2009 Distinguished Alumna Reflects on Career in Special Librarianship

By Ann Beckmann

When she arrived at the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune, Sharon Stewart Reeves took over a newspaper library where women — even famous ones — were filed under their husbands’ names. Television was filed under radio because radio came first.

It was 1975 and Reeves faced a formidable task. Making sense of peculiarly organized newspaper clippings was an early challenge in a career that would display vision, determination and advocacy.

Today, Sharon Reeves is the recipient of the UW Information School’s 2009 Distinguished Alumna Award, the highest honor bestowed on an alumna or alumnus. In its 40–year history, the award has recognized leaders and innovators in the field, including Margaret Chisholm and Beverly Cleary.

Reeves grew up on a small farm in Minnesota. While working on her B.A. at the University of Minnesota Morris, she came to summer school at the University of Washington in 1966. That’s when she met Paul Reeves, her future husband.

Once she completed her B.A., becoming a librarian struck this history major as a better option than teaching. She headed for Seattle and entered the UW School of Librarianship.

She landed a job at the Seattle Times Library and Information Bureau and worked there while a student. She spent a fair chunk of time answering oddball questions from the public: How many people had jumped off the Aurora Bridge? How many steps to the top of the Space Needle?

Meanwhile, in her library studies Reeves balked at taking children’s literature classes.

"I steadfastly refused to take a ‘kiddy lit’ class," she says. "I also avoided the weekly teas. I know that sounds like I didn’t enjoy library school. I did enjoy the classes, just not the social part."

Her favorite class was History of the Book, taught by the late Prof. L. Dorothy Bevis near the end of her 25-year teaching career.

"It probably wasn’t the most useful class, but it certainly was the most interesting," Reeves notes.

After completing her MLib degree in 1969, she became the lone cataloger for Battelle Northwest at Hanford. On weekends, she often trekked to Seattle to see Paul, who was studying for his master’s and Ph.D. at the UW Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

When they married in 1971, she returned to the Seattle area and took a job as a research librarian for The Boeing Company. She worked at the ready reference desk and did in-depth literature searches for engineers. Enterprising librarian that she was, she also developed the original pilot project at Boeing to introduce online searching.

"The library didn’t have its own computer, so each afternoon I borrowed a ‘portable’ computer that weighed 25 or 30 pounds from one of the engineering offices. It didn’t take long to make me a believer in online searching. I soon found that in many cases I could produce the same results in less than an hour that it would have taken most of a week to produce manually," she says.

After her husband completed his Ph.D. in 1974, they moved to San Diego. She found a temporary job at the James S. Copley Library cataloging Revolutionary War materials, a great match for this history buff.

In short order, the San Diego dailies, both then owned by Copley Newspapers, sought a new library director. With a recommendation from her Copley Library boss, she was a shoo-in.

She remembers starting her new job on April Fools’ Day. As soon as she put the newspaper clippings in order — no small chore at a library that supported two newspapers — she explored procedures for greater efficiency. Early on, she recognized a newspaper library could better serve its reporters and editors by not taking public calls.

With her Boeing background in early online information retrieval, Reeves soon became the first newspaper librarian in the West — and third in the nation — to implement an online archive. In 1978, she introduced Dialog® for online searches, then LexisNexis® in 1979 and Basis archiving software in 1983. By 1984, her library was fully automated and archivists no longer clipped stories from all editions of the two newspapers.

"The IT staff used to tease me because every time new software came out, I’d think of six other things I could do with it," Reeves says.

The way Barbara Semonche sees it, Reeves ran a top-notch professional news research department. A former news librarian and library director at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Chapel Hill, Semonche met Reeves in 1977 through the Special Libraries Association (SLA).

Semonche explains the many ways Reeves contributed to discussions in the News Division, a national group of news media librarians within the SLA. Key word indexing, text and image archival technology, digitizing newspaper microfilm, news library ethics and copyright issues were among the topics Reeves addressed in various roles at annual SLA conventions.

"She is a clear news research champion in my mind," Semonche says.

By 1990, Reeves had a library staff of 25. One of them was Anne Magill, hired by Reeves as a library assistant in 1985 and the senior research librarian today.

"She did such a great job of selecting staff," says Magill. "We knew we could trust one another. It was a good work environment — engaging and fun — and she set the pace for us."

Nancy Wyld, the last boss Reeves had before retirement, describes Reeves as forward-looking and thoughtful.

"With will and determination, she always asked, ‘How can we do this better?’ She would step in — knowing what she wanted to do — and find the forces to make it happen," notes Wyld, newsroom operations manager at what is now the San Diego Union-Tribune.

After the two papers merged and became the Union-Tribune in 1992, Reeves lobbied for her research librarians to receive credit in print for their efforts. It became a much-admired policy among newspaper librarians nationwide, says Semonche.

As a result, four staff librarians received published credit on several stories in the entry that won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, among other national awards. The reporting exposed bribery and influence peddling by California Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, which led to his resignation and an eight-year prison sentence.

That same year, Reeves accepted the paper’s first buyout for those with 30 or more years of service. "I couldn’t afford not to retire," she says.

When she left, the merger and attrition had reduced her staff to 14. The paper’s library now operates with a staff of five and Copley Newspapers sold the Union-Tribune this spring to a private equity firm.

"I’m so glad I retired when I did," Reeves says with a sigh. After a successful career as a research engineer, her husband Paul joined her in retirement last year.

Sharon Reeves now spends her spare time knitting and crocheting booties and caps for doulas to give to newborns at the University of California San Diego Hospital. She figures she produces 25–35 sets a month.

"It’s fun, keeps me out of mischief and probably provides many of the babies with the only handmade item of apparel they will ever have," she says.