Vernon Mathew Pings, FMLA, 1923–2008

Vernon Mathew Pings, FMLA, was born in 1923, in Sauk City, Wisconsin. In 1939, after graduating from high school in the closing years of the Great Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and served for two years. Following his CCC service, he went to nursing school at the University of Chicago, graduating with a bachelor of philosophy in 1946. He earned a bachelor's degree in zoology at the University of Wisconsin in 1947 and a master's degree in health education in 1952 from Columbia University. He earned his library science degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1955 and went on to earn his doctorate in education from the University of Wisconsin in 1958.

His career ranged widely, beginning as a nurse and nursing school instructor in the Midwest in 1944–1948, followed by service in the Middle East from 1949–1954. While in the Middle East, he worked in Gaza and Beirut as a refugee services officer, first with the American Friends Service Committee and then with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (1949–1951). He later worked as director of the American University of Beirut School of Agriculture's University Farm (1952–1954).

After he received his library science degree in 1955, Pings focused his professional career on librarianship. His first position was as assistant engineering librarian at the University of Wisconsin (1955–1958), followed by service as director of libraries at Ohio Northern University (1958–1959). In 1960, he moved to Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit, Michigan, as librarian, later becoming the director of the medical library (1961–1971), and then director of university libraries (1971–1984).

Pings came to Wayne State in 1960 as assistant librarian II and assistant professor of medicine in 1960. Prior to joining WSU, he was an associate professor at the school of librarianship at the University of Denver. Barely a year after being hired at WSU, he was named medical librarian (on April 1, 1961), when the previous director retired. He was instrumental in the design of the WSU Shiffman Medical Library, built in 1968. The new medical library at that time was intended, as Pings stated, “to serve not only the School of Medicine itself but the health sciences professions in the Detroit metropolitan community as well.” Funding for the $2 million library came from a $1,432,246 grant from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a $500,000 gift from Abraham Shiffman—for whom the library was named, a lifelong resident of Detroit and industrial real estate magnate—through the Shiffman Foundation, and $200,000 in gifts from WSU medical alumni.

Pings became director of the WSU library system in 1971, which was then ranked 40th in terms of volume count among the country's large academic research libraries. The library system had a $3.41 million budget and added approximately 90,000 books annually. As he assumed the directorship, Pings stated that libraries were changing, reflecting the changes occurring outside libraries, and that he intended to have the library reflect the “growing body of knowledge, new technologies, and new trends in society, education, and professions. The research library will have to use new technologies to keep pace. It will have to incorporate new retrieval techniques and services and utilize computer technology to carry out routines.”

Pings was very active in medical library associations and organizations. He reorganized the Detroit Medical Library Group, and he helped establish and served as director of the network of medical resource libraries of Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio under the National Library of Medicine's Regional Medical Library Program. His interest in new technologies led to his spearheading the organization of the Michigan Library Consortium (MLC) to bring the services of OCLC to Michigan libraries. MLC was an outgrowth of a 1973 meeting of library representatives from across the state that sought methods of increasing library cooperation and collaboration, from interlibrary loan activity, to economy-of-scale purchasing, to uniform cataloging and serials control. Seed money to establish MLC came from membership fees, a Kellogg Foundation grant, and Federal Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA) funds. Pings served as the acting director of MLC for two years, with the first headquarters on the WSU campus.

Pings published many scholarly publications on library management and garnered grant support for his research from the National Library of Medicine, the Shiffman and Kellogg Foundations, and the American Nurses Foundation. He wrote for American Documentation, American Journal of Nursing, Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, Catholic Library World, College and Research Libraries, Hospitals, Library Journal, Library Resources and Technical Services, Nursing Outlook, and Special Libraries. In addition to a wide range of articles, he authored a number of book chapters, library reports, studies, and papers dealing with the library profession, bibliographic organization, serials, literature utilization, document retrieval, nursing and medical libraries, interlibrary loan, automation of libraries, library service for the health sciences, and planning and design of hospital health sciences libraries, plus other topics relating to health sciences librarianship.

Pings was an active member of the Medical Library Association (MLA), the American Library Association (ALA), the Special Libraries Association (SLA), and the Michigan Library Association, as well as the local and regional chapters of the MLA, ALA, and SLA. In 1988, he was honored by selection as a Fellow of MLA. He was also a principal in creating the school of medicine library's post-master's fellowship program in medical librarianship sponsored by the US Public Health Service. The innovative fellowship provided one year of intensive training and education, a stipend, travel and education expenses, and an opportunity to become an active member of the biomedical community.

Pings was also active as an educator, holding an associate professor position at the School of Librarianship at the University of Denver (1960) and lecturing at Kent State University in Ohio (1962) and in the Department of Library Science at the University of Michigan (1966–1971). During his last two years at WSU (1984–1986), he moved from the university library system to hold a faculty appointment as professor in the WSU's Library and Information Science Program, teaching, among other courses, the automation of libraries. Technology was an important facet of librarianship for Pings, and he shared his knowledge regularly with library science students through his courses, presentations, and guest lectures.

One of his loves, other than libraries, was cooking, and he was even called a “vegetable freak.” In an article in the Detroit News in 1976, Pings was mentioned for his interest in cooking vegetables, which he stated he had developed as a “matter of survival. His mother did not know how to cook them, and as an adult he was a bachelor for so long he had to learn to cook.” Pings described himself as a “vegetable buff” and enjoyed shopping for vegetables at the Detroit Eastern Market every Saturday morning. The article also carried recipes that Pings recommended for cooking winter vegetables [1].

An oral history interview with Pings was done in 2001. The interviewer was Diane McKenzie, FMLA, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library [2]. She remembers that interview process and writes that

As you know Vern set up sanitation systems in the Palestinian refugee camps in the late 1940s. He told me that of all the things he had done, it was his work in Palestine that he was the proudest of. Some of the work was carried out under the auspices of the Quaker International programs, so I asked him if he were a Quaker. He paused. Then he said, “I really admire the Quakers. I think they do excellent work. But, I could never be a Quaker.” Then he paused again, “They are just too damn tolerant.”

Pings retired from WSU in 1986 and moved to Chapel Hill, where he lived until his death on November 3, 2008. He is survived by his wife, Joan, a sister and brother-in-law, and six nieces and nephews.