Shane Godbolt died on 24th November 2019. I am not qualified to write a full obituary, but these are some memories.
I first met her in the 1990s, but her fame preceded her: Information Sources in the Medical Sciences, whose 3rd and 4th editions she co-edited with Leslie Morton, was a great help to a newcomer to medical librarianship like me. At that time she ran the NorthWest Thames regional library system, while I worked as Librarian of North Middlesex Hospital in North East Thames, under the wise direction of John Hewlett.
Shane’s collaboration with Leslie Morton was important, not just for the books they worked on together, but for the work he started and she continued, building a network of libraries and librarians in the medical education centres of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation. It was fitting that, when Leslie came to be interviewed for the MLA’s oral history project, Shane was the interviewer, along with T. Mark Hodges. It is such a pity that some of the tapes were lost before they could be transcribed, but what survives may be seen here.
I think the first time I met her was when she gave the 1992 Bishop lecture. Shane was one of the few people to achieve both an FLA by the dissertation route in 1975, and a honorary FCLIP. Her FLA dissertation, the Incomparable Mac, later published as a book, formed the basis of her Bishop lecture which she was invited to deliver (now the Bishop-LeFanu lecture) in 1992. The Mac in the title refers to John MacAlister, who as both the founding secretary of the Royal Society of Medicine and Secretary of the Library Association epitomised the relationship between the professions of medicine and librarianship. Apple, whose British marketing department must have heard the title of the lecture, sent some promotional material, believing that the Incomparable Mac must be one of their computers.
I came to work for Shane in 1995; i had already moved from North-East to North-West Thames, running the medical library at Edgware General Hospital, and the two North Thames regions merged. In those days the internet was a project, and Shane, while she was no technophile, saw the potential. of the internet I was appointed as Senior Project Officer for the internet and regional documents database projects at the newly merged North Thames Regional Library and Information Unit, of which Shane was the overall head.
It was an extraordinary place to work. There were a hundred and one projects at different stages of progress. A visit to Shane’s office could mean a chance encounter with distinguished foreign visitors from the US Medical Library Association, or the National Library of Medicine, or Finland or India or anywhere in the world. The plates were kept spinning with the help of Susan Fairlamb, her PA, and her husband Paul.
Shane was always open to new ideas; this was the time of the evidence-based medicine movement. David Sackett delivered the 1995 Bishop lecture (I still have a cassette recording of it somewhere) and Shane deployed her librarians to the second UK workshop on teaching evidence based medicine. In some portakabins in the grounds of the Whittington hospital at Archway, we rubbed shoulders with some of the founders of EBM and first heard the dread words critical appraisal.
Shane also had the knack of persuading others to take on tasks without her interlocutor ever realising that they had been persuaded. She invited me to come and talk to the Editorial Board of Health Libraries Review about the internet: I think I may have suggested that they might want to think about making the journal available online. The next thing I knew, I was a member of the Editorial Board.
I moved on from North Thames unit to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and was not there to see it join with the South to form one unit for the whole of London. I followed Shane’s career, which did not stop for anything as trifling as retirement, and she continued to be a regular and inspiring figure at professional meetings nationally and internationally.
Tributes will probably concentrate on her international work, for which she was very well-known. Her work for British medical librarianship, though, should not be ignored: she gave the profession our own scholarly journal, she brought together the health libraries of the capital for the first time, and she could be relied upon to listen and offer original and wise advice to anyone who asked. She will be very much missed.