INTERVIEW WITH DORIS BROWN. R Respondent: Doris Brown. I Interviewer: David Edward Sims

Transcription

1 INTERVIEW WITH DORIS BROWN R Respondent: Doris Brown I Interviewer: David Edward Sims I Welcome to the Oral History Project of the DePaul Emeritus Society. My name is David Edward Sims and today we re speaking with Doris Brown. Doris, thank you for joining us today. R Good morning. I If I might briefly recount your career at DePaul, you came to the university in l976 as associate director of the DePaul University Library. In 1984 you were appointed Director of Libraries and from 2000 until your retirement from DePaul in 2007, you were the Associate Vice President for Teaching and Learning Resources. Much changed at DePaul during those years, but perhaps even more changed in the area of information storage and retrieval and the purpose of libraries in today s world. Could you perhaps give us an idea of the scope of the changes in information availability you observed during that time? R Well, basically, David, we went from paper and slides and LP s to everything digital. And those of us who were in the library world could see this happening and the struggle that we all faced, whether at DePaul or elsewhere, was trying to get university administrators and library staff and faculty to see what was coming down the pike. So the first thing that we did at DePaul was to get the card catalogue automated, in effect. But that was all a manual conversion. So it was a big project. We got grants to do it, to pay for it. It took several years, but we ultimately got the card catalogue converted. The challenge then was to convince the university administrators and faculty, and even some of the staff, that we should get rid of the card catalogue. So we had to sit on that for some years while it sort of sat there and got outdated, and then we were able to dispose of it. The other part then was all of the other paper products and the other LP, all the analog information. So what we did was we were very active in a consortium of what was state institutions. DePaul was the first private institution to be part of that. That was critical, because we were then able to use the on-line systems that all of the State of Illinois in effect subsidized. So it saved DePaul, and it s still saving DePaul, millions every year, because we, DePaul doesn t have to pay for that, or pays a nominal fee because it s a consortium. Um, one of the major tensions was trying to get the university administrators and faculty to see that we had to do this. For example, the music staff didn t want to give up LP s. The art faculty didn t want to give up their slides. Um, some of the library staff didn t want to do digital projects that we started to do. Um, the university also had to plan for using instructional resources and trying to get the university to move to on-line courses and to move to course management software, which now seems like it couldn t even be possible that they would have resisted, but they did. Faculty didn t want it

2 because they felt it would change their method of teaching, which it had to. University administrators didn t want it because they didn t want to force faculty, I think, but it was really critical from my perspective. That was when I then had Information Technology and for academic and libraries, it was really critical because we had to blend the two if it was going to take off. And we could see that other universities were doing this. And if DePaul was going to be a competitor it also needed to do it. So that was a long effort. And at one point there were three course management software packages in use at DePaul, which from a business model wasn t a good model, but it was something that now in recent years has been finally accepted. That they have to have one. The other thing that we had to do was revise the library organization itself. Funds were VERY tight. We had to do everything within the year budget. There was nothing extra. So that if we were going to introduce a new service we had to somehow get the money from within the budgets that we had. So what I did was automate parts of certain services, like library services for example, an easy example being not producing labels for books with a typewriter or label machine. Instead we automated it. And we then took the positions and the staff money, the part-time money that was there, moved it to reference so that we would be giving more services for faculty and students, because we were making all these other transitions. The, um, struggle in that was trying to do it all without causing too much, shall I say unhappiness, in the staff. I m not sure I was succeeding in that. I know I didn t succeed in that but I You had to do a lot of strategic thinking. R Yes, a lot. Because you knew, we could see where it was going so you had to be looking not to next month or next year. It had to be two years, three years, five years down the pike, whether I was here or whoever was here, this is where it was going so I You also had to rely on information from the outside, too, from your professional R Yes, I was very active professionally. I was nationally, and in the state very, very much, and then also nationally, because you couldn t just look at what was happening here at the university. You had to be looking at a bigger picture. And then I You had to know what was coming down the pike. R You had to know what was coming down the pike. You had to follow the publishing industry. You had to follow the music industry. You had to follow basically all of that and see what other larger universities with more funding were doing, because many of them were already taking part in projects like digitizing slides or like putting music up that would be digital and students would be able to get it. So it was that sort of balance of trying to manage today but also trying to manage what s gonna happen in the future. I But as a librarian were you excited about the changes? R Oh, it was GREAT! It was wonderful! It was a wonderful time to be in a career in a great state because the state put so much funding into this and DePaul was lucky that we

3 were able to get into the state funded projects because it really allowed us to do what we wouldn t have been able to do otherwise. And by out being part of it, Northwestern didn t take part in it, University of Chicago didn t, and Loyola didn t. So we were one of the largest, we were able to bring, one of my big causes was that we would have the other private schools, many of which are religious, not just Catholic but other religions, be part of it also. And ultimately even the Newberry was part of it. So the other three large academics aren t. But it was a great time to be in libraries and a great time to be in academic technology, so. I Now during your tenure at DePaul you opened two brand new libraries. The John T. Richardson Library on the Lincoln Park Campus and the Loop Campus Library in DePaul Center. I must imagine your counterparts in other universities must have been envious. Yet developing two new libraries must have been also an enormous task. Can you tell me about the process that you and your staff pursued to accomplish such major projects? R Well, first of all I m not sure that my colleagues were envious because DePaul s library facilities were very outdated. And so one, yes I had the opportunity to it. It was a great career opportunity, um, but at the same time it was really necessary to bring it up to standards because it just, we weren t there. Well, we visited a lot of new libraries in the immediate area and saw what they had done well from our perspective and not well. I had two GREAT associate directors then. We did a lot of these trips, you know, driving to these places and we could see, well, that wouldn t work at DePaul. It worked for them but it wouldn t work for us. And we then did space planning where we looked at what we would, ah, how we would interrelate these areas. At that point the first library, the first part of the planning of it, ah, Glen Scharfennorth was then the Director of Libraries and he had done some work when UIC did their new library; that s where had come from. So we used that model, which is a national model also relational, ah, relational drawings of what fits with that. And we did that, but again, the struggle there, Glen then was moved to a different area. The struggle that we then had was I knew we were going to be removing some positions. And so having to devise the building plans, etc., knowing that in like at two years out maximum we would not have that position anymore was always difficult. What we put in place was what we called the F word which meant flexibility because we had to be flexible enough that if we were saying this was going to be this person s department, that was a department head, and we knew that we were not going to have that department, because we were going to consolidate, we then had to think of how would we use that space in this new environment, this new plan that we had. Sounds devious, but it is how organizations work, so I Well, it s more strategic thinking, basically. R Well, um, one thing that I remember very clearly is Father Richardson said, Doris, you know, are we going to be able to use this building in the future, etc.? I said, Father, you can make this into a dorm or an apartment building, whatever you wanted, because we had devised it in that way. There were things in there that we knew, when we were putting them in, wouldn t be used, we thought they wouldn t be used in the

4 future. Like there are, like at Richardson Library there are channels in all the floors where the fiber that had to be run through. Well, then it was copper, but we knew fiber was coming. We just couldn t afford it. We knew that ultimately probably this stuff would be wireless, but we had to do it because that was the technology of the time. But doing what they ve done now with the Lincoln Park, that first floor where they sort of made it into a huge reading room, that. I They call it The Commons, I think they call it that. R Yeah, that s, that term is a term, ah, from like the late 80 s or middle, or early 90 s, and they, it s smart that they did what they did because they COULD have restructured it in, it s very high end, beautiful, but I I have to say as someone who is taking classes now, it s VERY popular. Very popular. R Oh, and it should! It s what they needed was a quiet study area, and where students could sit and hang out, etc., so that. I They could still be together. R Yes. I Because this generation likes being together. R Yes. I But they can also get a lot of work done. R Yes. And they re, it s like the Starbucks. I It s kind of like Starbucks, yes. (laughs) I was gonna say R Well, it is! I mean, it was radical. When I was there to, we said, I said people should be able to bring coffee in. I mean, they do it at Starbucks. And you know, public libraries don t allow that, which is a, some public libraries have put coffee areas in, coffee machines. Um, so it s the kind of thing that libraries, if they re going to survive at all have to go with the times. And that s the struggle they have because like public libraries still have the struggle of do we do paper AND digital? They have to do that because they don t have everybody moving off, off paper. And I think universities are unique in that they can move off paper. And I This is a little side question. Has Starbucks in some ways taken culturally the role that libraries had, to a certain extent?

5 R Yes. Yes. And Google did too. I mean, when we were first automating we were dealing with a number of libraries software vendors. And one of the things that I said all the time, I m a really bad, I, you know, didn t take typing. I took Latin instead. I m a really bad typist, as everybody who communicates with me knows, and I thought that they should have something that you could, that like the machine would guess spelling for the person, the client. And nobody else thought that was important because you had to follow library cataloguing rules. Well, Google didn t follow library cataloguing rules, and look where THEY are. And I think those are the kind of opportunities that are missed. And I wish I d worked for Google. (laughs) I (laughs) I want to change directions now, if I might, and ask you to tell us about your childhood, your family, where you grew up. Can you tell me a little about your, tell me a little about your parents. R My parents were, ah, from Dyersville, Iowa. It s a little town 20 miles west of Dubuque. It s where they did Field of Dreams. Um, I grew up on a farm that s within spitting distance of Field of Dreams. I Really! R In fact, my brothers farmed the corn for Field of Dreams. And my one brother did the guys coming out of the corn, the Black Sox guys coming out of the corn. Anyway, Dyersville at that time was 190% Catholic. Um, and it, I m from a very large family of ten brothers and sisters, it s an Iowa farm work ethic. It um, my daughter says, Your motto is Arbeit uber Alles. She s probably right. I Which means? You had Latin. R Work, work, this is German. Work above all. I Oh, German. R Work over all. You know, Deutschland uber Alles. There s another Arbeit thing that I (laughs) R Anyway, Arbeit uber Alles. She s probably right. That s my motto. Um, my, we were lucky to have the parents we had, my ten brothers and sisters, BECAUSE they, even though they hadn t gotten an education, they knew the importance of it. My mom wanted us all to at least go to high school. Some of my dad s brothers wouldn t let his daughters, their daughters, go to high school because they didn t think girls needed an education. And we were able to get scholarships and loans so, we didn t have any money but we all got scholarships and loans and all of us went to college. Many of us have advanced degrees. And we were lucky we to have the parents we had. So from there, background,

6 you know, I think that s a key thing, and again I think that s represented in a lot of DePaul students also. R Yes. One of the most intriguing items in your resume is your service in the Peace Corps from 1965 to 1968 in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Before I ask you about the actual experience, I m hoping you d give us an idea about the cultural forces that were shaping you at the time. The mid-1960 s are a time of much significance in America and I d love it if you could describe your perceptions of the time. I Well, I think that, you know, from my perspective I was just out of college. I was in college and then just out of college. I graduated in 1961 from high school and 65 from college. Um, I think there were probably like three groups of young people, of young adults, or whatever, young college students at that time. One was the people whose parents had benefitted from World War II, post-world War II growth. And they were the ones who are the stereotype of what the 60 s were like, because they had the money and the education to look, question and look at the societal norms, etc., of the time. So they saw things like inequality, racism, imperial wars, Vietnam. And really challenged it and led to a lot of the, the unrest that there was. Then I think a second group were the people who had been left out because of race, African Americans, Hispanic, um, maybe sexual preference, although I don t know that that was that much, I mean it certainly was THERE, that s not the question, but whether that was that overt at that time. I mean, that came later. And then there were third people, people like me who resulted, who benefitted from the results of World War II growth, whose parents hadn t, but who then did because of scholarships and loans and were able to get, we were able to get an education that then led to our own advancement. I think all three groups somehow felt that they had to give back. And to change the world in some way. And you mentioned Peace Corps. That for me was that I had gotten a scholarship and a job, so I had no money. I hadn t paid for any of my education. And so I felt I had to give back in some way. You know, I know that all sounds a little naïve right now, given we still have inequality, given we still have racism; given we still, people don t have the opportunity for advancement that we had, whether here or where else in the world. Um, so but that is what I think it was at the time. I Can you describe your experience in Brazil? R Sure. I What do you remember most about working there? R Well, I m from Iowa farms, so I was put in a 4H program, and I had studied Portugese in college, so I was lucky in that most, most people, the women, remember putting a team in a little town? I was put in a little town, Brumadinho, which is near Belo Horizonte in the Minas Gerias state so, and I was lucky because, because I didn t have some non-portuguese speaking male with me, I was really able to be fully integrated into that little town. And I worked with the people. Extension agent is something that exists in the U.S., it exists in rural countries elsewhere too. Rural areas where there are state

7 agencies that help farmers develop plans for farming. That was then popular. I m not so sure it s so much now anymore, with corporate farming. But, um, I worked with the, two Brazilians, a man and a woman who were the Extension agents ACAR in that town, that municipio, which is like a big county form of government. And our, my role, the U.S. had been giving, as part of Food for Peace, bulgur wheat, which was a foreign food to Brazilians. So what I did was develop the school lunch program. Kids came to school from 8:00 to noon, or noon to 4:00. There were two shifts every day. So I developed a program where we would plant gardens in the schools and taught the kids how to, it sounds gross, but taught the kids how to do things, especially the towners, like break up cow pies to get the fertilizer, dry it, break it up, use it for fertilizer for, the manure, you know, for the plants. And then we would use those vegetables to make soup with this bulgur wheat as the starch in it. And then the kids, the kids who were leaving would have food when they went home and the kids who were coming would have food when they got there. So they came to school for food. So it s like a hot lunch program. The problem was that those, for that program to continue those rural elementary schools hadn t been paid in two years by the state. So it didn t take a rocket scientist to figure out this wasn t gonna continue after I left. So I really thought lots of times, Peace Corps was a great idea but, you know, a lot of people didn t speak the language. Um, most of them didn t. There were like two of us who spoke Portuguese and um, the rest were all goodhearted, wonderful people but they, the government, U.S. government might have, in Brazil might have benefitted more by bringing Brazilians HERE to the U.S. to like, they, um, like the agricultural programs here to get more training. And I think then, in after times the Peace Corps required more training and people had language expertise, more knowledge, and I think those programs that, I think it s probably, I feel it s a stronger program with that than it was. I Did you develop an affection for the people? R Of course! I mean, it was a WONDERFUL time in my life. It was wonderful. I fit right in. I had a wonderful time. I How about music? Was there music? R Oh, the music was incredible! I used to be a key samba dancer and then I went back, when I came back I went to Madison, I had a fellowship there, and I mean, my Portuguese was GREAT! It s not anymore. But it was great! People thought I was a native, you know, and it was wonderful. Personally it was wonderful. It set the stage in my life. I met my husband when I was in those, that program at Madison. And yeah, it was great. I mean, I wish I could still samba, but I can t. We went to a samba program this summer up at the Botanic Garden here and I was watching all these people samba and I was like sambaing in my chair. And this guy kept inviting me to come out I Yeah! R No, no. My knees won t take this anymore.

8 I Oh, right. R I mean, it was a great time. Yeah, it was. I But you went on to become an instructor in Spanish and Portuguese, and a bibliographer for Hispanic literature and culture. What are some of the aspects of Hispanic culture you find particularly compelling? Do you have any favorite authors? R Well, um, obviously, I mean, the stereotypes of Hispanic culture are there for a reason. I mean, that the people DO have a warmth and an outgoing, and you know, food is great and music and um, I never have liked literature of any Hispanic culture because I actually don t read much literature. I have never read much literature. I read history and politics and. I You re really into non-fiction. R Non-fiction. I occasionally read mysteries. One, Anne Hudson, the associate director used to say mysteries are popcorn for the brain. And I think that s true. And, ah, she turned me onto a lot of writers that I didn t know. But I would say I really do read history and literature, history and politics and religion, social things, ecological, those kind of non-literary I You re a pragmatic person. R Yeah. My husband s area, his doctorate is in 16 th century Spanish literature. So I get enough (laughs) discussion of literature from that. (laughs) I Why did you come to DePaul? R I followed Gary here. He was at, we were at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. And he got a job at Northwestern and we came here. And um, I saw an ad in the paper for DePaul. I applied for a couple other jobs, whatever was Chase Bank then. But I, and I, another university, but I thought DePaul was the better university and I wanted to stay in academic libraries. That s where I d been. And ah, I liked the idea of working in the Loop, etc. I stayed here because it was ah, personally convenient. Gary was, Gary left Northwestern and was in ah, marketing and sales. So he traveled the world. He had Latin America as his territory for ten years. So it was personally convenient for him, and I liked some of the people I worked with and stuff, I mean, enough to stay. Obviously I was recruited but decided to stay because I was near enough to Iowa to get there and, you know, it was just a good fit. Evanston, I ve lived in the same house, so it was a nice fit all over. I liked living in Evanston. It was an easy commute to DePaul and I d tell anybody, come to DePaul! And stay! I (laughs) Now you were part of the generation that both instigated and witnessed the historical growth of DePaul University as an institution of national and international reputation. From your perspective, what factors contributed to that growth?

9 R I think DePaul realized that it was a business, that universities are businesses. And that would be Ralph Beaudoin, Ken McHugh realized that and were able to ah, work closely enough with the Board of Trustees to get them to see it and to finally get the Vincentians to see it. Or at least then Father Richardson to see it. Um, I think that they realized that they needed to run it like a business, which they did and they do. And I think that was it. And I think, you know, I personally was lucky to work with people, Dawne Tortorella was one of the best people I ve ever worked with in my whole life. And I m gonna be 70 in nine days. Ah, she was then the head of academic technology development. A young person, she was, I always told her she was 12. She was visionary. She had great ideas. She could see the future. She could see the politics were here. And I was pretty naïve and she sort of escorted me through the politics. So I really think that there were some people like that who really MADE the university, and I think, as I said, the business people did. I Well, and also you were, you were modernizing the information systems. R Oh, I needed, I needed Dawne. I You were really part of that. R Dawne and I, Dawne and I were partners in the best sense. I needed Dawne because I needed to have that kind of support. And it couldn t be that we were in competition, which we weren t. We worked together. I think that that s the struggle that I know we, it happened here also of course, later, after Dawne left. But I think that that s what many libraries struggled with was the, rather than think we were in competition, it should, we, I was lucky. I was VERY, VERY lucky. And, you know, Dawne and I are still in communication. She was really, really great here. She was good for this place. I Were there other faculty or staff members that you remember as having an important role in your life? You mentioned two associate directors in the library. R Yeah. Ah, Anne Hudson, very hard-working, very bright. Sharon Mader, she, Anne went to the University of Illinois. Sharon went to, ah, oh, New Orleans. I m drawing a blank, but she s there. Bright people, both of them. Really forward thinking. Another technology person we were able to hire, Frank Cervone, um, was, he was the library technology person. VERY bright. Very knowledgeable. Very ah, forward-thinking, etc. He was most recently at, he was at, went to Northwestern from DePaul and then went to University of, Indiana University, Purdue, who I think in like Gary, somewhere there. I How about Father Richardson? Did you work closely with him? R Um, well, you know, I was down several layers. I wasn t a dean. DePaul didn t have a dean position on, so I didn t really. I mean, I know him well and I m going to the event tomorrow but I didn t work closely with him because ah, DePaul is also a place that if you re not, [you were staff here so you know] if you re not faculty, you re not on the

10 same ah, decision making. But the good thing about DePaul was that also meant that nobody interfered in your area. I know, I knew people who had to deal with faculty trying to tell them how to run libraries or, um, I didn t have that, so that was very, another reason to stay at DePaul. So um, I mean, I I So you were given some area, you were. R Oh, given leeway! I You were given leeway. R As long as you didn t screw up. And, you know, I didn t screw up. And as long as you didn t you were fine. I think another person who was great in the HR was Joyce Fescke. She really I think had the good of the faculty and staff at heart and ah, Nancy Gall was, who worked with her. I remember her VERY, very fondly. And very highly. I mean, she was, TIAA/CREF thought well enough of her to put her on their Board. That s just shows how good she was. I Yes. R But I knew a lot of GREAT library deans in this state and throughout the country. And ah, I think I overall had a very good career. I Did you see the influence of St. Vincent DePaul on university policy or culture? And in your observation how was that influence manifested? R You know, I, I see what DePaul is, I think it was branding. I think it was when um, oh, Anne Kennedy came and then ah, Kallsbeeck came after here. They HAD to brand. Everybody was branding. Loyola was branding. It was a Jesuit institution, but Loyola and the Jesuits, my husband used to be a Jesuit so I know about this. So um, they were branding themselves as a Jesuit, which has a whole, not the conniving kind of Jesuit, a political term, but instead scholarship, research, etc. So higher academic standards, they were saying. And ah, DePaul had to differentiate itself from UIC, which was growing. They weren t in the same league as Northwestern and University of Chicago on a national or international basis. They didn t want to be, and they shouldn t have been either, in the small school, little Catholic school league. You know, the Benedictines and Dominicans, what they are now universities. Um, they shouldn t have been. They were higher than that. So I think they saw that those people, Kennedy, Kallsbeeck, saw that they had to brand themselves as something different. And so that Vincentian became that. And um, I think a lot of programs that DePaul does, which are laudable, very laudable, the service programs, etc., many, and maybe most other schools also do those now. I mean, I know they do because I ve got a big enough family and enough friends elsewhere. And I live in Evanston and, you know, have friends who are academics elsewhere. Um, so I think that they ve been smart in branding those as Vincentian. Because people applying here or going here, or the external world doesn t know Vincentian from whatever. And so I think it s a smart branding on their part. Um, yes,

11 my friends chuckle at Vinny on the side of the dorm at Lincoln Park (chuckles) and say, who is that? And if you ve gone to Paris and seen him there and say, oh, my god, he doesn t go away! (laughs) You know, all in all I think it s a good branding that they did. I Are you doing anything interesting in your retirement that you d like to tell us about? R Well, you know, I, I always was so envious of faculty and students who could sit there all day and read if they wanted to. Sit in the library and read. It s quiet. You know, they could get whatever they wanted. And so what I ve done in retirement is ah, develop my own little mini-courses. I don t think I d be a good student for a faculty member because I m ah, as defined by others, too confrontational and too challenging and things like that. And I, I agree that those are terms that describe me. Um, so I ve developed my own little mini-courses and I was in England nine months when our daughter lived there and had twins. And I started really reading a LOT about English history that I hadn t read much. Which is of course then world history. And so that led me to the Raj and the Great Game and led me to, you know, all of World War I and the Revolutionary War, Civil War. Civil War leads to the Mexican American War, the Dakota War. I mean, so I actually, and I ve just finished a little mini-course or still am immersed in it on Nazi Germany. Read a great book recently, Hitler s Charisma, which I would recommend to anybody, whatever their religion is or whatever their thinking is because it really shows how could millions of people follow Hitler. I just really, it s a new book, excellent. Um, and that s what I plan on continuing to do. I m not gonna, there are a lot of senior courses, like Northwestern has a whole program, but I think I d be impatient with people who haven t read the stuff and therefore take a lot of time in sort of discussions that aren t pertinent to the topic on hand. I Yes! R So way years ago, ah, a woman who had been my, one of my teachers in college left, that was, I was at Rosary College, she left the nunnery, the Dominicans, and she said, I then had her later as a faculty member when I was in library school, and she said, Doris, the thing about you is you didn t suffer fools gladly. And I said, Well, I may be the biggest fool of all. And she said, No, no. You re not. And I said, Yeah, you re right. I m not. So I m very happy with what I m doing. And you know, we travel. We go to, part of that mini-course means go to art exhibits, go to museums. You know. Go to. I When you say mini-course are you actually talking about a curriculum or are you just doing this yourself? R I develop a curriculum myself. I do it. I do it. But NOW with the news site I ve just learned from my daughter called Openculture.com, that is just outstanding because it has everything anybody could ever want from all the free courses at the Stanfords and the Harvards, etc., are doing. I So you re benefitting from the information revolution.

12 R Oh, I m, the, oh, I, we are gonna stay here, actually, in Evanston because the library services it sounds like an ad the library services at DePaul are incredible! I mean, my husband is doing, he went back to all of his publishing, so he s publishing as an independent scholar. He s doing all this work on Jesuits and Lope devega and he s had like eight articles published since he retired and, which is phenomenal because most academic people don t, academic journals don t publish people who aren t related to an academic institution. And he s not. And so we re gonna stay here for the library services. I m able to get anything! I mean, I go to, you know, the Co-op at the University of Chicago and I go to Barnes and Noble and look at what are they getting and I get it through what s now called CARLI as a DePaul staff member. I was careful to set that up, by the way, before I left because I felt staff should get the benefits faculty do. And we do. Um, I, there s so much on the Internet. You know, Gary s reading things he would have had to go all over Europe to read. So it s just great. It s wonderful! I Now are you reading in print or are you reading off of readers? R Both. Both. Both. And the whole way of teaching, I think, of teaching, I hope, I m sure the faculty do this now. Um, journalism that s on-line is so different from print journalism that you can really see why it s so threatened. And books are also so different. I do read a lot on-line, a really lot, but I do also read books and paper because (a) they don t shut off when you re going on the plane, (b) they don t run out of electricity, (c) you can go back and forth more quickly and easily. You can look at the maps. I m reading, I m reading history, remember. You can look at the maps, you can look at the photos. Some of the digital stuff doesn t include the photos or the maps are hard to look at. But the good part about it is if your eyesight is starting to be, you know, challenged, you can also blow up text, which is great. You can also link easily when you re on-line, you can link easily to the footnotes. So a lot of academic writers now use examples from web pages or from other maps or from art, for example, where they re, if you re talking about Nazi Germany they have to relate to art. And they do. You can go look at those. If you re reading the print, you can go look at those right away or if you re reading it on-line, you can look at those right away. So I just think it s an incredible time to be alive, so I I ve been speaking with Doris Brown. Doris, it has been a genuine pleasure talking to you. Thank you for sharing your recollections with us. R Thank you. I For the DePaul Emeritus Society, I m David Edward Sims.