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.
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