Samuel J. Hough III, a former library employee, died of complications from diabetes on March 4. He was 80 years old.

Mr. Hough was born in Philadelphia. He attended Kenyon College, where he earned his BA in English in 1960 and then joined the staff at the University of Pennsylvania in library acquisitions. Mr. Hough left Penn to work at Columbia University while pursuing a degree in library science.

In 1964, he was hired by the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and then, when drafted, he took two years to serve his military duty at Fort Bragg as library janitor and lecturer in early Mediterranean history. In 1972, he was awarded a Florence Schepp Fellowship to the Villa I Tatti in Florence, Italy, where he conducted research into the transition in Italy from manuscript to printed page.

In 1974, he returned to the US and to the John Carter Brown Library, where he became assistant librarian. During that time he formed an exhibition entitled The Italians and the Creation of America, which was subsequently published in book form. He resigned from the JCB in 1980 to become a bookseller, appraiser and researcher.

In the course of his independent bibliographical life he agreed to appraise the papers from the factory of the Gorham Company (Providence, Rhode Island), which were given to Brown. With his wife, he catalogued the Walter Beinecke Collection on the Lesser Antilles at Hamilton College, which was published by the University of Florida Press.

Mr. Hough is survived by his wife, Penelope; son, Mark; brother, Brian; sister, Sherna Deamer; and grandson, Kevin.