Agnes Adams

Miller, Tice Author

02/26/2024 Added

5 Plays

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This oral history is part of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Emeriti Association Oral Histories

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[00:00:01.200]So we'll see late,
[00:00:04.020]you have a whole year gone by,
[00:00:08.520]do I just start on? Thank you.
[00:00:11.700]I was just this June 24th, 2010.
[00:00:15.390]This is the oral history project sponsored by the UNL and maritime association
[00:00:20.070]today. We're interviewing Agnus Adams. Who's professor ameritized libraries.
[00:00:24.960]I'm Tyce Miller,
[00:00:25.810]professor emeritus of theater behind the camera is Jim Kendrick professor
[00:00:30.330]emeritus of ID. And, uh, well,
[00:00:33.960]it started to beginning Agnes, uh, your, your childhood and background.
[00:00:39.000]Well, I'm from central Illinois, a small town in,
[00:00:43.860]in Illinois. Um, I have, uh,
[00:00:48.540]two, uh, two sisters and a brother. Uh,
[00:00:52.320]I come from a family, uh, who I was the first,
[00:00:56.940]uh, first child in my family,
[00:00:59.580]including cousins who went on to school, uh,
[00:01:03.660]beyond high school. It was, uh,
[00:01:07.770]quite an occasion, but I had a very good, uh,
[00:01:11.910]high school, uh, background, uh,
[00:01:16.350]nice small town, but,
[00:01:18.450]but very good and always thought I was going to go on to
[00:01:22.860]school and always going to be a librarian.
[00:01:26.760]I started working in the library when I was probably 14 or
[00:01:31.320]15 years old. I worked in the public library and then I worked in the,
[00:01:36.720]my high school library and always
[00:01:41.490]knew that's what I wanted to do. I loved getting people in books together.
[00:01:47.070]Um,
[00:01:47.450]eventually it became getting people and information together a
[00:01:52.290]little bit different than what I had thought I was going to spend my life doing,
[00:01:56.790]but that's, uh, that's where I, I came from,
[00:02:00.690]went off from my little small town in central Illinois to the university of
[00:02:05.040]Illinois and went to school there
[00:02:09.420]in the early mid sixties. And, uh,
[00:02:14.910]then proceeded to, uh, to take a bit of a break. I don't know,
[00:02:19.890]we all do, uh, life interfered, uh, uh,
[00:02:24.840]husband, uh, the sixties, uh,
[00:02:29.100]travel.
[00:02:30.420]And a few years later I
[00:02:35.490]was living in Missouri and I went to graduate school at the university of
[00:02:39.900]Missouri and, uh,
[00:02:42.840]did a master's in library science there.
[00:02:46.290]Can we ship out the Illinois library? It's really one of the great big tent.
[00:02:52.620]And there was a cornfield,
[00:02:53.610]as I remember that was protected when the library didn't need to be expanded,
[00:02:57.780]we around.
[00:02:58.320]Them. No, that was, uh, after I left. But, uh,
[00:03:03.250]yes, that was, um, uh, what was it called?
[00:03:07.960]The mirror, Merle plot Merrill plot. Um,
[00:03:12.520]and, uh, that was, that was very important,
[00:03:16.900]but eventually the library did,
[00:03:19.690]did persevere and get that error or undergraduate training.
[00:03:24.610]Yes. Yes. And I was a history major Latin American studies was my,
[00:03:29.800]was my bachelor's degree, but while I was at Illinois,
[00:03:34.330]since we're back there,
[00:03:35.650]I did work in the physical education and the Slavic
[00:03:42.760]languages, libraries, uh, Illinois. No,
[00:03:46.360]those of you who've been there. Um, Tice, I know you are,
[00:03:50.440]there are lots of smaller. Oh.
[00:03:52.030]And I worked labor and industrial relations and that was a real, uh,
[00:03:58.330]fiery library. We had a,
[00:04:01.240]we had a firebrand of a communist that was the head librarian there.
[00:04:06.040]So those were interesting days,
[00:04:08.140]but I got a very good undergraduate background in and
[00:04:13.030]reinforced that. Yes, that's what I wanted to do.
[00:04:15.940]But it also broadened to see that there were lots of needs and lots of,
[00:04:20.920]lots of different folks to work with. Oh, yes,
[00:04:25.630]yes. That was, uh, I wasn't much of a football fan, but, uh,
[00:04:30.310]that was, uh, a joy to go. And you at least stayed through halftime.
[00:04:35.080]I don't think that the align I work at Correll all team
[00:04:39.970]back then. I haven't kept up, but, uh, yes,
[00:04:43.960]those were good days. Uh, if Champaign-Urbana was,
[00:04:48.910]uh, was such a different place coming from my small town.
[00:04:53.950]And, um, I just loved it.
[00:04:56.230]I think it it's seated
[00:05:01.210]a love of living in an academic community.
[00:05:05.650]And, uh, since those, since then, uh,
[00:05:09.700]I've lived in a couple major ag DEMEC communities, uh, west Lafayette,
[00:05:14.590]Purdue, and here, uh,
[00:05:17.380]Lincoln in the university of Nebraska.
[00:05:21.100]I was a couple of smaller places in Kentucky and Missouri,
[00:05:25.960]but, uh, there's just something special about it.
[00:05:29.110]University community that the ideas and the folks that are there.
[00:05:36.430]Well, I lived in both to begin with.
[00:05:39.400]I lived on campus and then actually Allen
[00:05:44.110]hall, they were the newest shiniest dorms at the time.
[00:05:48.820]My, of seemed to me miles from any,
[00:05:53.590]any library that I am be working and miles from
[00:05:58.520]the student union,
[00:05:59.780]but still managed to spend many an hour in the student union and the
[00:06:04.340]library. But, um, and then, uh,
[00:06:08.330]right before I left Champaign-Urbana I did live in, uh,
[00:06:13.340]sort of a co-op in Urbana, but, uh,
[00:06:18.320]it, uh, there was a little bit different feeling, but I enjoyed champagne a lot.
[00:06:23.360]Did you go on to graduate school and we didn't, we have to rush. No, no. Uh, I,
[00:06:28.220]uh, I met the person I was going to marry down there.
[00:06:31.910]He was a undergraduate geology undergraduate,
[00:06:36.830]and, uh, he proceeded to, uh,
[00:06:41.360]to go on to school and wanted to work right away.
[00:06:45.080]And so we did some traveling, um,
[00:06:49.130]both traveling and stores and then for his, uh,
[00:06:53.210]for his job and, uh, minerals exploration.
[00:06:56.870]So we lived a number of places all in the states.
[00:07:01.640]And because I was, uh, as I said, a Latin American history major,
[00:07:06.320]I took the time after my undergraduate degree to
[00:07:11.210]do a lot of traveling in Mexico and central America and
[00:07:16.460]spent
[00:07:19.920]a couple months down there two or three times a year for a
[00:07:24.740]couple of years and, uh,
[00:07:27.710]got a little stronger in my Spanish and, uh,
[00:07:31.490]finding out some of the things that were going on. So,
[00:07:35.630]and then I was ready to come back, push you into graduate school. Yes.
[00:07:40.970]Well, what pushed me in to graduate school? I was ready. I'd been out of,
[00:07:46.430]out of classes for awhile,
[00:07:48.560]was living in Southern Southeast, Missouri
[00:07:53.840]and the university of Missouri.
[00:07:55.910]This was back a ways,
[00:07:59.540]but the areas of library science that were really growing and
[00:08:04.490]starting to use this thing that we call digital information and
[00:08:08.990]computers and all those kinds of things,
[00:08:12.350]the areas of agriculture and areas of medicine.
[00:08:16.430]These have lots of federal funding and the university of
[00:08:21.230]Missouri had large funding in both of
[00:08:26.030]those areas.
[00:08:27.770]And I was offered a graduate,
[00:08:31.460]a stipend to come to the university of Missouri and work in their
[00:08:37.250]library. And, uh, this was, uh,
[00:08:40.770]a real important time for me.
[00:08:44.120]A couple of the people in the medical program were very
[00:08:48.290]influential. Uh, Virginia McNamara was, uh,
[00:08:53.630]this is Mac as, as we called her, had,
[00:08:57.840]had been, uh, a librarian in, uh,
[00:09:03.000]several big research libraries, a medical librarian,
[00:09:07.830]and she was putting together the program of Missouri.
[00:09:12.360]And it was, was quite an honor to work with her.
[00:09:16.920]And, uh, the background I got there in,
[00:09:20.790]in terms of the, uh, computers,
[00:09:24.930]the cataloguing the classification
[00:09:29.160]doing research online,
[00:09:32.100]and I'm using all these terms that we come to be so comfortable with.
[00:09:36.240]They weren't quite that simple then, but we were, uh,
[00:09:41.040]we did, we did have things in the, in the computers that we could,
[00:09:45.240]we could do searching and flying things all over the world or all over
[00:09:50.760]the country. So I spent almost two years there.
[00:09:54.540]I finished my degree. It was just a little over a one-year program.
[00:09:59.580]And at that time, uh, uh,
[00:10:03.790]a master's was the terminal degree in library science.
[00:10:08.220]And most of our new librarians here at UNL still have a master's
[00:10:13.020]terminal degree,
[00:10:14.490]but more are going on and getting a PhD in a subject
[00:10:19.020]specialist. I never got around to that. I think, uh,
[00:10:23.730]that would have been a good step,
[00:10:26.850]but I don't know what I would have done it in.
[00:10:29.040]There's so many interesting things that I might talk about later. And,
[00:10:33.810]uh, but I, I stayed at Missouri, like I said,
[00:10:37.110]almost two years and, uh, worked in, uh,
[00:10:42.300]in a small physics research lab, uh, helping,
[00:10:47.220]uh, do some, uh,
[00:10:49.980]some cataloging and classification so that material could be,
[00:10:54.300]could be retrieved. Uh, and, uh,
[00:10:59.250]then I decided it was time to start settling down.
[00:11:03.540]And I went to Western Kentucky university.
[00:11:07.440]Early days of computerizing and putting stuff online.
[00:11:10.880]You were involved in doing that, putting stuff online. Okay. But ear was that.
[00:11:16.860]Oh, that was probably
[00:11:21.690]in, uh, mid seventies,
[00:11:26.050]mid seventies. Okay. And, uh, as I said,
[00:11:30.510]with the federal,
[00:11:31.980]the federal funding in S and not in all the sciences,
[00:11:36.960]but in,
[00:11:37.350]in medicine and agriculture and those
[00:11:42.480]folks on east camp on,
[00:11:45.000]in the agriculture program here probably mean,
[00:11:47.880]you remember some of those of those areas that they could do could do.
[00:11:53.800]And, uh, much earlier than, uh,
[00:11:58.480]the people in the humanities and associates and your church,
[00:12:01.300]your computers like a doctor water, or was it, well,
[00:12:06.160]I w wasn't one of those bleeding edge persons, but I,
[00:12:11.980]yes,
[00:12:12.580]I was probably a little disparaging and thought of them
[00:12:17.440]as a tool. And I think they still are. They're not, I think,
[00:12:22.300]I think a lot of us have gone over the hill and thinking it's much more than
[00:12:25.900]just a tool, but yes, I wanted to see what all we could do.
[00:12:30.670]And, uh, when you can see how much information,
[00:12:34.390]how much more information one could get,
[00:12:37.870]then sitting down with a paper product
[00:12:43.240]and going spending hours and days and weeks
[00:12:49.750]there was, there was no question that that was the way that was the way to go.
[00:12:54.940]And it was, it was exciting to be involved at that time.
[00:13:00.160]So you went to Kentucky? Yes. Well,
[00:13:05.800]I loved that little school, Western Kentucky,
[00:13:10.210]Western Kentucky in bowling green. And it's very, pretty,
[00:13:14.830]very, very pretty. And, uh, it was, uh,
[00:13:20.910]a comfortable two years, but I wasn't quite doing the,
[00:13:26.700]what I went for. They were using some of my skills,
[00:13:31.090]my language skills and my science skills and the
[00:13:36.160]cataloging and classification. But, uh,
[00:13:42.160]wasn't in quite the same ways that I had been, uh,
[00:13:46.840]before and areas that I thought we could be going
[00:13:51.490]into,
[00:13:52.030]and they didn't really have any basic support of that kind of work
[00:13:56.920]beyond basic catalog. So I started looking
[00:14:02.680]elsewhere and applied to Purdue university and the
[00:14:07.090]university of Nebraska,
[00:14:08.470]the only two schools I applied to and, uh,
[00:14:13.150]both offered me jobs, using my languages,
[00:14:17.110]using my science background. And, um,
[00:14:23.140]I think it was kind of a difficult, well, yes,
[00:14:26.860]it was a bit of a difficult decision. Um,
[00:14:30.010]I was familiar with Purdue a couple of the years before I had gone on to
[00:14:35.110]do graduate school. I had lived in Purdue. My, um,
[00:14:40.030]my husband had gotten his PhD at Purdue, so I was familiar with Purdue,
[00:14:46.180]but, um, I just came out to
[00:14:52.760]and saw some of the things that they needed to do and wanted to
[00:14:57.350]do and decided this is, this is where I want it to be.
[00:15:03.050]So in the late seventies, I came to Lincoln, Nebraska,
[00:15:10.870]the online computer work in the library and you'd have a lock up.
[00:15:15.410]Yes, yes. We really didn't have much going at that time.
[00:15:21.230]And they still had lots of materials,
[00:15:25.970]lots of paper products that had that they didn't have any
[00:15:30.350]access to at all, uh,
[00:15:33.720]not even paper indexes.
[00:15:36.200]So I came to work on the Slavic and Germanic
[00:15:40.730]sciences collection and started getting those materials
[00:15:45.170]cataloged and getting that
[00:15:48.620]information online, rudimentary,
[00:15:51.740]but it was available and people could have access to,
[00:15:56.440]to those materials.
[00:15:58.820]But I was here for five months
[00:16:03.440]and, uh, the Dean of the libraries, Jerry Rudolph,
[00:16:10.140]he said, oh, I know what you're doing. This is great.
[00:16:15.270]But I wonder if you would like to be a science librarian instead, would,
[00:16:20.250]you could still use your languages. You could still use your science,
[00:16:24.510]but I've had a whole year in my staff for quite a
[00:16:29.250]while. And, uh,
[00:16:32.700]I think you're the person to fill it.
[00:16:36.510]And so I talked to some colleagues of, one of them,
[00:16:41.250]still a colleague,
[00:16:42.450]Judy Johnson in the libraries and a few other folks.
[00:16:47.040]And, uh, I said, we'll give it a try. Go ahead. You know?
[00:16:52.830]And, uh,
[00:16:53.640]so five months after I got here and working in one area,
[00:16:58.260]I moved into the other area and became the, uh,
[00:17:02.820]librarian for the geologists,
[00:17:05.910]computer scientists and physicists. And, uh,
[00:17:11.850]at that time,
[00:17:12.900]all of the science libraries were what we call branch libraries.
[00:17:17.880]And they were spread all over both city and east
[00:17:22.260]campus. And so I was, uh,
[00:17:26.370]given the responsibility for those collections,
[00:17:30.270]working with the faculty and, uh,
[00:17:34.530]teaching them how,
[00:17:36.000]at that time we were just starting to do the online searching
[00:17:40.710]and starting to work with the faculty and students
[00:17:46.440]in retrieving information yeah. In a different, different way.
[00:17:52.170]And these were wonderful areas to be in because they were already,
[00:17:55.560]they were more than ready.
[00:17:58.080]Probably the chemists were the only group on campus that were
[00:18:02.250]more ready, Randy. You're sorry,
[00:18:06.840]but that didn't sound very good.
[00:18:10.060]We were ready to do the online, uh, retrieval.
[00:18:15.030]Yeah. Uh,
[00:18:17.070]so I did that for a while and very
[00:18:21.420]quickly, Jerry Rudolph liked what I did.
[00:18:24.990]And we started adding libraries to my
[00:18:29.040]portfolio and I became the nurse.
[00:18:33.540]And these all add an aunt didn't, you know,
[00:18:36.600]none of them felt away for quite a while.
[00:18:39.660]And so I started working with the nurses and of course this was an easy
[00:18:44.100]addition because I spent almost two years at the med library
[00:18:49.080]and Missouri, and a lot of the work was being done over in,
[00:18:53.880]uh, in Omaha.
[00:18:55.620]But we did have a lot of students here who wanted to get ready to do
[00:19:00.600]that.
[00:19:01.860]So I am pre-med and in pre a lot of the other
[00:19:07.530]pre science, uh.
[00:19:09.330]I was a librarian. Omaha, was it here? Was there a,
[00:19:12.120]did you have to take care of the librarian? Omaha?
[00:19:13.920]They know they have a medical library with full staff open there.
[00:19:19.230]And I worked with the, uh, with the students here.
[00:19:25.020]We had a small collection that was the time in one of the
[00:19:31.080]dorms on campus. That one of those that was converted to, you know,
[00:19:35.880]the first floor became a library or part of one
[00:19:40.860]room became the library, but it was mostly doing research,
[00:19:45.600]retrieving information,
[00:19:47.100]finding citations and getting that material here.
[00:19:51.690]So it was early days of not having to be with a
[00:19:56.040]physical collection. So all this,
[00:19:59.010]this continued to change these I'm at that time,
[00:20:03.090]working with people who, who don't care, where their information is,
[00:20:07.650]they just want to, to find it. And if they can get it online, fine,
[00:20:12.450]if they can't they'll order a dinner library loan or something
[00:20:17.310]like that. But that's, that's where we were at that time.
[00:20:23.310]Well, let's see. I.
[00:20:27.710]Can I ask you a question about that issue of us?
[00:20:30.680]So th the system is shifting over now so that, uh,
[00:20:34.370]the libraries are online and students are starting to use research
[00:20:39.290]online. This was.
[00:20:40.460]The early, early, early days.
[00:20:44.420]And, uh.
[00:20:46.370]I'm trying to think of the liers was our early
[00:20:51.250]library information retrievals system.
[00:20:55.990]And that's just a precursor to what we have now,
[00:20:59.860]but that was at the time that was our system.
[00:21:03.190]Right. But the accusation is made now, students don't even go near the library,
[00:21:06.520]they just go online and whatever's online. That's what they do research.
[00:21:09.520]And that's very true. Okay. But this was the beginning
[00:21:14.260]And it's also for faculty, right? So you were taken over,
[00:21:17.650]you were rapidly taking over.
[00:21:20.500]Many of the.
[00:21:21.130]Sites and nothing was dropping off. You just keep an eye on.
[00:21:24.160]Better math and nursing at about the same time.
[00:21:28.060]Or where are you headquartered in lover?
[00:21:30.910]I was in the geology library and that was before they
[00:21:35.770]had renovated moral hall.
[00:21:38.080]And so I actually was in the museum on the third floor of the museum
[00:21:43.210]and spent kind of pony express,
[00:21:46.870]spent most of my time,
[00:21:51.130]going around campus visiting with,
[00:21:53.910]with faculty in their office as, uh,
[00:21:58.510]scheduling different promotions for students
[00:22:03.280]and inviting them either to come to the library or to come to a room in the
[00:22:07.900]geology department, that kind of thing. But, uh,
[00:22:13.120]I was in, in the GA, in the museum for.
[00:22:18.090]Uh, did you have lots of training sessions at the time,
[00:22:20.370]particularly with faculty, staff and students to teach them the system.
[00:22:24.500]Quite a few, I would have a mic. I would call what I,
[00:22:29.160]what I would call a major one weekly that, uh,
[00:22:33.930]because we had, at that time,
[00:22:35.490]we had to schedule a time that we were going online to do the re the
[00:22:40.350]searches, et cetera.
[00:22:42.300]And we didn't have access to all of the databases that are
[00:22:47.220]available now. So we'd have to say, you know,
[00:22:50.010]I want to be able to search the social sciences index,
[00:22:54.150]or I want to be able to serve, uh,
[00:22:57.420]to search the bibliography and index to geology.
[00:23:01.920]And I want to do such and such, you know, we would have, at that time,
[00:23:06.750]there, wasn't the sense of free text. We would have,
[00:23:10.590]have to sit down and work with our faculty member or
[00:23:15.510]the students and, and decide, uh,
[00:23:18.660]what search terms are we going to use and how are we going to put these
[00:23:23.490]search terms together? Are we going to, and them, and get the world,
[00:23:28.320]or are we going to, or them, and, and really, you know,
[00:23:32.670]dig in and, and get real concise information.
[00:23:36.780]So that was a busy time. That was a busy time. And, um,
[00:23:42.540]oh, I can't quite tell you when all, when this happened,
[00:23:47.270]but then I was asked to take responsibility
[00:23:51.950]for engineering and engineering was quite a large
[00:23:56.780]library, and this is an adamant,
[00:24:00.290]this is an add on I, at that time.
[00:24:03.350]I think they dropped nursing.
[00:24:06.710]And we did have a new young woman on staff who,
[00:24:10.730]who had gone to a similar program and she was able to take the
[00:24:15.230]nursing quite easily.
[00:24:17.660]And so I was responsible for engineering for probably two
[00:24:22.370]years, but I had professional librarian over there.
[00:24:27.470]I was just one, one layer above.
[00:24:32.360]So this was a, this was a busy time, and this
[00:24:38.750]was a good decision for me to come here, professionally. Uh,
[00:24:42.740]things kept changing all the time.
[00:24:46.070]And I was with my deans,
[00:24:49.670]both Jerry Rudolph and Cantor Hendrickson.
[00:24:53.260]And there were a couple on campus interims,
[00:24:56.780]but they were always very supportive in sending me to national
[00:25:00.740]conferences or workshops and the like, so,
[00:25:05.750]uh, we were,
[00:25:09.080]we were very on, we were on T we,
[00:25:13.250]the libraries was very on top of the things that were going on and
[00:25:18.230]frequently I would,
[00:25:20.700]would come to understand that while some other
[00:25:25.220]places were talking about where we should be going,
[00:25:29.150]we were just doing it.
[00:25:31.280]We were just down in the trenches doing this,
[00:25:35.960]uh, this work with,
[00:25:38.030]with texts and putting things online.
[00:25:40.970]And then we started scanning materials and,
[00:25:46.010]and digitizing, which was a big thing.
[00:25:49.910]And I wasn't as involved with, but we went into the social sciences.
[00:25:53.960]This was one of the last,
[00:25:56.120]last areas that history and political science that,
[00:26:00.710]that started to getting, getting information available.
[00:26:05.450]But this was just a busy, busy time,
[00:26:08.540]and probably why I never went on and got a PhD
[00:26:13.460]because I was busy. I,
[00:26:16.880]I really think I loved every minute of it and was, I was very, very busy. Uh,
[00:26:21.620]we were, um,
[00:26:25.460]we never were overstaffed at the library.
[00:26:29.510]You're suggesting that we were staying up with, you know,
[00:26:32.480]we weren't falling too far behind what other people were doing as far as putting
[00:26:35.870]all the, all of your technology.
[00:26:38.900]Exactly. I, I think, um,
[00:26:44.370]it's one of those, there are lots of little P there. Well,
[00:26:47.400]they're not little pockets,
[00:26:48.510]but pockets on at the university of Nebraska
[00:26:53.130]adapt where we really have strengths and people are
[00:26:57.960]just working hard, getting things done.
[00:27:01.620]And the library's really what, uh, really was doing that.
[00:27:05.670]They just were hunkering down and
[00:27:11.790]getting on the national level in the libraries,
[00:27:15.510]we were getting a great deal of, of, uh, publicity.
[00:27:19.980]And we're probably coming now up into that,
[00:27:23.550]went through the eighties and,
[00:27:25.170]and Ken Hendrickson did an awful lot.
[00:27:28.650]Cat came from the book world, uh,
[00:27:31.710]worked for major book sellers,
[00:27:35.100]but so he knew how to use computers. And he,
[00:27:39.240]he pushed us and helped us. And he didn't drag me, but he,
[00:27:44.100]he was very supportive to me and other staff members took
[00:27:48.990]us to, uh,
[00:27:51.300]to meet people and to schools where they were starting to do things.
[00:27:56.100]And he just always said, yes, I think we can do that.
[00:27:59.550]And then he moved up,
[00:28:04.530]moved up here at the university and became vice chancellor for
[00:28:09.900]computing resources or some such title and junky sick.
[00:28:13.680]He came in and Dean geese, and she has been,
[00:28:17.970]and was very important to me.
[00:28:21.630]She continued supporting all the kinds of things that
[00:28:26.340]needed to be done. Um, and we were buying,
[00:28:31.170]we were buying databases
[00:28:34.950]before most other schools were, uh, subscribing to databases,
[00:28:40.560]for instance, um,
[00:28:43.500]well bibliography and index to geology, chem abstracts, uh,
[00:28:48.270]physics abstracts purchase. Yes, we,
[00:28:53.340]we would, would purchase them, uh,
[00:28:56.400]back files as much as we could.
[00:28:59.040]And we would offer these searching free to,
[00:29:03.180]to our students. And
[00:29:07.470]about this time, because we were doing this,
[00:29:10.620]this was a whole different world. Now everything's out there.
[00:29:15.030]I became very interested in intellectual property and copyright.
[00:29:21.540]And that took up probably the last
[00:29:28.530]five, 10 years. Well,
[00:29:30.510]over five years of my time at
[00:29:34.950]UNL,
[00:29:36.240]I started working with the faculty because they were using,
[00:29:41.380]they were finding things on the internet and you seen these
[00:29:46.210]databases almost interchangeably,
[00:29:50.920]and one can't always do that.
[00:29:53.590]So we had to start teaching faculty of
[00:29:58.600]about citations and who owned materials and what they could use
[00:30:03.520]and what, and how they could use it, et cetera. And, you know,
[00:30:08.170]one of my things was just because she can do it doesn't mean it's right.
[00:30:13.570]Uh, you know, I'm afraid too many people on this campus heard, heard that,
[00:30:19.120]but, uh, that was a very,
[00:30:21.670]very interesting to me in that I've done just a little bit of work since I
[00:30:25.780]retired in that area.
[00:30:28.060]And now we're getting more and more people aware
[00:30:32.890]of, of ownership rights, uh,
[00:30:36.070]both as both as creators and users. But I, um,
[00:30:41.800]I taught a lot of, a lot of courses on intellectual,
[00:30:46.420]on copyright and intellectual property, a little bit on patents, but,
[00:30:51.070]uh, the folks who were working with patents,
[00:30:56.170]we got involved with central administration and that was,
[00:31:02.170]I was more, you know, they were comfortable with that. And, uh,
[00:31:07.630]it was beyond the usage. It was the creation, but it was,
[00:31:12.250]it was a very exciting time for me. So it was with that,
[00:31:16.810]that I tapered down my career here and did a little work
[00:31:21.760]afterwards to retired.
[00:31:24.400]I retired in 2005. Okay.
[00:31:30.360]And, um,
[00:31:33.210]I was thinking about the change,
[00:31:36.540]particularly on intellectual properties and citations that,
[00:31:41.400]uh, along with all that good stuff came the bad stuff.
[00:31:45.090]And that is in teaching. We never knew whether the paper came off the internet,
[00:31:49.740]whatever you, whether hunks of it did, uh, that was,
[00:31:53.700]that's the downside of that. Wasn't there.
[00:31:55.980]What has happened since then to improve that?
[00:31:58.710]Well, I think, and I don't know this, but I know that there,
[00:32:03.480]with this awareness that I hoped, I, you know,
[00:32:07.680]instilled in faculty and students,
[00:32:10.440]there became more awareness of
[00:32:15.870]plagiarism and there are no
[00:32:20.610]software packages now where faculty can run,
[00:32:24.180]can run up a paper through and see and see how
[00:32:28.680]consistent it is with other papers Chan. And I don't know how to do this.
[00:32:33.630]So I just worked with faculty who started purchasing things like
[00:32:38.550]that after we talked about intellectual property and all these wide,
[00:32:44.300]but I think they're probably a, probably a few awarenesses as helped.
[00:32:49.220]And so I don't know how it's being dealt with, but I won't surprise.
[00:32:52.940]You mentioned you went to obviously going to meetings, uh, getting outside.
[00:32:57.680]What meetings, what, what were you getting from particularly meetings,
[00:33:02.840]particularly this really change. We were changing into technology,
[00:33:07.250]like kind of making some money if you get from them.
[00:33:11.430]One of the university of Nebraska Lincoln currently
[00:33:16.440]is a member of the association for research libraries.
[00:33:21.660]And it's the big national
[00:33:25.680]counterpart of CIC,
[00:33:28.050]which is the corporation of institutional
[00:33:32.550]cooperation or something. And their libraries are in there.
[00:33:36.030]So except for the big 10 libraries,
[00:33:39.750]we were via association for research libraries had the major,
[00:33:43.770]major libraries and beyond talking,
[00:33:48.240]there were groups and tasks,
[00:33:50.430]task forces put together that
[00:33:55.110]would, would the provided a lot of the leadership for libraries
[00:34:00.360]and funding to do, to do some of the work.
[00:34:03.360]It wasn't possible to do,
[00:34:06.840]to fund these kinds of projects at one school.
[00:34:10.800]That's why medicine and agriculture were so successful early on
[00:34:16.110]because they had so much federal funding.
[00:34:19.410]And through the association of research libraries and a couple other
[00:34:24.030]regional groups,
[00:34:26.610]we were able to offer a leadership and show the
[00:34:30.690]schools and precedents why they needed to cooperate and move ahead.
[00:34:37.440]It's the CIC type,
[00:34:38.400]something that recently we're going to be part of it because we're part of the
[00:34:41.250]big 10, this includes the big 10 plus university of Chicago.
[00:34:46.110]So that's an enormous resource in itself.
[00:34:48.270]Yes.
[00:34:48.930]I know the university of the Dean has already been invited to a couple
[00:34:54.120]meetings and we'll be talking about how our collections and,
[00:34:59.010]you know, our resources will be integrated.
[00:35:02.070]And obviously, you know, what kind of access we'll have from,
[00:35:06.750]from some of those schools, they're all, you know, uh,
[00:35:11.070]inter library, loan agreements, uh, you know,
[00:35:14.070]who gets first dibs on materials,
[00:35:17.340]those go regionally and nationally. And, uh,
[00:35:21.480]so there'll be a lot of access us
[00:35:26.260]that I think is beyond what we've had, uh,
[00:35:29.980]in the recent past. It looks exciting.
[00:35:33.780]Um, while most of your, your,
[00:35:37.030]your career has been like you have,
[00:35:40.290]you've been involved in teaching somebody particularly towards the here.
[00:35:45.450]Um,
[00:35:46.260]did you do the occasional class and how to use the library for the scientist or
[00:35:50.250]along the way? Or did you get.
[00:35:51.120]Yes, I did. Yes. I did a few of those. Um, and, uh,
[00:35:58.480]they were fun. They were fun, but, um,
[00:36:02.500]I think the,
[00:36:04.300]the students and faculty that I worked with got beyond
[00:36:09.130]that, and, and we're, we're doing,
[00:36:11.890]doing the specific research more than,
[00:36:15.190]than using the paper products.
[00:36:17.140]So that's what got me off the hook. So.
[00:36:22.660]So how,
[00:36:22.960]so you've been here since the early eighties and how's the university changed?
[00:36:27.910]We're all searching.
[00:36:30.110]Well, one of the things I want to mention just just briefly,
[00:36:34.250]I was very involved with the, uh,
[00:36:38.090]faculty and academic Senate would change names
[00:36:42.680]someplace along the way, and was involved,
[00:36:47.720]uh,
[00:36:48.200]chaired the academic planning committee one year during a budget
[00:36:53.180]cuts.
[00:36:54.770]And I think the participation and the
[00:37:01.160]sharing by administrators with
[00:37:05.420]faculty of the decision making has improved
[00:37:10.310]since I've been here, not wondrously. So,
[00:37:14.840]but over the years,
[00:37:16.520]it just seems that there more cooperation than top down decisions.
[00:37:21.230]I can remember early days,
[00:37:24.770]maybe the first vice chancellor that I worked with was,
[00:37:29.790]was very interested in finding out what the faculty thought,
[00:37:35.870]but not beyond that. I mean,
[00:37:39.020]just wanted to know what was going on on campus.
[00:37:42.650]And the year I was on the, uh,
[00:37:47.180]chaired academic planning committee, it would be vice chancellor,
[00:37:50.480]invited me to join the chancellor's cabinet.
[00:37:55.010]And there was a lot, and we brought a lot of,
[00:37:57.590]he brought a lot of faculty in to talk to the cabinet
[00:38:02.360]and be more involved in decision making.
[00:38:07.340]And I think that's, I think that's very positive.
[00:38:11.240]Another area that's changed
[00:38:15.190]in a very similar way is the benefits. That was an area.
[00:38:19.460]They also, because the faculty Senate worked,
[00:38:23.840]worked on. And I think that there's been more,
[00:38:28.760]um,
[00:38:30.290]some benefit changes that were stimulated by
[00:38:34.960]faculty and staff, um, the, uh,
[00:38:39.220]the tuition for dependence. And now we're,
[00:38:43.050]we're still looking at the issues of insurance for, uh,
[00:38:49.210]for all dependents and, and, uh, significant others,
[00:38:54.100]but, but ideas and issues have come from the faculty.
[00:38:59.260]So those have been very positive changes.
[00:39:03.190]Certainly there seems to be more women on campus now than they were when you
[00:39:06.670]came, I there hasn't been a vaping or have you, uh,
[00:39:09.700]do you have a different opinion about that?
[00:39:11.710]No, I do have, um, I think there are a lot more women.
[00:39:16.840]One of the things that I regret not having been able to relate is I don't,
[00:39:22.240]I did not have a lot of faculty, uh,
[00:39:24.970]see male mentors on campus.
[00:39:27.430]I don't think most of us did pretty isolated youth at the time you
[00:39:32.350]thought of one or two people in geology, one and two people in math.
[00:39:37.600]When I was with physics, I don't think we had any women. And, uh,
[00:39:42.940]so everybody was kind of out there on their own doing it alone. And, um,
[00:39:49.690]I think that's changed a lot. I see lots of young women when I,
[00:39:54.430]when I go to campus or go to go to meetings or receptions for
[00:39:59.740]one thing or another. So I think that's been very positive.
[00:40:03.250]Was there any different when you were at, uh, Kentucky, Missouri, and Illinois,
[00:40:09.340]this is pretty much a male dominated. It was library, Illinois,
[00:40:12.780]mainly men or women, or do you remember.
[00:40:17.200]The, it was a mix. It was a mix.
[00:40:21.910]It was a mix. Uh, but, uh,
[00:40:25.180]Missouri was accepted this one person in the, uh,
[00:40:29.920]the medical program, both the library,
[00:40:33.730]science faculty and the,
[00:40:36.730]like the librarians and the various departments and
[00:40:41.320]divisions across campus all made sure.
[00:40:45.760]Well, there's a,
[00:40:46.460]the branch library situation here that seems to have changed a bit too didn't.
[00:40:52.840]Stuff. What happened money? Um,
[00:40:57.430]I know at one time when we were looking at, uh, and it was,
[00:41:02.500]it was finances,
[00:41:04.840]replication of resources before we had all
[00:41:09.790]of the, uh, online services and staff.
[00:41:14.560]And, uh,
[00:41:18.200]we had a professional librarian in the BR biology,
[00:41:23.120]chemistry libraries, a professional librarian doing,
[00:41:28.580]you know, I mentioned all the ones that I added, but as the years went,
[00:41:33.710]we had people in between, in between me and the,
[00:41:39.050]and the day-to-day staff and probably, um,
[00:41:44.870]and that's just, and frequently with the, uh,
[00:41:49.730]departments,
[00:41:50.660]the academic departments needed space and not
[00:41:55.610]all of the, of the eliminations were amicable,
[00:42:01.220]but, um, they,
[00:42:03.910]they serve both the library and the departments.
[00:42:10.010]And I think we have music and architecture,
[00:42:12.080]and I think those are that's about it.
[00:42:16.430]Okay. Um,
[00:42:22.790]looking back over your time here, what,
[00:42:26.730]what you take the greatest satisfaction of your career or being in the fall?
[00:42:32.900]What would you say would be maybe the high point?
[00:42:42.560]I'm not,
[00:42:45.340]I want all these things to the last, I think we're the,
[00:42:49.580]the copyright and the intellectual property was an area that
[00:42:54.560]I was really heading, enjoying,
[00:42:59.420]uh, getting a great deal of, of satisfaction. Um,
[00:43:04.820]and in some ways I was doing a lot more teaching and maybe that was why I
[00:43:09.680]liked that. And that's one area,
[00:43:12.860]I guess it's because it was active when I retired that I have done
[00:43:17.810]work since I, since I retired.
[00:43:21.770]So regarding retirement, what else are you going to do?
[00:43:25.250]You've been retired now for five years, so.
[00:43:29.900]Well, after taking a year,
[00:43:32.120]just kind of off reading in the, like,
[00:43:36.470]I've been doing some volunteer work. Uh,
[00:43:39.740]I volunteer with a, um, what do we call it?
[00:43:44.640]The Lincoln literacy council.
[00:43:47.420]And I've had a number of, uh, foreign language,
[00:43:52.760]uh, Vietnamese and a Russian students that I'm teaching
[00:43:57.590]English, um, and,
[00:44:01.330]and just American life skills. And that's been very rewarding.
[00:44:06.200]I've really enjoyed that. And I'm also involved in the,
[00:44:11.090]in the, uh, group called, uh,
[00:44:13.810]friendship force that does some traveling
[00:44:18.650]to other countries. We're time, you know,
[00:44:22.190]building world peace, one person at a time.
[00:44:26.210]And I've been very involved the last three years in hosting,
[00:44:31.530]uh, folks from, um,
[00:44:37.650]the former Soviet republics Tajikistan
[00:44:42.240]and, uh, the Ukraine white,
[00:44:46.110]those areas that are coming here for leadership training in the United States
[00:44:51.540]and getting ready in October to host and other groups that will be here. So,
[00:44:58.770]And I've been a docent past year at the Sheldon museum of
[00:45:03.480]art and it's, that's just, that's another whole world.
[00:45:08.640]I'm so glad it was opened up.
[00:45:10.080]To us.
[00:45:15.810]In many ways.
[00:45:16.950]It's back to the very beginning when I decided I wanted to
[00:45:21.930]be alive Prairie. And because I enjoyed getting people and materials together,
[00:45:26.700]back at the public library,
[00:45:29.250]working with young people and seeing their excitement at
[00:45:35.850]being presented with things that they had no idea whether it's books
[00:45:40.920]or art or statues. And just, just enjoying that,
[00:45:45.780]just enjoying that has been,
[00:45:48.300]has been the high point of working at Sheldon.
[00:45:53.220]So, uh, but advice, uh,
[00:45:55.530]somebody's 22 or something, I'd say somebody 18,
[00:45:59.340]19 as you were back in Illinois coming from a small town
[00:46:03.990]Nebraska. And they said, why should I, why should it be a liar? Or should I be,
[00:46:08.520]is there a future of being a librarian? How would you respond to.
[00:46:12.360]I would say, yes, there's a future in being a librarian.
[00:46:17.100]And there's just going to be more and more open up in terms of this
[00:46:22.050]information and how we access that and the multiple
[00:46:26.730]layers of,
[00:46:29.400]of information that's out there. And I,
[00:46:33.240]at this stage of my life,
[00:46:34.620]I can't even imagine all the alternatives and there will
[00:46:39.390]be in this, in this area, I would say, go for it.
[00:46:49.470]Yes, probably so, and I would, would hope that one would have, uh,
[00:46:54.690]a PhD maybe in the technology,
[00:46:59.040]maybe in the computer science, um, well, or in the discipline,
[00:47:03.840]because it's,
[00:47:04.900]it's manipulating this information and the more
[00:47:09.900]you know about it or how to manipulate it, the stronger it will be
[00:47:15.720]that there are opportunities out there.
[00:47:18.790]Do you have any concluding remarks about anything to do with university,
[00:47:22.940]your career Lincoln, any travel,
[00:47:26.710]anything else that you'd like to end today's.
[00:47:31.930]No. Well, I just say,
[00:47:35.050]I think back when I came out here for my
[00:47:39.760]interview for bowling green Kentucky,
[00:47:41.920]I was sitting on airplane and got to chatting with
[00:47:46.780]seven was my seatmate. And I said, well, you know,
[00:47:51.400]you got a big decision to make.
[00:47:52.990]I was offered a position at Purdue university and the university of Nebraska,
[00:47:58.510]and this fellow said he liked basketball.
[00:48:04.860]And then I didn't know what that meant.
[00:48:09.430]And I came here and, uh,
[00:48:14.500]and I never regret coming to Nebraska football games. Yes.
[00:48:19.180]I have seen a few football games
[00:48:22.930]enjoying it very much. Terrific.
[00:48:25.720]Well, today we've been interviewing Agnes adage,
[00:48:28.330]professor emeritus of libraries. This is the oral history project.
[00:48:31.840]You would know America associates bought a lot of the things.
[00:48:35.020]She talked about technology and that new.

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