Lindquist honored with 2019 Shapiro Award

The world of library acquisitions is surprisingly volatile.

Fondren Library’s head of acquisitions Janice Lindquist, left, was presented with the 2019 Shapiro Award by Vice Provost and University Librarian Sara Lowman. (Photos by Jeff Fitlow)

A top-tier research university such as Rice requires books and other resources that can come from any country and in any language or format. They’re often needed on the spur of the moment, for rush delivery. Supplier relationships are capricious, with currencies fluctuating and dealers constantly going in and out of business. Major vendor bankruptcies in 2003 and 2014 tossed the library world into disarray, costing libraries across the world millions of dollars.

But not Rice, which navigated these fraught waters thanks to the professional prudence and expertise of Janice Lindquist, the university’s head of acquisitions.

“Thanks to Janice’s business foresight, she revended our subscriptions before they went out of business,” said Melinda Flannery, assistant university librarian for technical services, during a May 21 reception to honor Lindquist, winner of the 2019 Shapiro Award, in Fondren Library’s historic Kyle Morrow Room.

The award is named for former Rice librarian Beth Shapiro, who was a beloved mentor and tireless advocate for numerous causes. Before she died of cancer in 1995, she and her husband Russell Barnes created the Shapiro Award recognizing staff members who have developed an innovative program to provide library services or shown other exemplary service to the community.

Russell Barnes, Rice’s director of equal employment opportunity programs and affirmative action, wrote the guidelines for the Shapiro Award with wife Beth Shapiro in the hospital just before she died.

An “unswerving instinct to preserve the university’s resources,” Flannery said, was just one of the reasons Lindquist was honored as the 18th winner of the annual award.

Lindquist is also a noted mentor who always puts her staff first and ensures they’re recognized for their efforts and supported in their ideas, said Vice Provost and University Librarian Sara Lowman. As a result, her team is known across the university for its results: Work given to acquisitions will always be done right, on time and to spec.

“Beth would have been very proud of Janice’s impact on the library and the effects she’s had moving us forward with technology in the acquisitions department, her great attention to detail and her mentoring of the staff,” Lowman said.

In addition to steering around sticky supplier situations and mentoring her team, Lindquist was noted for her ability to forecast changes that call for new approaches and then allocate the necessary resources.

Russell Barnes, Janice Lindquist, Sara Lowman, Melinda Flannery and Josh Lindquist

“The electronic resources librarian position she pushed for in 2007 is now a three-person team with additional tasks distributed to other staff,” Flannery offered as an example.

Since coming to Rice in 1993, Lindquist “has helped navigate Fondren through a significant number of business and technological changes that have affected the broader library profession,” Flannery said. “She has had a profound impact on the library and this university as a whole. We are grateful for her accomplishments and sure judgment.”

With her son Josh in attendance, Lindquist accepted the Shapiro Award and a hearty round of applause from the audience with characteristic deference.

“I’m not much of a speaker, but thank you very much and thank you to my staff for helping me look good,” she said.