Katharine Kyes Leab

Leab died age 78 on February 16, 2020, in Washington, Connecticut.

In 2003, Leab deposited nearly 50,000 papers of her father and family in the Eisenhower Library.

Leab adapted ABPC with major 20th-century technical changes in book publishing. In 1994, she began publishing American Book Prices Current on CD-ROM through 2006. In 2006, she introduced "ABPC on a Stick" (a USB drive). In 2007, she converted ABPC into an online database, which offers data back to 1975.

Leab was active in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) as well as a member of the Bibliographical Society of America. For the ACRL, Leab and her husband endowed a fund the "Leab Awards" to celebrate excellence in library exhibition catalogs. Leab and her husband, publishers of American Book Prices Current underwrote the awards, formally known as "The Katharine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab American Book Prices Current Exhibition Catalogue Awards." The awards were made from 1986 and continue to be made annually.

Leab became so troubled by increasing theft of rare book and manuscript from libraries that in the 1980s she created and maintained Bookline Alert Missing Books and Manuscripts ("BAMBAM"), a registry of thefts to help both law enforcement and libraries could alert each other. As she later recounting in 2016, she became involved when hearing that book thieves were using her American Book Prices Current as a guide to picking the most valuable books to steal, once they had broken in.

In 1972, Leab and her husband took ownership of American Book Prices Current (ABPC). ABPC, established in 1895, records books, manuscripts, autographs, maps, and broadsides sold at auction in much of the world. It focuses on North America and the United Kingdom but also tracks countries including Switzerland, Germany, Monaco, the Netherlands, Australia, and France. Leab served as co-owner and editor-in-chief for more than four decades.

In the mid-1970s, the Leabs bought a house in Washington, Connecticut, where they began to live full-time in 1983. She served as a trustee of the Washington Montessori School in the 1980s. Both Leab and her husband served on local community organizations, including the zoning board of appeals in the 2000s and 2010s. In mid-2017, Leab moved home and business to South Burlington, Vermont.

In 1964, Kyes married Daniel Leab; they had two daughters and a son.

Katharine Kyes Leab (17 March 1941 – 16 February 2020) was an American publisher, expert on rare books and manuscripts, and co-owner and editor-in-chief of American Book Prices Current, known as "the grande dame of book auction data."

Katharine Kyes was born on March 17, 1941, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her parents were Helen Gilmore Jacoby and Roger Martin Kyes, a General Motors executive who served as Deputy Secretary of Defense under U.S. President Dwight David Eisenhower. Kyes grew up at first in Marion, Ohio, and spent most of her youth in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She attended the Kingswood School Cranbrook, except a sophomore year at the Emma Willard School. In 1962, Kyes graduated from Smith College with a BA in English, Phi Beta Kappa. While at Columbia University for graduate studies she met and married Daniel Leab in 1964, after which she was known as Katharine Kyes Leab.