.

Born in Montpelier, Vt., Mrs. Sevy earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Vermont in 1947.

She spent that summer in Grenoble, France, with the Experiment in International Living, where her students were World War II orphans.

In the 1947-48 academic year, she taught English and French at Black River Academy in Ludlow, Vt.

After she and her husband, Roger, moved to Chicago in 1948 for his medical studies, she tutored his fellow students in French and German.

She also began her library career in Chicago, working at the libraries of the University of Illinois College of Medicine and at the Commission on Financing of Hospital Care.

When her husband joined the faculty of the Temple University School of Medicine in 1955, she earned her master's degree in library science at the Drexel Institute of Technology, later Drexel University.

Besides her husband and daughter, she is survived by a son, Jonathan, and a brother.

There were no services.