A curious mind.

Leadership has many facets. Leadership may come from the power of a new idea. It may come from the impact of the written word or from the strength of an individual's personality. When you find an individual with all these attributes, you have a true leader. Such a person is Nina Matheson, FMLA. Her idea burst through the confusion about automation at a time when librarians were just beginning to envision an electronic future. Her report, “Academic Information in the Academic Health Sciences Center: Roles for the Library in Information Management,” was published in 1982 [1]. She forced us to think in a new way, to look beyond the walls of the library, to take responsibility for information management in a way librarians had not done before. The year is 1982. What was happening two decades ago? Scanning the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association of that era, you find articles on indexing consistency, cooperative cataloging, patient education, and journal pricing along with many pieces on automation—retrieval systems, technology advances, and so on. All were interesting but just examples of single programs in individual libraries. The Matheson design placed the library in the center of the medical institution, not only with library activities but with all areas of information use. The data in the medical center would be integrated along with information and knowledge resources in a comprehensive networked information system. With this vast and varied information and knowledge available to faculty, staff, research staff, and students, the medical center becomes a community. In 1982, libraries were overwhelmed with the streams of information, and the new technologies were seen as the way to stem the flood. Electronic information has no building barriers to access, no disadvantages in distance. The time saved was a boon to busy practitioners and researchers tied to their labs. But the network concept was not accepted by all. Libraries were mired in print, bound by tradition, and many librarians were literally “scared” of the computer. And we had no equipment budgets to accommodate the needs for servers, terminals, and telecommunications. Nevertheless, libraries forged ahead with the Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) program. Nina Matheson changed the way we practiced, and her model became the standard. Nina Matheson's leadership also shines through her publications. In 1977, she wrote of the changes needed for libraries to survive. Her title, “The Clouded Crystal Ball and the Library Profession,” provided a clear vision of what was needed: leave behind the idea of the library as an information center in the sense of a collection of physical resources [2]. Instead, the library must become a collection of intellectual resources. This idea is exciting, for one of the best “intellectual resources” in the library is the librarian. She also championed the part librarians could play in the educational process of the institution. This was 1977, and she was pushing the profession to think, to change, to take risks, and to become decision makers. Her Janet Doe Lecture in 1995, “The Idea of the Library in the Twenty-first Century,” is also visionary and challenging. She quotes A. N. Whitehead, “First-hand knowledge is the ultimate basis of intellectual life.” She adds that book learning conveys secondhand information; it is not enough to have a library filled with the knowledge of others. Here again, she breaks through the tradition and says the library must foster the creation of new knowledge. And, if we are to do that successfully, we must wrench ourselves away from those traditions and change. Today, many libraries are doing just that: owning and managing firsthand knowledge. But read her words, beautifully expressed, to see a true visionary: I discovered the key limitation of my life and idea of the library. The access points to knowledge—the libraries, the catalogs, the indexes, the textbooks, the monographs, the journal articles, the encyclopedias—are only primitive approximations of access to knowledge. It was then that I discovered the limits of libraries as a technology. There is no way to get an orderly display of knowledge in any specific domain. There are only little peepholes to some portion of the elephant known as a discipline. We all know this library reality, especially scholars and, more especially, those students who gave up on libraries early along the education pathway. The barriers only begin with the library as a place. The barriers ascend through each of the levels imposed by the forms in which knowledge is described or encapsulated. [3] Today, the library is changing, whether or not we are leading the change. The profession is changing and demanding that we work in different venues and provide our resources in different ways. Anyone reading her words could have expected what we are experiencing now. The third facet of this leader is the force of her personality. Nina Matheson is not aggressive or demanding. She is quiet and thoughtful. But being with her or working with her on a committee or program is exhilarating. Her conversation, her knowledge, her vitality, and the excitement she demonstrates when good ideas are expressed make people think. After being with her, you look within yourself for ways to change and grow. Nina Matheson will be one of the librarians listed in a roll call of library leaders. This is not just my opinion. There is ample evidence that she outlined a future for libraries that caused a sea change in our thinking. Just some of the appointments and honors given her show the breadth of her success. In addition to the Janet Doe Lecture, she was given the Medical Library of Association's (MLA's) highest honor, the Marcia C. Noyes Award. She won the Ida and George Eliot prize for her publication, “The Health Sciences Librarian as a Knowledge Worker,” published in Library Trends in 1993 [4]. She received the President's Award and is a Fellow of MLA. One signal recognition was her election to the Institute of Medicine in 1993. In that same year, she was a visiting professor at Guy's and St. Thomas' Medical and Dental School in London. She was president of both MLA and the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. She served as librarian at a number of prestigious medical schools: the William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins, the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library at George Washington University School of Medicine and the Health Sciences, and the Missouri Institute of Psychiatry. During her work as a director, she mentored many librarians, both in her institutions and through work in various associations. She was on the staff of both the National Library of Medicine and the Association of American Medical Colleges, where she developed the IAIMS program. Perhaps you will never have the opportunity to meet Nina Matheson. But you can follow her career and read her words. She is among the finest in our profession, and you could describe her in a few words: leader, visionary, intellectual, author, friend. And a thinker, whose curiosity led her to probe and develop ideas, concepts, and a way for the future of libraries.