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After earning a Master of Arts in Musicology from Tufts University (1994) and Master of Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh (1995), Yale started his library career in Pittsburgh. He worked first briefly at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and then, from 1996 to 1998, in the Music and Art Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. He left to assume the post of User Services Librarian in the Duke University Music Library in 1998.

Yale is known widely among his colleagues in the Music Library Association as the creator of DW3 Classical Music Resources, while he was at Duke University. He wrote about that project in the Music Library Association Notes (March 2002) under the title “The Economics of Information: DW3 and the Case for Creating a Music Megasite.” Professionally active and articulate through publications and presentations on various aspects of digital information dissemination and bibliography, Yale’s most recent article on “Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Music” appeared in the June 2004 issue of Notes.

Those who knew Yale well knew him also as a brilliant classical guitarist with an abiding love for Spanish music, which he had studied, practiced, and performed for thirty-five years. He was a noted expert on the music of Isaac Albeniz. His repertoire spanned five centuries of western music, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to jazz-influenced, Latin-American tunes. Upon learning of Yale’s cancer diagnosis earlier in 2004, friends and colleagues in MLA’s Southeast and Atlantic Chapters paid tribute to him by commissioning John Mayrose, a Duke friend and colleague and recent recipient of ASCAP's Morton Gould Young Composer Award, to compose a composition for classical guitar in his honor. They presented "Cascada" to Yale in June 2004.

Yale will be remembered by his colleagues as a vivid presence, dedicated in equal measure to librarianship, service, scholarship, and musicianship—and as a loyal friend who touched numerous lives across the country. He is survived by his wife Carol, two brothers, and his mother. Notes of condolence and remembrance can be sent to the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, in care of Debra Reed, 2511 Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park MD 20742. Contributions to the Yale Fineman Memorial Fund, made out to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation (memo: Yale Fineman Memorial Fund) can be mailed to the Performing Arts Library address above.

--Bruce Wilson, Retired Head of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland, College Park