She doesn’t go around shushing people or wear horn-rimmed glasses, but Shirley Baker has been the face of Washington University’s libraries since 1989.

This June, she will be retiring, handing the job off to Jeffrey Trzeciak, the University Librarian of McMaster University in Canada.

Baker, the vice chancellor for scholarly resources and the dean of University Libraries, has her office on the third floor of the Olin Library. The room, with windows overlooking the ginkgo trees on the quad, is decorated with various knickknacks from the past 23 years: memos from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an oriental rug from the home of a library benefactor and a bust of Arthur Holly Compton wearing a construction hat.

The variety on her desk only partially reflects the change she has overseen at the libraries.

“I have been here for just short of 23 years, and they have been times of massive change. When I came in, everything was in print, the catalogues were in cards, there was no network, and nobody had email in the libraries,” said Baker.

Under Baker, the Ronald Rettner Earth & Planetary Sciences Library as well as the Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library were built, and 10 of the University’s 12 libraries were reconstructed. The collection of Thomas Jefferson books was also discovered.

“So, wiring the digital things, [working on] buildings, resource sharing and dramatically expanding the University collections–that is what I did for 23 years,” Baker said.

Her accomplishments, however, are in no way limited to the Danforth Campus. In fact, Baker noted that the majority of her accomplishments were national and international endeavors that came back to influence the University.

In the last two decades, Baker has worked as the board president and co-founder of MOBIUS, the resource-sharing consortium of Missouri libraries. She was also integral to WorldCat, an online library catalog where students can access resources from more than 170 countries. She has also held numerous and various leadership positions in library and research organizations.

After receiving master’s degrees in library science and south Asian languages and civilizations, Baker became a librarian at Northwestern University. From there, Baker advanced in her career to higher positions at Johns Hopkins University and MIT before joining the Washington University community.

“What gives me pleasure is making things happen, seeing what needs to be done, and if somebody else isn’t doing it, stepping forward and doing what needs to happen,” Baker said in describing how she rose to her current position. “I didn’t think of myself as ambitious; I didn’t start out thinking, ‘I want to run a big library.’ I wanted to answer reference questions and buy books.”

Some of Baker’s favorite books include Patrick O’Brian’s series of novels set during the naval battles of the Napoleonic Wars. She has recently taken up reading mysteries, and once went through a 10-year period where she only read non-fiction.

Baker shares her love of books and education with her family. Her husband, Richard Baker, is a book and paper conservator, and he has built a bindery behind their house. Their son worked as a web developer for two years before ultimately deciding to be a librarian as well. Their daughter is set on avoiding a career with books, according to Baker, although her son-in-law, a technologist at a school system, has just acquired the library under his area of responsibilities.

After retiring, Baker said her plan is not to work. However, friends suggested that she write a book on leadership.

“I was initially hesitant, but then someone reminded me that I tell really interesting stories and use these to mentor people. If anyone [has] a problem, I share my own stories about how I encountered that particular problem—or how I failed at it.”

Baker now has a book contract. After June, she intends to spend her retirement in St. Louis with her husband, also recently retired, and work on her book.