For Anne

[Roy Tennant]

Anne Grodzins Lipow -- a true treasure of librarianship -- died at her 
home in Belvedere, CA on Thursday, September 9 of cancer. There is so 
much to say about Anne, that I despair of describing how she has 
affected us -- not just those blessed with knowing her personally, but 
also the library profession as a whole.

I do not know Anne's life history, nor her many contributions outside 
of librarianship, so from me you will get a very personal story, and 
perhaps through this one small window get to know something about this 
remarkable person, and why I am posting such a personal message to this 
list.

As a newly-minted librarian at UC Berkeley in the second half of the 
1980s, I knew Anne as the person who led the outreach and instructional 
efforts of the library. Before long, she saw in me the potential to be 
a good teacher, despite my fear of public speaking, so she pulled me 
into her program and began teaching me everything she knew about 
speaking, putting on workshops, making handouts, etc. Under her 
tutelage, I taught such classes as dialup access to the library 
catalog, when 300bps modems were still common.

As the Internet began making inroads into universities, Anne was there 
with newly-developed workshops on how to use it. She was convinced very 
early on, as was I, that the Internet would be an essential technology 
for libraries. This led to her approaching me and my colleague John 
Ober (then on faculty at the library school at Berkeley) about doing a 
full-day Internet workshop scheduled to coincide with the 1992 ALA 
Annual Conference in San Francisco. Using a metaphor of John's, we 
called it "Crossing the Internet Threshold".

In preparing for the workshop, we created so many handouts that we 
needed to put them into a binder that began to look increasingly like a 
book in the making. With typical Anne flair, she arranged for the 
gifted librarian cartoonist Gary Handman (also our colleague at 
Berkeley) to create a snazzy cover for the binder, that she also used 
to create T-shirts (which many of us have to this day).

Anne knew enough about workshops to do a "trial run" before the big 
day, so we used UCB library staff as guinea pigs a couple weeks before, 
which gave us feedback essential to making an excellent workshop. In 
the end, the workshop was such a hit that Anne ran with it. She took 
the binder of handouts we had created and made a book out of it -- the 
first book of her newly-created business called Library Solutions 
Institute and Press. Her decision to publish the book herself rather 
than seek out a publisher was also typical of Anne. And _how_ she did 
it will tell you a lot about her.

Despite the higher cost, Anne insisted on using domestic union printing 
shops for printing. While other publishers were publishing books 
overseas for a fraction of the cost, to Anne publishing was a political 
and social activity, through which she could do good for those around 
her. It was very important to her to treat people with respect and 
kindness, and she did it so well. That was the kind of person Anne was.

While every publisher I have so far worked with other than Anne has 
insisted they are incapable of paying royalties any more frequently 
than twice a year, Anne paid her authors _monthly_. And whereas other 
publishers wait _months_ to pay you for royalties earned long before, 
Anne would pay immediately. This meant that when books were returned, 
as they sometimes were, she took the loss for having paid the author 
royalties on books that had not been sold. That was the kind of person 
Anne was.

Anne continued to blaze new trails after libraries began climbing on 
the Internet bandwagon, due in no small measure to her books and 
workshops on the topic. Anne became a well-known and coveted consultant 
on a number of topics, but in particular on reference services. Her 
"Rethinking Reference" institutes and book were widely acclaimed, and 
her book "The Virtual Reference Librarian's Handbook" (just published 
in 2003) demonstrated that Anne was always at the cutting edge of 
librarianship. That was the kind of person Anne was.

I visited her after her cancer was diagnosed and after her treatment 
had failed. We all knew there was no hope, that she had only a matter 
of weeks to live. Despite the obvious ravages of the illness, Anne's 
outlook remained bright and welcoming. She was happy to have her 
friends and family around her, and we talked of many things except that 
which hung over us all. Even then, she was happy to see whoever came 
by, and to talk with them with a smile and good wishes. That was the 
kind of person Anne was.

A piece of all my major professional accomplishments I owe to Anne, and 
her great and good influence on me. She would deny this, despite it's 
truth, wanting all the credit to accrue to me alone. That was the kind 
of person Anne was. That, and so much more. Goodbye, good friend. We 
are so much the poorer for your passing.
Roy