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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 18, 2000)
Library stays afloat thanks to Shipman’s work ■ George Shipman contributed to the successful Knight Library fund-raiser and helped advance library technology By Joel Kuhnau for the Emerald Despite receiving notice of a possible termination in 1992, Uni versity Librarian George Shipman continued working for eight years — right up until June 30. 2000. Then he retired. While Shipman wasn’t actually fired in 1992, he along with 16 oth er library staff members received one-year notices that their con tracts might not be renewed be cause of budget cuts. “Myles Brand [then University President] thought that if Measure 5 was really going to hit as hard as predicted, we needed to take pru dent steps,” Shipman recalled. He disagreed with the strategy, but said that by taking such drastic measures the administration felt “maybe people will begin to real ize this is real.” “It didn’t work out,” Shipman added. In fact no one was laid off, I but according to Shipman the un certainty oyer potential job cuts contributed to a loss of 48 percent of library faculty in 18 months. Shipman hadn't wanted to re tire. He’s a man who readily ad mits, “I love my work.” But after being diagnosed with a rare vascu lar disease, he said his doctor told him “you’re through,” and he de cided to follow his doctor’s advice. Shipman, 61, became Universi ty Librarian in 1980, having previ ously served as an Associate Li brary Director at the University of Tennessee. During his twenty years on the job, he oversaw a li brary collection that has grown from about 1.5 million volumes in 1980, to more than 2.3 million to day. Library funding was an issue right from the beginning. “Our problem is we are always running a debt,” he said. Budgetary, issues are no longer Shipman’s domain. Deborah Carv er, an associate University librari an, was named interim library head following Shipman’s depar ture two and half months ago. When Shipman first started 20 years ago, the University library didn’t do any fundraising. Ship man created a development office so that the library could raise mon ey as other departments do. That money helps fill in holes in the budget, funding everything from new books to student internships. Shipman said that in talking to donors, including Nike founder Phil Knight, he emphasized that a donation to the library was a way “to make an impression on the en tire University community. ” Several large donations in the late 1980s helped the University push forward with a 140,000 square foot expansion of the li brary. Persuading donors hasn’t seemed to be a.problem, with the development program having raised about $30 million to date. “My view is that everyone who graduates is an alum of the li brary,” Shipman said. “I think he was pretty far ahead of the curve in making develop ment a priority,” said Lisa Manot ti, the library’s Director of Develop ment. She added that libraries are. in creasingly catching on to the idea that they need to fundraise. While bricks-and-mortar im provements have been highly visi ble, so have the changes in library technology during Shipman's tenure. He remembers the quizzi cal looks the first computer moni tors got from students and faculty when they were introduced in the early 1980s as a means of accessing the library catalog. Within no time, puzzled stares turned into enthusi astic reactions, and as Shipman said of the technology bandwagon, “they jumped on to it, and we nev er turned them off.” Dennis Hyatt, Law Library Di rector, credits Shipman with hav ing “the vision to see the power the computer was going to have,” and foreseeing possibilities before the l technology was there with systems like Janus and Orbis. The Janus system catalogs the li brary’s collections on-line, while Orbis created a consortium of li braries in Oregon and Washington that share materials. Shipman played a leading role in establish ing this system, which provides ac cess to more than eight million books. Shipman said the library has tried to have “as many networks as possible, and as many terminals as possible, so all students could have access.” Now that he has retired, the ter mination notice that hung in a frame on his office wall since 1992 has come down. Shipman said he will miss library work, what he de scribed as helping students and faculty “engage in acts of explo ration.” Shipman said he is also grateful for his time at the University. “I’m pleased that the University of Oregon honored me by letting me be University librarian for 20 years,” he said. 2001 Summer Session Short courses,seminars,and workshops begin throughoutthe summer. Summer Session begins June 25. Duck Call starts May 7. The UO Summer Session Catalog will be available in early April. You can speed your way toward graduation by taking required courses during summer. 2001 Summer Schedule First four-week session: June 25-July 20 Second four-week session: July 23-August 17 Eight week session: June 25- August 17 Eleven week session: June 25-September 7 UNIVERSITY of OREGON SUMMER SESSION 333 Oregon Hall 1279 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403-1279 Telephone (541) 346-3475; toll free (800) 524-2404 http://uosummer.uoregon.edu keep in touch www.dailyemerald.com MORE Stop fiy suite 300 emu, today. ■ ■ V I ''''
