Jean Shipman Oral History

Interview with Jean P. Shipman, M.L.S. conducted on July 27, 2016. This oral history is one in a series of interviews conducted by the Office of Alumni Affairs and the Eccles Health Sciences Library to document the history of the University of Utah School of Medicine.

Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 *Interviewee was allowed to make changes to the transcript so the recording and transcript may not match* TODAY IS JULY 27TH, 2016. AND THIS IS THE START OF AN ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH JEAN SHIPMAN, DIRECTOR OF THE ECCLES HEALTH SCIENCES LIBRARY. THIS IS HEIDI GREENBERG. I WILL BE THE INTERVIEWER. AND SO WE WILL TALK ABOUT JEAN’S CAREER AND HER TIME HERE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH. HG: Jean, why don’t you start and tell us where you were born and raised, maybe a little bit about your family. JS: Well, thanks, Heidi, for doing this, first of all. I was born in a town of 300 people, Orrstown, Pennsylvania, not Moorestown, New Jersey, like everyone thinks, but Orrstown. And it was a small town, actually that has a lot of family tradition. It has a bank. It has a store. It has a post office and two churches. The bank was cofounded by my grandfather. My sister currently serves as the first women on the board of directors, and my mother was the first female employee of the bank. It was three houses away; so my mother worked almost all of my youth. I was inspired by her: a woman being out in the business world. She had tons of fun stories about how men treated her in those days. But she survived. It made me really look at opportunities for work. I say that, although at that time you could be a teacher, you could be a nurse, or you could be a wife– pretty much those things. My sister went out and became a pharmacist, and everyone about fell over because she was perceived as being a doctor in the community. I got a lot of pressure about, “Why don’t you be a pharmacist?” I was five years younger than her. And I was like, “I don’t want to be a pharmacist. I don’t want to be what my sister is.” No harm to her, but I wanted to do something different. My mother went from banking to the Shippensburg University Library to work as a civil servant and loved it. She worked in government documents, which I still give her total credit for 1 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 being able to understand. She enjoyed learning every day and the whole interaction with people and being of assistance and service. So I’d listen to that. I’d listen to my sister’s pharmacy stories, and then I kind of mashed them up, although that term wasn’t around then, to be a medical librarian. I went to the University library with Mom one day and looked up what the medical library requirements were and where you would go get a good degree. There were three colleges at the time. I considered Case Western Reserve University, ranked number one, because they had a curriculum in medical librarianship. It wasn’t a certificate or anything formal but a lot of courses in that vein. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina was the second choice. I didn’t want to do a thesis so that kind of killed that one. And then University of Illinois in Champaign was the third choice. I went to Case Western Reserve University. I guess I should back up and state where– I went for undergrad. I remember looking not too far because Shippensburg University seemed to be what I should do. My Mom would get tuition reimbursement. I also was pretty shy, and I knew one highway and that was the only one I’d drive on. If something wasn’t off that highway, I wasn’t going there. [both laugh] JS: When it came time for college, my one friend who I babysat for said, “You really do need to get away. This is a small town. You need to get away, just to expand your horizons and grow.” And so I thought, Well, let me go look at Gettysburg College, which was a whole 30 minutes away. And so we did, and I fell in love with it and applied there. I can recall coming back from the interviews and my Mom saying to me, “You never told me you wanted to be a medical librarian. You said library.” But when we got to the college interview, they were kind of befuddled because they were like, “Well, we don’t have a library 2 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 science program. You know that, right?” And I said, “Yeah. I know that. But I’m going to get a biology undergraduate degree, then I’ll go for a masters in library science and become a medical librarian.” And then they were happy again. They were like, “Okay. Now we can talk to you some more.” HG: You kept that to yourself. JS: Uh-huh. Because I knew that if I became just a librarian, which could be a school or public or whatever, I could stay in town. A medical librarian wouldn’t allow that, though, because there was only a hospital somewhat a distance away. So I said I would become a medical librarian to get out of dodge. HG: [laughs] And that is partly true. JS: It worked. But I was still pretty timid. Gettysburg was 30 minutes away. I came home a lot of weekends, more than I would have preferred. I had a great time, a great education, and got my biology undergraduate degree, and then got into Case Western Reserve University for its medical library program. And got finished August of 1980. I graduated within about a year. Then I went to look for jobs. And I’m thinking, Still a little shy. Where can I go? My roommate from Gettysburg College went to Baltimore. So I thought, Baltimore. Let’s go to Baltimore. HG: Right. Why not? JS: So that was what directed my job search. I went to the Medical Library Association annual meeting in 1980, which was held in Washington DC. They had a job, career fair that corresponds every year with the annual meeting. Someone, I can’t ever remember who, said, “You should think about putting your application in there, and then people will contact you and you get interviewed.” So I did. I had 20 interviews in two days. With the very last one being with 3 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 Johns Hopkins. I can remember opening the little booth curtain and there were two people, not just one. Every other interview I had one. I was exhausted. I thought, Oh my gosh. No way is this going to ever happen. So I was so calm, so at ease, and so myself that, sure enough, the next day they called and said, “We want to talk to you some more.” So I ended up in Baltimore. Big city. I can remember my parents driving me there. I didn’t have electricity operating in the apartment that night so they stayed. Baltimore was close; it was like an hour and a half from home. So it got me a little bit farther out. What I didn’t understand about this opportunity was that the location provided proximately to the National Library of Medicine (NLM); it is within an hour’s drive. In Baltimore, there was the University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins, Medical and Chirurgical Society of Maryland Library at the time, plus several hospital libraries. So that corridor of being so close to NLM off of I-95 was really a wonderful opportunity to grow up in medical library science. I started as a reference librarian. In those days, we all had desks just on the main floor. We didn’t have offices. We thought we were just golden, and we would look at the library as if we owned the world. I learned a lot. I didn’t know at the time who all was going to influence my life, but there were a lot of people in the area. That was in August of 1980, I started working. About three to four years later, Nina Matheson became our director at the Welch Medical Library at Hopkins. She had this vision from her work with the American Association of Medical Colleges, AAMC, to create an entity called IAIMS. And it wasn’t the dogfood [laughs]. But it was – I can’t even remember – something like Integrated Academic Medical Information Systems or something like that. But it was a theory that information would be central to everybody, and that the library could serve as that central entity. It was going to be very 4 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 different. I can remember her talking about text editing back then. We were all just clueless. We were like, “What?” HG: [laughs] Didn’t really know what you were getting into. JS: Didn’t know what we were getting into. She was very demanding, in a good way, in retrospect. At the time, we were not so sure what was happening to us, but she really was influential. In fact, the kudos of this year was having drinks with her and just thanking her for the vision that she was able to embed in all of us who worked for her. And I shared, with her, “It wasn’t always fun, as you know.” It became time to move on. I’d been there, let’s see, about eight years I believe. I’d moved in to two different positions while there. I started as a reference librarian, as I mentioned. Then in 1982, there was an opportunity to move to the head of access services, including circulation and interlibrary loan. I got that position. In ’84 there was satellite libraries that had been created, which were really departmental libraries. One was on the eighth floor of the hospital which was beautiful. It was the Psychiatry and Neurosciences Library. I worked there for four years, operating this satellite library. Which was great because it was kind of independent, but you also were connected to the Welch Library and could serve on its many committees. I mean, Nina had us involved in everything. I can still remember meeting Ben Carson and would ride the elevators with him and chat, because he was in Neurosurgery. I had Psychiatry, Neurology, and Neurosurgery as my three departments that I served. It was really great. Soon I met my husband and decided that I needed not to take my computer on dates anymore. [both laugh] 5 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 Her was getting a little annoyed with me [laughs]. I decided to move to a hospital library in Towson, Maryland, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, and was a hospital librarian for a year and a half, and learned a ton. In the course of that time, I got married and then my dad died from cancer. So while it was only a year and a half, it was a very life-changing time. I learned that I didn’t care to be a solo librarian. I didn’t care to change toner in photocopy machines and unjam paper. Even though I had authority for a conference center, I’d have to bus tables because the setup didn’t happen right and the next meeting was coming. I learned a lot from that experience; I learned I needed to get back into the academic world. I had been spoiled at Hopkins and didn’t realize what I had. About that time, Cyril Fong, who was the director at University of Maryland, Baltimore, emailed me and said, “Would you consider applying for the regional medical library position we have open?” a DOCLINE coordinator or resource sharing coordinator. I kind of paused because Dad was dying at the time. I was like, “Well, you know, I should probably look into it.” So I looked into it. Then unfortunately, Cyril and my dad died right before I got interviewed. I can remember it was a Thanksgiving from you-know-where. We were all dealing with many changes. When I had my interview, I was not my sparkly self. Faith Meakin, who was the regional medical library director at the time said, “H ow was your Thanksgiving?” I explained that dad had died and she was like, “Oh my gosh.” HG: “We know why.” JS: Everybody was kind of in a shock mode at the library at the time with the passing of Cyril, but I got the position because I told Faith that I like to work with numbers, and she did not like budgets. There was a lot of budgeting at that time – so it worked out really well because she is probably the best mentor I’ve ever had in my career. She helped me to get over public 6 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 speaking. I can still remember being in West Virginia at a B and B and taking off my purple dress that had a belt. My stomach had a purple belt line because I had perspired so much. HG: Oh my gosh. JS: [laughs] And we just laughed. We were like, you know, “You just got to get over this.” She kind of loosened me up regarding public speaking. HG: And that was Faith – what was her last name? JS: Meakin. She was at Maryland at the time and then went on to be the University of Florida, Gainesville director, and then retired from that. We had so many good times – she was a director, a supervisor, but a peer in a lot of ways, and helped me to grow professionally. Plus, we were responsible for 13 states in the country. I helped to train everybody about Loansome Doc, that had just come out from the National Library of Medicine. It was a way to access articles from Grateful Med searches, which was their self-searchable Medline at the time. It was very cool that people could self-search because when I started we were doing the literature searching for everyone. There was no end user system. And then BRS/After Dark came along and then different products. NLM started their own CD-based product called Grateful Med. I got to exhibit at a lot of professional association meetings for healthcare providers. I got to talk at their conferences. I have some nice stories of what happened on these travels. It was fun. But it was kind of like a sales job without a sales role. It gave me that speaking confidence and getting out and teaching librarians. We did CE courses and a lot of training, as regional medical libraries do. I loved the job, just absolutely loved the job. Then my husband got an offer to move to Seattle [laughs]. And I can remember sitting in the kitchen going, “Really?” 7 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 HG: “I don’t want to go.” JS: I get the job of my dreams and you’re going to make me move? But Seattle, it wasn’t the worst; it was a good place. So I thought it over, and I still remember him about falling over when I said, “Let’s do it.” And he’s like, “Really? You would do this?” And I said, “Let’s do it.” My dad had passed. I was closest to him. I was like, “Let’s just do it.” So lo and behold, we moved to Seattle. I can remember not having a job, Elaine Martin, who had been at Ginger, Washington as a librarian, was an associate director at the University of Washington. I knew her from a regional chapter of the Medical Library Association-MidAtlantic Chapter (MAC). I emailed her and said, “Is there anything open?” She goes, “Actually, there is. There’s a fee-based service librarian that we’re just starting, and you have two years to make your own salary. But you’ll need to apply. Don’t let our friendship from the MAC days of MLA make you think you will get the job – consider this as a real application.” So I did. I can remember, watching the moving van leave my parents’ house and me thinking, What have I done? HG: “What am I doing?” JS: What am I doing? Because my career was everything to me. But obviously, love comes before career. That same day Elaine called and offered me the job. It was interesting because it was at the time when biotech companies were really starting up big in Seattle. Amazon also started. Starbucks had been around for a while. It was just kind of fun to be in that culture before the dotcom bubble broke. I worked with law firms. I worked with tech companies to do literature searching and get articles for them. All of it was done by the hour, so I had billable hours and made it! I had to come up with all the marketing and program design. HG: Such a wide experience. 8 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 It was great. It was called Health Information for You, or HIFY, as we called it for fun. And it was a great experience. Then Elaine left for a Chicago job. I remember sitting in my cubicle saying, “Well, surely, Sherrilynne Fuller” – who was the director of the library – “will know that I moved here and took a job that was okay but pretty much entry level. She’ll think of me to replace Elaine.” And then I sat there and I thought, “You know, I shouldn’t assume because of what they say about assume.” So I sent an email. I said, “Sherrlynne I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I would like to offer my expertise and my job history to maybe serve at least as interim until you hire someone to replace Elaine.” Within a minute, she’s sends me an email to go to her office. She said, “I didn’t think of you. I’m so glad you emailed. Of course, you would be perfect.” So I became interim. I was the only candidate to be interviewed by the University of Washington library system (we were part of the whole academic library system there) and I got the job of Associate Director, Information Resources. HG: So now you’re the director of – JS: I had been a fee-based librarian, but became the associate director for information resources management when Elaine left. I was in that position for five years, and worked a lot with Debbie Ketchell, who was the deputy director. She and I had an office right next to each other. We were so techy. I remember we had a glass wall between us but we’d be on our computers faced each other, and we’d be typing emails, and all of a sudden one of us would pop up and say, “Can you come over?” [laughs] It was right when email calendars started – and everybody had their online calendar that we built internally. We just thought we were the coolest. HG: [laughs] “We are so great.” 9 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 “We are so cool.” What I didn’t realize was the opportunity this position was going to give me because it was mostly technical services. I had grown up in public services. All of a sudden I was dealing with licensing resources, electronic resources that no one had had to deal with before. But it was good that I no prior experience because I had no preconceived idea how this was going to work. I just learned on the fly, and I learned a ton. I learned how to wheel and deal and do the negotiations and work with the publishers to create a cadre of information resources that one could access. We were so creative as a university library, and did a lot of grant work. Debbie actually headed up Prime Answers. It was this idea that you put in a question, like Ask Jeeves, and you get a synthesized answer from multiple databases. This was, like, in 1997. It sounds so antiquated now but it was huge. I had to license content to use as behind-the-scene products, not something that would be plug-and-play. This was very unusual for publishers to deal with, too. We were both creating a frontier solution to this issue at the time. We also ran a photocopy business. That sounds like old times, too. But we made $70,000 a month on photocopying. I learned how to run a recharge center. HG: Wow. That’d fund the whole library. Okay. JS: Well, we were all cost recovery, but we were able to hire staff and buy equipment. I had to negotiate every year with the state about our fees because they were regulated by state rules. I can still remember there was a usage fee, a state tax fee, as well as the initial charge. I couldn’t ever tell someone, “Here’s how much your literature search or ILL is going to be” because it was dependent on those three factors cumulatively adding up. Again, I was running a business. My fee-based business kind of carried into this one. I was able to keep the fee-based services under me and hire another librarian to operate it the fee-based one. 10 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 Again, I was very happy, until 2000. And then, I think – I’m trying to remember how this happened. I don’t think they contacted me. I learned that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) had a directorship position open. If you track my resume, every seven or eight years, usually I do something different. Both sets of parents were aging and Mark’s parents (my husband) were having some health issues. Richmond, Virginia is much closer to Pennsylvania and Florida, (where Mark is from) then Washington is. And I have to say, it wasn’t the rain that got to us in Seattle, it was the traffic. Seattle had just gotten too congested. Some days I did a three-hour commute. I was like, “There’s got to be a better life than this.” I went to VCU and interviewed. I remember thinking it was a great place and interviewed with John Ulmschneider, who is still the library director. There the libraries are a library system like University of Washington was. Their budget was combined, so I didn’t have a budget. It was not a branch, but it was definitely governed by the system. I was a part of the leadership team for all of the libraries, not just the medical library. John was wonderful. He gave me a lot of opportunities. He learned a lot about medical libraries. He had been a National Library of Medicine fellow in his youth and had helped to create DOCLINE so he appreciated medical libraries, but needed to have someone to work with the day-to-day operations. We were three or four miles apart. There was a shuttle bus that went back and forth. It was a great starting point for being a director because I had the authority of a director but not all the responsibility. Then I became the Medical Library Association president in 2006-7. I remember John saying, “Well, you know, we need to support you.” So we were able to put three people – promote them for the year to take on some of my responsibilities while I served as president. That gave them a kind of growth experience. John was very supportive of my reign as president. 11 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 One day he said, “I know you’re going to leave after this.” And I was like, “No, don’t say that.” And he goes, “No. I know you will because you’ve got the exposure now. You’ve got the stature. People are going to want you. And VCU’s great, but you need to move on.” He was right. And I can remember just crying one day in the street, going, “You were right. You were right. I’ve got to go.” University of Utah had inquired about my interest. One of the members of the search committee (after Wayne Pay had retired) approached me about applying, someone who I had worked with in Seattle at the University of Washington. I said, “No. I Can’t. I just got done with the MLA president. My brain’s dead. I can’t even write a cover letter. I just can’t. I just can’t even begin to consider moving and all that stuff.” She was like, “Okay.” And then I thought, You know, I made the right decision. I needed to refresh my head. About six months later, she emailed me again and said, “Well, how about now? Could you think about it now?” And I was like, “Okay. I guess. But I’m not really interested in moving. I’m very happy at VCU. If you want me to interview, I’ll do it, but know that I won’t take the job.” And she said, “That’s okay. Just come on out.” I replied, “Really? You would do that?” And she said, “Yeah, just come on out.” So I’m on the plane going to the interview, and my husband’s best friend from Richmond’s on the plane. He asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m going to an interview at the University of Utah.” He goes, “Take that job! I will have a place to stay when I ski there then.” He eventually hung his skis in our garage. [both laugh] JS: He was our most frequent visitor. [both laugh] HG: So who did you interview with when you came here? 12 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 There was a search committee that was headed by Maureen Keefe, who was the dean of nursing at the time. Although Marilyn Payne did a lot of the infrastructure work. Maureen had been on sabbatical, so Marilyn had done a lot of the internal work. The committee represented every college and school at the time. Suzanne Stensaas was on it because of her Slice-of-Life involvement with the library and technology. Most of the people are now gone to be honest, but there are a couple of people left. What really attracted me was the Health Sciences Education Building. It was attached to the library, and the library managed it. HG: So what year was this? This was ’07? JS: This was 2008, winter of 2008. HG: Okay. So HSEB was up. JS: Yeah. I think it was, like, March. It was winter when we came out here, and there was snow on the ground. Joan Stoddart was the interim director, and she drove me around the city. I had been here for an AAMC, Group for Information Resources meeting, and we had stayed at the Grand America. I was convinced that if everyone lived this way in Utah, this was great. [both laugh] JS: I’d actually been teasing Wayne about, “When are you retiring? When you are– let me know.” He did call and say, “I am retiring.” I’m like, “No. Not now. I can’t – I just can’t think of it now.” He goes, “Oh, you’ll be getting a request to apply.” And then a search committee member emailed me. After the interview, I called home and I said, “Mark, we have to do this.” And he’s like, “Good. Because I’ve already packed. I was hoping.” HG: [laughs] He was already convinced. 13 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 He loved Seattle, and he’s very outdoors-oriented. Utah is a sunny Seattle so it has all the benefits of Seattle but sunshine and more too. There was no having to talk him into it. We moved in August of 2008, and I started in September, officially. I actually started working October 1. Dr. Lorris Betz, was the one who hired me. I can remember thinking, He just seems so wise and so believing in his people. And I can remember it was right after an AAMC meeting where Jim Collins had spoken about getting on the bus and getting the right people on the bus, from his book “Good to Great”. I said to Dr. Betz, “Dr. Betz, I want to be on your bus.” He totally understood what I was saying. He then called me in Hawaii to offer me the job where we were on vacation. Moving was horrible. We just had gotten so old and had collected so much stuff collected. We had a cat, but it all worked. I’ve been here now almost eight years and don’t regret it. HG: So when you first got here, what had you heard about the Eccles Health Sciences Library up to that point? JS: Well, they’re just famous. I had a Wayne folder on email because he would always send out these emails that were just so profound. I’d store them in my Wayne email folder to get to when I had time to pontificate about them. Eccles was rich in technology. They started the email system for the campus. They did all kinds of development of course training and things electronically before webinars and things were really understood. Wayne had written many grants and had a lot of respect from the National Library of Medicine. He actually was able to get the Regional Medical Library from the University of Nebraska. That was part of the attraction of the job, too. I had such fond memories of my Regional Medical Library experience in Baltimore. Wayne was very foresightful, and even with the Regional Medical Library, he 14 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 couldn’t do it the same way everyone else did. He had to distribute it. So each state has a coordinator locally embedded. That was very avant garde at the time. It was, like, wow. You just don’t do that. But NLM went along with it and it’s worked out really, really well. This library, even though we’re celebrating our 45th anniversary this year, has had a lot of successes – it’s huger than life I guess is what I want to say. That was also the attraction of coming out here. The one concern I did have was knowing that the next big city was 600 miles away: Las Vegas and then Denver. I’d grown up on the 95 and 5 corridors, and I was like, “Can I really handle that?” But there’s so much travel with this position. And there’s so much beauty in not having big cities right next to you that I have come to really appreciate Salt Lake City. HG: You can visit big cities. JS: You can visit big cities. And when I see those mountains, flying back home, it does feel like I’ve come home. So yeah, it’s really great living in Utah. The faculty and staff here are just excellent, too. I mean, I keep saying I don’t want to ever wake up because the people here believe in working. They want to work. There’s very little time spent on personnel, what I’d call headache kind of situations. There’s no one trying to beat the system. For example, there was workout equipment in the one room downstairs in the library when I came. I said, “Why do we have workout equipment?” They’re like, “Oh, everyone’s into being healthy and we contributed our old equipment. We just put it in a room and then we go at lunchtime and workout.” I inquired, “Have you signed liability agreements to prevent individuals from suing the library?” And they all looked at me like, “Why would we do that?” I’m like, “Never mind. Never mind.” [both laugh] 15 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 HG: “Do your thing.” JS: “Just proceed. Carry on. Stay calm. Proceed.” It just gave me the refreshment that I’m in a world where people do want to work and not look for how to get out of the next day’s work. It’s proven true over the years. Not to say we don’t have some issues, but it’s usually not anything that I spend a lot of time on, which is so refreshing because you can spend all your energy on positive things and being able to take the Library to the next level. And that’s kind of what we did. After I got here, I think it was only a couple of months until I got an email, “There’s a ceiling project that has been on the board for ten years, and we just got funded for it.” And I was like, “Ceiling project. What does that mean?” [laughs] And lo and behold it changed the whole library because we were closed for ten months completely, except for our access to the collection. We were scattered over 12 different locations staff-wise. We used Pigeon to communicate, which was our instant messaging system. We had meetings in HSEB because we could schedule rooms there. We learned how to work virtually, and yet, when we’d see each other, it’d be hugs, “Hey, you’re still here! Yay!” We were closed, I think it was around October of 2009, for about a year. We reopened in August of 2010. HG: While it was under construction. JS: Right before we reopened, they said something about, “Well, you did brace the stacks, right, because you have seismic issues here?” And I said, “No one ever said we had to.” So we had to scramble very quickly. Dr. Bettz gave us money to buy compact shelving. We installed that into the – at that point, the basement, the lower level of the library. We had to move the collection three times, during the remodel, but one time to this compact shelving. Mary 16 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 McFarland did the management of the moves, along with Joan Stoddart, and they kept everyone engaged. We did it all with temporary help and ourselves moving the collection. The last move delayed us a little bit, but we had compact shelving, which freed up the other two levels of the Library. Asbestos had been removed so now we could do remodels without it costing an arm and a leg. It just kind of dominoed into a progression of construction project that has not even ended today. I mean, eight years later we’re still constructing. And the most recent one is a vault for our History of Medicine collection. We can preserve and keep the collection safe, at a secure temperature, and protected from theft. HG: So when you came here, what was your vision for the Library? What did you see yourself doing here? JS: Well, you know, I have to say I came – and I can remember talking to Joan quite a bit, saying, “I don’t know what to do with this Library. Because you guys are all so out there with so many things. What can we do?” And she kept saying, “Jean, just enjoy life.” I kept saying, “No. We’ve got to figure out something to do.” And then, the whole thing with the compact shelving happened. I really wanted to figure out what to do that would set us even more apart from all the other academic libraries. And I can’t remember if – I think Dr. Vivian Lee had just come. I met with her. She came in July five years ago. She said something to me about, “Could you consider becoming our discovery center?” And I said, “I would love that.” Because we had just gone through some strategic planning and had come up with a tagline for the Library that was, “Inform. Connect. Innovate.” And I said, “Well, you know, that would fit in really nicely with our ‘innovate’ tagline-discovery and innovation. Sure.” About that time, Jim Agutter, from the College of Architecture, popped in and inquired about space – I’d met him in a meeting where we looked at deep dive centers for lean projects. 17 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 We had done a road trip to California to look at a Kaiser deep dive center and the Ideo company that does design work for big companies. And he’s like, “Could I have part of the space in the new basement of the Library for Spark faculty,” which is his innovation program that works with honors students. I said, “Sure Jim. We have a wall down there we just painted green. We can put up a splash sign for Spark. Let’s work you in.” And then, I think it was honestly the next day, John Langell came and knocked on my door and said, “I want to talk to you about this innovation center.” And I was like, “Oh, okay. Let me show you the space that we were talking about.” I didn’t mention Jim, but I’m driving home and I’m thinking, John never mentioned Jim. I think I just gave the space of Jim’s away to John. And I’m going, “Oh my gosh. I think I just did that.” So I called Jim and I said, “Are you working with John?” He said, “No. But that’s okay. I’m down on this other campus. Just go ahead and give him the space.” And I was like, “No I promised you.” And he goes, “No, just go ahead.” And I said, “Well, let’s try to work you in anyway.” I didn’t realize the back story. I’m a little embarrassed to say I didn’t. But the University of Utah has always been very tech-oriented; there is a tech transfer office. The President’s Office created an ecosystem of innovation. And the TVC, as it’s called now, is a part of that ecosystem. Glen Prestwich, from the College of Pharmacy, had a faculty scholar entrepreneurial program that became part of the ecosystem. The Office of Research was involved, as well as the new Center for Medical Innovation. I had met John while traveling to California. I learned he was working with Dr. Lee on creating the Center for Medical Innovation (CMI). That’s what they wanted to house in the library. When I heard “discovery center,” I just, in my typical way, went fast forward, - thinking the library could become the innovative library partnering with the CMI. We’ll become one and 18 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 we’ll do all this work together. And so I wrote proposals, sharing them with John. It became clearer that there was a Center for Medical Innovation that had been started by the President. I realized then, “I can’t quite become one with CMI because there’s a whole structure; it is a part of the Innovation Ecosystem.” I had not been aware of that. As you can imagine there’s been some political sensitivities about all of this. But I grabbed the concept and wanted to run with it. Meanwhile, I’m starting to think, “What can libraries do to support innovators?” I knew that John had worked with this one group called BioInnovate that was working with Bioengineering. I talked to Catherine Soehner at the Marriott Library and said, “I think we need to meet with these Bioinnovate students, do focus groups with them to figure out what their information needs are. We met with about four groups, had pizza lunches, asked questions to came up with a list of things we could do. Then we formed, based on my suggestion, a library innovation team that was composed of representatives from the three libraries to support innovation. Things have just proceeded. I started to think, Well, we really need to think about having a position dedicated to innovation. We tried research associate for a year, Tallie Cassuci. She worked out really well; they loved her. The GApp Lab, which is a therapeutic games and apps laboratory, became a part of CMI in January of 2014 and moved here to occupy – what had been the National Training Center’s computer laboratory or instruction laboratory. They joined us and Tallie worked wonders with them. We made her position permanent a year later as the innovation librarian. HG: So is that a position that is unique to the University of Utah? JS: As far as I can tell. I’ve not seen any others, except the Marriott Library has created a 19 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 creativity and innovation librarian and a department with 3D printing, makes things and so forth. But I have not seen any other medical library with such a position. We came up with a whole ton of things that we’re partnering with innovators. We annually give an award to a Bench to Bedside (B-2-B) team that’s a joint award from the Marriott and Eccles Libraries to honor a team. The first year we had a grant from the National Library of Medicine regarding sex and gender differences and educating university populations about that. We gave an award to a B-2-B design group that would think about sex and gender needs with equipment. For example, females have less grip strength than males, was this considered in the design? After that grant ended, we turned it into another type of award, one that required that team members use the Libraries Innovation Team. If they reflected that in their poster, their demonstration, their business marketing plan, then we would consider them for the award. We’ve given the award for two years now. HG: So why don’t you give a brief overview of Bench to Bedside? JS: Okay. Bench to Bedside actually came out of a test for BioInnovate to see if interprofessional teams of students from business, healthcare, and engineering can create a medical device prototype within a six-month period of time. They get some seed money to do that. They not only have to create a prototype of a device, but also a business plan and a promotional plan. There is a Shark Tank night – it used to be in the stadium box office, but is now held at the state capitol – where judges go from booth to booth. Teams give their spiel about their device. There were different types of awards. I got involved I guess in year two of that competition. I wanted the EHSL to support the teams. That is a lot of what Tallie still does is offer support. The Marriott Library does, too, researching the prior art, and searching for patents. Dave Morrison does a lot of that and Tallie does this as well. 20 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 It’s really blossomed into this whole – between The GApp Lab and the B to B, which is a short name for Bench to Bedside. We also have gotten more involved with BioInnovate. We’ve actually worked with them on assessing their five-year program with Dr. Robert Hitchcock. We have reached out to TVC with James Thompson and Sherry Gordon, who’s now Sherry Christiansen, to work with their program to emulate the research life cycle to create an innovation life cycle. We had developed a research life cycle called MyRA, My Research Assistant. We emulated that with an innovation life cycle. It goes into all the components of innovation and highlights the resources that are available here at the University to support the different stages of innovation. I feel we’ve been so successful with partnering with innovators. I’ve been invited even to speak in Japan to talk about it. The Japanese people are so respectful and will not really look at you when you’re talking. They look down. I had a translator – and I said, “And we threw all of the books and print journals into the dumpster.” Then the translator said it. All of the faces lit up and looked shocked. They asked “Did you really do that?” It’s my favorite memory of the talk. [both laugh] HG: “Did you really do that?” JS: “Did you really do that?” I shared a little video of Christy Jarvis in the dumpster laying on top of all the print things. This partnership with innovators has a lot to get the EHSL on the cutting edge of being supportive of innovation, as innovation has now become the buzzword everywhere. There’s innovative food, innovative clothes. Many commercials have “innovation” in them. But we gave up a lot to be a part of this; we gave up the print collection and shared a lot of our space. In return there’s been a lot of benefit to us. We’re actually written a book about the experience, again, to help share with other libraries how they can think about this. Some of my 21 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 peers say that you were really lucky that they came to you and you didn’t have to start a service and beg and borrow people to come. And I agree. I mean, I really agree. My vision would be that we even become more of a part, like I had originally thought. But infrastructure and politics have gotten in the way to. HG: Sure. Those things are hard to push through. JS: It is what it is. I’m trying to come to grip that we did the best we could do and have done a lot. And I think in retrospect I would do it all again. There would be some things I’d do differently, but I’d do it all again. HG: It’s provided a lot of opportunity for the Library. JS: Yeah, and a lot of stretching of our imagination. We just created an Ideation Studio that opened in mid-July 2016. I still am not sure what it is, but I was willing to take the risk because people said, “We need a space that allows us to be free with our thoughts and come as a group or individuals and play with widgets to create design and processes.” We’re willing to explore what that kind of space should be. HG: Ideation is part of the innovation process, right? That’s one of the initial stages of that. JS: Roger Altizer, of The GApp Lab, was the one who said, “This is kind of a name that’s really hot right now”, so I give him credit for the name. We hope to engage instructors from design, psychology, and The GApp Lab to teach classes in this space that will help people learn about design and ideation. So I think that will be the next development of that space. If you build it, things happen. My dream is now that we continue to work together as the transformation of the campus happens. But I’m not sure what the future will hold, because there will be a whole discovery center built. 22 Jean P. Shipman HG: 27 July 2016 Right. As our School of Medicine comes down and a new building is built for students and patients and – JS: And discovery. Will the Library have a role? I sure hope so. I hope the Library is part of the Discovery Center. HG: Right. Exactly. So let’s back up just a little bit because everyone always asks us about this, as you said. You’ve spoken a lot about the collection and getting rid of the collection. So we know the event that sparked it, but how did that come to be and what was that like, as a librarian, to do that? JS: I know. Well, in fact, again, I was talking with John. We were walking through the basement area, because he had gotten– as part of the first installation of the CMI, an office for the program manager, Megan McIntyre, and three study rooms that were turned into group meeting rooms. They bought some furniture for them. He came by one day and said, “Well, you mentioned when you were showing me around about those compact shelves probably going in ten years.” And I did, I said, “Probably in ten years this area will be history.” We noticed in the move that a lot of things weren’t being asked for. We have the data from that time. Everything that we can get digital we’d love to get digital. HG: So the collection – it wasn’t necessarily being used as often as it had before. JS: Exactly. People didn’t really like the compact shelving. I can’t tell you how many people asked, “Am I going to get stuck in the middle of this thing and it’s going to squish me?” My reply, “No. There’s lasers.” But we all know technology doesn’t operate every time; however, we didn’t lose anybody. HG: [laughs] 23 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 Soon John came by and said, “I have a donor for a simulation center. Could you get rid of the collection now?” And I just looked at him and I said, “Are you serious?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” HG: That’s a scary thing to ask. JS: And I said, “Well, let me work on it,” because, again, I was thinking we were working toward a combined kind of facility between CMI and the EHSL. I talked with Jim Turnbull about moving the collection to what had become a data center downtown that I knew had extra storage space. And he very sadly said, “You know Jean, I could give you the space right now, but probably in three years, we’d have to get it back because we’ll need the space.” I said, “Well, we don’t want to do that.” I then talked to the Marriott Library Director because we had transferred some of our rarer materials to its ARC, Automatic Retrieval System. They were not wanting to give us more space because their Special Collections was expanding and they were going to need the space. I went to Vivian Lee and said, “I can’t find anyone that will store this collection. I guess we’re going to have to pitch it.” She said, “That sounds good to me. Are you okay with that?” And I said, “I guess I am because I really want innovation to be a part of the Library.” One thing I would redo is the removal of the collection. We did it all ourselves in nine months because this donor needed to sped up the process. We did it physically ourselves. I would not put the staff through that again, because it was very hard. HG: Very hard. JS: Very hard. A lot of librarians had been the ones to buy those books, catalog them, and shelve them many times. It was less hard for me because I didn’t grow up here, but I think it was pretty hard on the people who did grow up here. Although they were excited and they, being the great people that they are, always look for opportunities, too. But it was tough. 24 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 HG: It was a hard thing, right. JS: We did, luckily, publish an article about it. A lot of other libraries are going through this and have referred to that article. Our experience was the fastest one I’m aware of-nine months to remove an entire collection appropriately. HG: That’s amazing. JS: It is, but that opened up all this space. And at the time, in addition to the new idea of a Sim Center, we had been working with the Hospital, who had – given us some money to create a deep-dive center like we had all seen at Kaiser. This center was to be created on the Garden Level where we had removed the compact shelving. We had been working with that concept, when the Sim Center idea surfaced. We went back to the drawing board trying to figure out how to put a Sim Center into this space because we were going to use the compact shelving as our walls for the deep dive center, and that would’ve been moveable and alterable. Jim Agutter helped me to design (for free) the space with the compact shelving walls. Lean training had been an initiative of Dr. Lee’s, and she wanted this deep-dive space for Lean project teams to meet. But Lean had become such a fabric of the culture of thinking, the mindset, that a space was no longer needed. Even though the Hospital had donated money, they were okay with reconceptualizing the purpose for the space. In the end, I built a kind of team collision center. John was going to raise money to remodel the Main Level for the Center for Medical Innovation; we were going to use the Lower Level as part of the library. I offered that until he raised the money- he could use the newly remodeled space as noise could be controlled on that level. Otherwise, I couldn’t promise the students a quiet space within the Library. This was to be a temporary location until he could remodel the Main Level. 25 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 So I said, “Well, I’m just remodeling this basement level into a think tank area. I guess you could occupy that until you get the money to remodel the Main Level.” And so he got to use the space. Then he took the space permanently until they build the Discovery Center. There was no donor willing to give money to the Library to create the Sim Center. This was hard, very hard because I felt like I’d put three years into planning this space for the Library. We’ve been sharing part of it- the Synapse Center. As one of our remodels, we brought in the administrative offices from our Center for Translational Science Award. They had offices that we remodeled with VP money in the Garden Level. John has been able to acquire this space for the CMI as well, instead of it returning to the Library as was planned. HG: Kind of sharing space. JS: It’s working okay overall. There are some moments of tension to be quite honest, but it is what it is. We just aren’t a part of CMI like I had thought we would be when I agreed to the remodels. HG: It is what it is. And there’s always the future of the next building. It’ll be interesting. JS: I think we’re learning a lot from this space to be able to shape the next building too. People walk in to the Library and they say, “Where’s the Library?” We reply, “You’re in it.” And they’re like, “No, we’re not. There’s no books. There’s no journals.” We were able to get quite a lot of digital material because we had built up revenues from endowment accounts for collections that allowed us to buy journal back files. I know a lot of other library directors who would like to go to where we are, but they aren’t able to because they can’t get the funding to support the back file acquisition. So all the dominos were kind of in place, and we’ve been able to really rethink what we are as a Library as a result. 26 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 Now I think, What’s next? We are in the midst of this transformation of the campus. Four new buildings will replace the School of Medicine Building. We’re in a 1971 building. It’s served us well, but it is starting to inhibit what we can do. And yet, there’s a lot of history to the building. The Eccles family has given a lot to the University, and this was their first family donation. They’re a lovely family, and we want to be very supportive of the building, but we need to think about what’s the next phase for our Library? Being so digital, I do believe that we could be dispersed throughout the campus and be in contexts where people are actually working. I moved myself from the corner office with a view to be part of the Synapse because I wanted to see how being embedded in a space that was shared worked. I could see what needs some governance, oversight, to inform other people creating shared spaces. I can tell you that there are so many interactions that happen because I’m physically there that would not happen even if I were one floor away, let alone a building away, let alone a campus away. So I’m a firm believer that if you’re embedded where people are working, they’re going to seek you out or you’re going to know what their needs are to be able to address them more than if you’re sitting in a building with other librarians. But this is not a shared vision. There is a lot of benefit to happy librarians from being together as well. When you look at academia, there are a lot of departmental silos. It would be unique to be that distributed. Although Johns Hopkins Welch Library has kind of done this model and with mixed success. I think they’re trying to be everywhere, whereas I think we – if we do this, we’re going to need to just do it, like when we peeled the band-aid off of the collection. Christy Jarvis said, “You know, it was like, just take that band-aid sucker right off.” It was less painful to do it that way than it would’ve been to draw it out. And that’s really good to hear from her because she spearheaded most of the removal of the collection. 27 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 I think libraries, because we have been a place with storage and collections of materials, people now think, we’ve nothing to do because there are no print books and journals, and that’s far from the truth. It’s even more work because we’re licensing content. Everything we get we have to negotiate separately for, more or less. It’s not like you buy a book at a certain price. With digital collections, you can negotiate the price, who’s going to access it, where it’s going to be available, those kinds of terms. Plus, we’re involved now with actually gathering the information that’s being produced by our University and putting it into databases; capturing committee work. That’s why my title just changed last week to Executive Director for Knowledge Management and the Spencer Eccles Health Sciences Library, to reflect the idea that we’re collecting knowledge and managing knowledge for the University. Open access (OA) has come along in these last 15 years with the idea that universities are producing the knowledge, giving it away, and then buying it back. I’m not anti OA, but I’m not as pro OA as most librarians. However, I see that there is a benefit to capturing what is coming out of the University. A lot of times, it’s not even something that would ever be in a container of a journal article or a book, but it’s still valuable. That’s what we’re trying to capture for the innovators here by creating a platform to house this content called e-channel. We’ve been able to restructure a lot of the work of staff. Staff had photocopied and shelved journals from print. You can use the same skillset to create digital materials as well. The staff who used to do the photocopying of journal articles are now doing the digitizing of mixed materials and are able to store, describe and create collections that we put on an online platform, not a shelf. One has to be able to figure out how to get back to this by consent describing it with metatags and descriptive terms which is cataloging. HG: So it’s the same job just in a digital format. 28 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 Exactly. With a little bit more technical skill needed because you’re working with computers. My favorite conversation most recently was with Dr. Kathleen Digre, who’s been a Library champion from way back and has worked with Nancy Lombardo on Novel, which is one of the first kind of digital collection development done by the Library. Novel has been around 15 plus years. We have a lot of knowledge that Nancy had built up over time within our staff. Kathleen and I were talking about copyright and ownership. And I said, “You’re okay with giving your content to a publisher. Why are you more reluctant to give that to your trusted library than to a publisher?” She had to agree, “You know, you’re right.” I said, “I know what it is and I can answer it for you.” She asked, “Well, what is it?” I said, “It’s the brand. You can publish in a journal and get professional credit because there’s a brand for that journal that’s known and respected among your colleagues. e-channel doesn’t have such a brand yet. It isn’t a viable thing that someone would recognize, yet.” But if we really make e-channel the storehouse of our content that’s coming out of the University, it will in time. If other universities do the same thing, there will be e-channels of many versions and subjects that can be shared. But it’s a big jump, and a huge one. We busted out of the print collection model, but our authors haven’t busted out of the collection mentality yet, as they know it: books, journals, and items. But we’re trying to break that horizon now with e-channel and different additional nativeborn digital collections. We have adopted more of a marketing role, or public relations role, in that our space now can have community events and exhibits. We host art shows within our art gallery, many arrangements via social media. We’re working with digitizing our history-our 45th anniversary exhibit. We tweet like crazy, yet are not Public Affairs who is responsible for tweeting. It’s kind of fun. We have pushed our professional boundaries in other ways. We have some role with 29 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 informatics for instance. We have a role with Public Affairs but not completely. Again, we’re kind of embedding ourselves-within contexts to be relevant to our communities. HG: Right, kind of breaking down those barriers, at least for the library, into the other areas. When we mention Library, most people think of the building. JS: How do we still differentiate services and activities automatically from the building. I’ve always challenged people, “Think about a profession other than the library that’s called after their building.” And the only one I’ve heard is pharmacy. It’s a holdback to me because, again, as soon as I say I’m a librarian, it’s like, “Oh, you must read a lot. It’s so quiet in the Library.” [laughs] HG: They come up with that view all of a sudden, “Oh, I know who you are.” JS: Uh-huh. Sometimes after I share my ideas, I hear , “Oh my gosh. I thought you said you were a librarian.” I reply “I am.” It’s very hard to break out of that mold and to get people, unless they’ve experienced with what you do for them, to shift their mental model. HG: It is hard to redefine a role that has been in place for all time. JS: A library is not a bad brand. I mean, that’s the sad part. It’s really just not a brand that identifies us anymore. And yet, what replaces that brand? There are so many kinds of information-related people. You walk down the hall of the School of Medicine and there’s Health Information, which is the medical record department. Then, there’s informatics. This is all different fields. HG: Everything is morphing, and we’re not necessarily the name that we’re called. JS: How do you still preside in a building that doesn’t do anything like it did? Why still preside over a building, except it has a name and it’s got a very good legacy. These are the challenges that keep me awake at night; thinking about where do we go next? 30 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 “What are we going to do to explain how we are unique?” I have the feeling we’re at that cusp again. We’ve got innovation kind of figured out. What’s next? What do we need to do next? Big data, of course, is looming. There’s roles I think we could play with that. Precision medicine is the next big thing, and there’s roles we can play with that. I think we don’t even know what’s going to hit us next because things are moving so quickly. I still say someday we’re going to have a little chip that we put in our head that will give us all the information we need right then, including the ability to speak multiple languages. I just can’t wait, I hope I live to see that time. But then, who are we in that world of truly embedded information? HG: Right. That’s all moving so quickly. You look at the innovation that’s even happened in the last 50 years and it is unbelievable. So you think, What will happen in the next ten years? And how will we, as a Library, play a role in that? JS: Right. Will concepts be even more soundbite –like 140 characters. Will that be how we’ll document our research and share or distribute our information? Or will there be things like echannel that collects lab results without any manipulation into more massaged content? Will we end up with raw information instead of it being refined like we’ve done over the years? Is that okay? Is raw information okay? HG: Would you say that innovation has become your champion project, or is there something else that you’ve worked towards throughout your career that is your champion project? JS: Well, you always dream about what’s going to be on your tombstone. HG: Sure [laughs]. JS: I think about what legacy do I want to leave. And historically, over my career, I’ve been known to be the person who breaks the barriers of roles. My plaque from the Medical Library Association presidency states, “She who went where no one went before,” or something like 31 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 that- the idea that you should look at where you can make yourself valuable in a place where you’ve never been. For instance, next week I’m going to Scotland to be at a conference of two gaming groups. And I’m like, “Why am I going there?” HG: [laughs] What do I have to offer? JS: And yet I know because I went to a local meeting of this conference when it was at Snowbird, that librarians have value to gamers. As soon as they heard that Tallie Casucci and I were librarians, they were like, “Oh my gosh. You can help us with this. You can help us with that.” There was a laundry list of so many things that they wanted librarians to help them with, which we’ve not tapped at all. I would hope that innovation could be my middle name, and also that people remember me as someone willing to always think differently. HG: Outside the box. JS: Outside the box. And not constrain ourselves to specific responsibilities that traditionally go with the profession, but always leap to new roles. That’s what I hope. I don’t know how you’re going to describe that on a tombstone. [both laugh] HG: It’s going to have to be really big. JS: But it’s going to be a virtual tombstone anyway [laughs]. HG: Yeah. You just need a QR code. That’s fine. JS: [laughs] Exactly. But I think if anyone can do the future, this Library can do it. They’ve done it for the last 45 years plus. HG: Right. In thinking about the history of the Library, we’ve only had three directors, which is amazing. It really is. Over 50-plus years. 32 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 Right. I did have the opportunity to speak one day with Priscilla. I’m so thankful because even at 92 pounds and 90 years of age, she still had substance and stoicness to her-I could see how she would’ve worked with formulating this Library from the Marriott Library and also be able to play equally with the deans and School of Medicine department chairs at the time, which would’ve been mostly male. She had the vision and insight into building this building in a way that could be repurposed over 45 years and still be not obsolete. She really was a visionary. Wayne Peay was able to work directly with her and also had his own vision of technology. And when I applied, I remember being quite scared of following Wayne because I do technology, but I don’t love it [laughs]. It’s not my first passion. I said to Dr. Betz, “You know, if you hire me, I will not be Ms. Technology. I will be Ms. People. I will coordinate and connect people and, I will do a lot with patient and community health information for the general lay person. I want to start a consumer library.” – and all that has happened. We’ve got the U-Bar now that is the information site for apps and wearables. Everyone can have all this stuff available at their fingertips, but they still need a personal touch. That’s what librarians bring. They bring that connection between the widget and the application of the widget and how to use it. And that, I think, will never go away, no matter how techy, robotic-like we become as humans. There’s still a desire to reach out to somebody. We see that with the community events we sponsor – I mean, we have yoga in the library. It’s a different day for a library. We offer massage therapy on Wednesdays. We have pet therapy, too. HG: We bring people together. JS: Yes and that connection is the other thing that will be on my tombstone- she did plug- and-play people and kind of knew how to work with different groups and make information a part of those groups as well, whether they knew it or not [laughs]. 33 Jean P. Shipman HG: 27 July 2016 So let’s talk about, just real quickly, how the projects – I call them projects – there could be a better word for it – but of things that you have created, like U-Bar and e-channel. You did open a consumer health library. If you were to list things, what would be the top five things that you have brought to the table. JS: Probably not in chronological order because I’m not in that kind of mood today [laughs]. But definitely e-channel. I’m very proud of that because to me, it consolidates the skills that we have into a new purpose and was able to give a new life to the Library. Thanks to Nancy and all her work with Novel, we were able to not have to start from scratch. We looked at where universities are with their own knowledge management, especially in the innovative arena, which differentiated us. We’re equal to MIT, really, with innovation, so why not have a library that reflects that innovative content as well? Consumer health. I’ll be more general. The Library was one thing. We got a space in a very prominent environment in the Hospital lobby, but now we’re looking at merging it with telehealth and also with a radio podcast, The Scope, and with the U-Bar, to be able to be even more virtual. Hopefully, this will reach the community even more. We worked with a lot of different grants on health literacy. I worked a lot as the president of MLA on health literacy and got medical librarians involved with a Health Literacy Conference that’s held annually. They still invite medical librarians today. It’s really great that I was able to shift that mindset to include us. I also tried to demonstrate the value that information gives health outcomes. We really need to demonstrate the value of information and how it helps to improve health and reduce costs, but it’s very hard. HG: Yes. And improve patient care. 34 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 It’s very hard to demonstrate that, but that’s the next nut we need to crack. And if I could be clear, what I’d also do is get reimbursed for that information [laughs] just like any other provider, that we could be reimbursed through insurers for giving information. I do think people empowered with knowledge are better patients and contribute to better outcomes. It’s very hard to demonstrate this however. So one more thing, right? I have three wishes, is that it? [both laugh] JS: Three things I did. e-channel, consumer health, and construction. I guess everything starts more or less with a “c” (e-channel, consumer, construction). I spent tons of hours remodeling this facility, the HSEB facility and building the consumer library. Now we’re remodeling the consumer library again hopefully. HG: Again, it goes along with that model of constantly morphing. That applies to space, too. We’re constantly morphing our space to meet the needs of whatever the generation is, meeting the needs of the campus, really. JS: Yeah. And here’s another C-word container. We’re shaping the space container as well as the content container because flexibility is key. The Ideation Studio we just opened has movable walls because who knows how long it’s going to exist or need to be expanded or whatever. We’re very much a prototyping facility ourselves in how we explore different projects. And you know, one thing innovation’s taught me, is to constantly have an innovative mindset. A key lesson is that failure is acceptable. We had a lovely statewide library conference this year on failures. It’s so fun to talk about failure because very few people will. Innovators believe that you have to fail fast and fail often in order to be pushing the envelope. I hope that same culture has permeated into the Library staff, that it’s okay to fail. 35 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 HG: Just try and try and try. JS: What we’re saying is not to try is failing. That’s how you can really fail is not to try. We’re actually trying to capture failure stories for e-channel, too, which is not going well. HG: Right. Because everyone’s really hesitant to share that. JS: Right. To have failure documented is even worse. Although everywhere you turn, again, failures are mentioned. I think academic promotion has always rewarded successes, some shift will have to happen with our RPT system to recognize that people tried and give as much weight to that and maybe even more, that they tried and failed. It’ll be fun to see where this all ends up. You know, I keep thinking I lived at a good time because I got to see the shift from the traditional library to the technological one. 1980, the first PC came into my life. I remember watching it in library school going, “Huh. What is this thing?” And then thinking, someday we can teach and do banking from a computer. Well, we’re beyond that. Now we’re driving cars with computers– so it’s just going to be so fascinating to see what the next generations of library people are going to have to deal with. I have also witnessed that our profession has been able to evolve and survive so far. And I truly believe that it will survive into the future. It won’t be the same. It won’t look the same, but it will survive. HG: It’ll be closer to knowledge management, capturing that somehow, and coordinating it. Our group here at Eccles coordinates a lot of efforts. U-Bar is a good example of that, working with people throughout the whole campus. Healthi4U is another example; it includes people throughout the whole campus. We draw people together to create information. JS: Exactly. And I guess, again, to answer what I’m most proud of is taking an idea from concept to fulfillment, and being able to take that idea to a final product or outcome. 36 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 But I’m not done. I still have ideas. I’m going to the next phase of my career. I have published journal articles, and some book chapters over the years. Now I’m a co-editing two books. It’s been really fun to go into that realm, although we no longer collect print books. I find it ironic that I’m creating a book that I won’t buy. [both laugh] HG: You can get the digital version. JS: Yes we can get the digital I guess. We need a new container, too, for our professional output. I’m kind of helping, I guess, when you think about what books do, they condense and they bring into one place a lot of information. I wanted us to have what we did for innovators documented since we were the first medical library to really do this. What better way than to create a book that, no matter if anyone reads it or not, it will exist, and have that history and involvement rewarded. I’m looking at working more with the Society for Scholarly Publishing. I’ve been on its Board of Directors, and I’ve really enjoyed seeing the other side of the story. Being able to see how publishers think about this same content that librarians have always “owned.” Because it’s not ours to own. It’s ours to help refine and help people to do-encourage them to write. But it’s not ours. Publishers have just as much involvement, if not more, because they’re having to produce a product and make a profit if they’re commercial. No margin, no mission. I loved that statement when I heard that. I was like, “Duh. Yeah.” And libraries have been – well, I hate to say this out loud, but libraries have been protected from the business world because we have been the apple pie and good for the University. We’ve not revenue generators in most cases. A couple libraries are, but now we are colliding with a group of people that have to make money. It’s not a comfortable collision. I’ve 37 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 been able to help bridge that gap and hope to continue to do that with the Chicago Collaborative work, where editors, publishers and librarians meet twice a year to talk about the big issues and to help shape the future of scholarly communication. Because it will be different, that’s what I want to continue to work with. I’d also love to continue to work with innovation because I think it is innovative [laughs]. It is going to become a fabric word, too. It’s just not going to be extra special. It’s going to be like Lean became here. The deep dive center was no longer needed as Lean became embedded. I see a day when innovation space is no longer needed because everything’s innovation space. And I have to say– I think even the Discovery Center is going to be a little dated by the time it gets built. Because we’re building it as we know it now; we can’t even imagine the needs of innovation down the road. HG: Right. Building it for our needs now. It could be five years before it’s built. JS: Look back five years. Let’s see, we had a print collection then, if I remember [laughs]. So these are the musings I have about the future. HG: Before you retire, do you have any big goals that you want to reach? Do you have anything else you would like – to do, obvious things? JS: Co-editing, the books is big. They take a lot of effort and time. I think serving someday as president of SSP would be interesting. HG: And SSP is? JS: Society for Scholarly Publishing. If I’m honored to be offered, I think it would be really fun to work even more closely with publishers. 38 Jean P. Shipman 27 July 2016 But I hope I never get afraid. I guess that’s my biggest goal- I know that with aging, fear sets in. People tell me you get afraid to drive somewhere. You get afraid – and I’m hoping that never happens to me. HG: That will never happen to you. JS: I hope. I hope that I’m never afraid to take the next step, whatever it is, that has to be done– and I hope that I can see what that next step is before I trip on it [laughs], and I’m not pushed down the next step. You do start to see yourself age. People always warn you about such things, but until you’re there, you really don’t understand. HG: “I feel it now.” JS: And I think Jerry Seinfeld had the right approach: get out while the going’s good. I don’t want to get to the point where I’m not helping to take a situation further. I want to build– just shoot me if I get there, okay? [both laugh] HG: I’ll be right there for you. JS: All right. You have my back. I think that can be the saddest thing, when people don’t realize it’s time to walk away, and you had your heyday. HG: Because that does happen. JS: Yeah. But other than that, I do want to do more fun things. I love talking with people about the future of scholarly communication because it’s going to be quite different. How do you collect – as I look at all my digital files, I think, Where’s that going to go when I leave? HG: Right. Everything that we create is sitting in a digital file somewhere. JS: How’s these files going to migrate to new formats? Not everything has to be preserved, but how will we be able to preserve the Gettysburg Address of today? 39 Jean P. Shipman HG: 27 July 2016 Right. I’ve done a lot of historical research, there are years that are missing because people stored it digitally and it is not available anymore. It’s gone. JS: Even with Dr. Betz’s retirement, he said, “Well, I don’t have a lot to give you because it’s mostly digital.” We still tried to capture it. But it’s much tougher, even though it should be easier. It’s kind of a funny thought. HG: Yeah. Nobody thought about how that would play out [laughs]. JS: Yeah. And how will it with big data? Because it’s big data – what we capture today in ten years won’t be readable. How are we going to migrate all that to constantly spin into the future, too? And if it’s so big [laughs] who’s going to do that? And what’s that called? Data massagers. I don’t know. HG: That’s what it feels like. JS: I think there’s just one more thing I’d like to discuss – I recently talked with Dr. Lee about a college for information to see if there was something that we should explore here. There is not a library school or a college for library science or information in the state. We have some other programs that are virtually here, but not a college. we had a fascinating conversation as it takes a lot to start a college. I still wonder, where is that next college that’s going to teach data? Right now it seems like informatics is going to so some of it, but I’m not sure they’ve got it all. They’ve got some of it. I do think innovation, information, and data could be the next school for the University down the road. HG: Very interesting to see. JS: If there were something like that started, it’d be fun to be a part of that, too, but I don’t know that it’ll happen here. I get it; I really do. I just think there is going to be a need for some professional that’s not figured out yet to do all this stuff. 40 Jean P. Shipman HG: 27 July 2016 Right. It’s that next step of, okay, this group is creating this, and this group is using this, but who’s the middle guy? JS: And who’s the preserver and who’s the selector? When you think about library collections, they were built by people who shifted through tons of materials that could be added to a collection and picked what they thought was the best. Are we going to do that with digital content? Not so much that I’ve seen. There’s no one out there really collecting – I mean, Novel, e-channel, those are, I guess, equivalents of collections. But where are they going to end up? I mean, will e-channel still exist in five years? HG: We don’t know. JS: No, we don’t know. HG: A lot changes in five years. JS: And will something else come along that makes it so much easier to manipulate data – like HTML. I learned how to code HTML when it first came out, then Dreamweaver came along. Now, you really don’t need to code, you just buy something, like WordPress, to create websites. Will there be that kind of “template-y” thing for data content massagers of the future, so you don’t have to worry about what format your digital file resides in. It’s just– it gets stored as raw data, and then it gets an overlay put on it that makes it relevant for the moment. Then during the next decade, another version massages the data again into a different readable format? That’s I think we need, but what is “that”? HG: Yeah. How do we create that? So before we end, is there anything else that you want to share about your career or your vision? We’ve been pretty thorough I think. 41 Jean P. Shipman JS: 27 July 2016 I think we have been thorough. One thing I’d just like to express is my thanks to all the directors, mentors, Vivian Lee, all the people who I’ve worked for that have helped shape my vision, potential, and experience to not be the typical librarian. From Nina Matheson, even though it was very painful, to Vivian Lee, I’ve had an opportunity to work with people that have given me the ability to not think in a container, but to think beyond the box. I thank them. HG: Yeah. Great mentors along the way. JS: Yeah. And thanks to all the members of MLA. There’s so many friends I’ve developed along the way, too. And Lucretia McClure at MLA always does a talk for the new MLA members about this. She states “Look around you because these are going to be your lifelong friends. You don’t know that yet, but you’re going to watch that person’s kid graduate and get married and see their grandkids.” It’s a small enough field that we can have those close relationships, but also never burn a bridge because you are working with the same people. Be careful as you move up [laughs] if that’s your goal. I think six degrees from Kevin Bacon applies in the medical library world. [both laugh] JS: We’re all connected some way or know each other – as we have probably worked together at some point in time. And I thank the staff here and the faculty, too. They’re really terrific people. HG: They are. It’s a great place to be. Not a lot of turnover here. Everyone stays a long time. JS: And the new ones that have come in have added a lot already, and I think will be here for hopefully a while as well. Thank you again for the opportunity to record and to pontificate about my reflections as the Eccles Library director. 42 Jean P. Shipman HG: Thanks, Jean, for your time. JS: Glad to do so. 27 July 2016 END OF INTERVIEW ©Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, University of Utah 43