Look at the Instagram accounts of various libraries, for instance, full of rare collections and images of decorative bindings. “These accounts have a lot of followers,” he says.

Conversation with Lipcan flows easily from talking about his favorite new breweries in Salem and Beverly to the digitization efforts he led at The Met. At PEM, he will lead ongoing digitization projects and help transform the highly-respected research library—with its rich and varied global collections—into an innovative and active intellectual hub that supports the overall mission of the museum.

“Digitization takes a lot of work if you do it right,” says Lipcan. Challenges are figuring out workflow and changing technology. But, it benefits both the institution and the public, he says, enabling scholarship and promoting PEM’s vast collection, while eliminating economic barriers and geographical distance. Libraries do an exceptional job, he says, of bridging the analog – such as decorative bookbinding, fonts, type and paper – with the digital world.

Lipcan’s arrival around Memorial Day coincided with the announcement of recent digitization efforts at the Phillips Library. Since 2014, the library has been enhancing digital access, enabling researchers around the globe to better access its vast and diverse collection. In the last year, another digitization initiative made high-priority material widely available. Working with the Internet Archive, a digital library that partners with the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, The Getty Research Institute and Harvard University to provide “Universal Access to All Knowledge,” more than 170 publications from PEM’s Phillips Library collection are now available online. The library also recently acquired digitization equipment to allow fragile and oversized materials to be safely processed in-house and shared with a global audience.

Lipcan is excited to dig into the collection, which includes several hundred thousand printed volumes and a linear mile of manuscript collections. He finds “remarkable” the sheer size of the Essex County family and business papers, deeds and census records. “The depth is astonishing,” he says. Beyond that, the logbooks, ship voyages and maritime journals are the very foundation of the museum, he says. Still, he adds, new things come in, supporting global and contemporary interests, including recently acquired material from South Asia.

Jumping right in, Lipcan has been going to curatorial meetings, reaching out to further integrate the library collection into museum exhibitions. “We have the opportunity to tell a lot of stories,” he says. “We may not have paintings or sculpture on a subject, but we may have library materials.”

One of the things that attracted him to the job is the Folger Gallery in the new wing, dedicated to showcasing works from the library collection. The first exhibition, The Creative Legacy of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selections from the Phillips Library Collection, features some of the library’s 3,000 works by Salem’s literary son. Focusing on the visual artistry of bookmaking and printing, from cover designs to typography, the exhibition highlights the full creativity present in books as literature and art objects.

From his busy New York life, Lipcan is excited about the backroad drive he makes to the library collection in Rowley every day, as well as the fact that there’s a farm stand and strawberry picking down the road. When it comes to the new job, Lipcan says that’s about talking to people, listening and figuring out the priorities. While we sip iced tea, he’s preparing to further his mission to engage visitors and patrons by heading off to lunch with two members of the Salem community.

“I’m thrilled that people care about the library,” says Lipcan. “That is an opportunity to have a discussion. The Phillips Library is poised to do some interesting and fun things that have meaning and impact people.”

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