NEWARK, NJ (AP).- A jazz archivist known for her work on the Smithsonian's Duke Ellington papers has died in New Jersey. Ann Byrnes Kuebler (KEEB'-ler) was 61.

Her former supervisor at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Vincent Pelote, says she died of a brain aneurysm Monday at a hospital in Atlantic City.

Kuebler helped make 200,000 pages of music and documents in the Smithsonian Institution's Ellington collection public and became a noted Ellington scholar.

She went to Rutgers in 2001 and was the lead archivist on its Mary Lou Williams collection. She also helped the university acquire the collection of pianist and composer James P. Johnson.

Kuebler was from Baltimore. She started her career as a volunteer at the Archives Center of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.


Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.