Mike Ingram came to work at Smith Library in 1987 but more importantly he graduated from High Point College in 1977. After getting a MFA from Arkansas State in English, he taught as an adjunct. While finishing library school in 1987, he worked at UNCG and later applied for the Head of Technical Services position and has worked at High Point College and later High Point University for over 30 years.
After that span of time, Mike has had an enormous impact on the library and the campus. When he first started the collection was about 200,000 print, serial, and microfilm volumes while today the collection numbers just shy of 1 million volumes of books, journals, and digital content. It is Mike who makes access to these materials work and he has done a stellar job. In thirty years he has gone through 3 SACS accreditation and a host of programmatic accreditations and in all of those visits and reports, access to library content and collections was never an issue.
In the late 80’s, Mike often had one of 2 computers on campus start a database sort in the afternoon so it would be finished the next morning. In 1996 Mike was instrumental in bringing the first online library catalog to the colleges in this area. Working with other librarians through PICA (Piedmont Independent College Association) and a state library grant, the paper card catalog book records of the PICA schools were converted to online holdings and were then made accessible via a shared online catalog. Students and faculty could use the 6 video display terminals (VDT) in Smith Library to search for holdings at High Point plus 5 other schools in the area including Greensboro and Guilford College. Later, in 2005 and at the University’s insistence, the library converted to its own online access (catalog) leaving PICA and the shared platform. Finally in 2011, Mike with the help of the other librarians made the move to the current online catalog. We were one of the first two libraries in the state to adopt this new system and we were in good company; the other school was Davidson. Today our holdings are on the same shared platform as hundreds of other libraries from around the state and the world providing our patrons with a wealth of high quality content. A search of worldwide libraries provides a student at the university access to nearly 2 billion items. One conversion is a great deal of work but three (very successful) conversions in a career is really quite notable.
Over the years Mike has served on many committees but really dedicated himself to technology by serving on the university technology committee and as an avid gardener he truly enjoyed the time that he served on the gardening committee.
I have benefited from Mike’s wisdom for 30 years. In the last 15 Mike and I realized that we made a good team. I was right-handed and he was left-handed. I had many ideas and he had many solutions. Mike’s steady philosophical bent made him a great colleague.
One of his thoughts that will stay with me for years to come happened one pretty day at the first of May as we were waiting in line for commencement to begin. We were dressed in our robes anticipating the start of the precession. It would be a long morning. When you are faculty with status but without rank you are perpetually at the end of the line. I noted this but without skipping a beat Mike quipped that I should look on the bright side – no one sits down until we sit down.
He will be missed.
-Blog post by David Bryden, Director of Library Services