Transcript of interview with William Carlson by Alice Brown, March 19, 1980

UNLV University Libraries William Carlson i An Interview with William Carlson An Oral History Conducted by Alice Brown Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries William Carlson ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2017 UNLV University Libraries William Carlson iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries William Carlson iv Abstract On March 19, 1980, Alice Brown interviewed Dr. William Carlson (born 1914 in Sandstone, Minnesota) about his experience working at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Carlson, who joined UNLV in 1957, provides his accounts on the history of the university library. The first part of the interview involves a discussion of the beginnings of the library from the location of Las Vegas High School to Maude Frazier Hall and its eventual move to Archie Grant Hall. Carlson also talks about some of the first librarians who were a part of the library, the funding and donations used to build and develop it, and the eventual construction and architecture of the James R. Dickinson Library. The two also discuss the first graduation of the university, the work it took to get students registered for classes in early days, and some of the overall changes over the years at the university. UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 1 This is Alice Brown, librarian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, interviewing Dr. William Carlson. We have the anniversary of Nevada Southern Regional Division and Nevada Southern University. Dr. Carlson, you came before Frazier was built or after? Frazier Hall had just been built and opened up in the summer of ’57, and I came down July 1, 1957 at the time when they were going to open the campus with a summer session that Dr. Liam Wood had already set up. Was this really the first classes or the start of the university and the library, would you say? Oh, no. The classes—everything from the auditorium at Las Vegas from the basement of the Baptist church and wherever they could find it. And at that time, they had a small little library that collected mainly books that were brought together by members of the faculty and anyone who wished to donate them, and these were held in the auditorium of the Las Vegas High School. You didn’t teach over there at the Las Vegas High School at all? No, I came down from the University of Nevada at Reno. I had been up there for four-and-a-half years before coming down here; I was dean of student affairs up there. And when I came down, that summer we had Mary Jane Bundy— Mary Lee Bundy. Mary Lee Bundy. And she had been hired that summer by Dr. Wood, who was the academic vice president and dean of statewide development. They had gotten a special grant of $10,000 to buy books for our library, which was to be located in Frazier Hall. And so, she was busy acquiring the volumes during that summer. And this, of course, at the time seemed like an awful lot of money. We knew it wasn’t that expensive—never had had anything previously, so this was a UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 2 start. Later that summer, in a hot summer day, I met Jerry Dye, who was an applicant for the position of librarian. And he came in (unintelligible) was a hot day, and one of the questions I asked him is his attitude or philosophy regarding books and collections, and in effect, what I wanted to know, was he the type of librarian that chained them down or free. And while he didn’t, as he replied, well, he didn’t want to lose any of those books; he felt, at least if they stole them, they were being used. But he wanted to make them available to the students. And Jerry took over, and of course, I think did an excellent job with the limited funds we had. Was Mary Lee a short-time hiree, or she moved on to somewhere else, is that right? Yes, she was hired just for over the summer months; I don’t recall whether it was all summer, she started in May through when it was, but this was just a temporary position for her to do the acquisition, get things set up during that period of time. In my notes somewhere, I’ve heard that, with the funds that the books were bought, while there were funds for the books to be bought, there were no funds for anybody to process them. Do you remember anything about this? Well, that was to be part of her task, to process them; that is, getting them shelves. And then of course, the problem of who handled them afterwards, there we had Celeste Lull, and I don’t recall who else, came in for that purpose. She served as one of the initial librarians and then became assistant to Jerry Dye when he came in. Do you remember just where—can you locate from the current Frazier Hall where the library was in Frazier? Oh, yes. It was the part which is now part of the registrar’s office, where the students would go in to add, withdraw, and so on like that, and that was set up as the library. It was also used for Board of Regents meetings on occasion and kind of a local purpose. That was before they had UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 3 enclosed what was the patio that had been given by the local service league. And so it was the, just, what I would call, to the south of what was the patio. And there was a big double glass door that opened up onto the patio, students could come in and out. And they tried to make it as comfortable as they could in that very, very limited space. And that was before we moved over to Grant Hall. I’ve heard that they even had—I don’t know—I got the impression that they had some of the book collections, or at least the students would use the patio, and when it rained on rare occasions, they got a mad scramble to get everything back into the library. Yes. Of course, that didn’t happen very often, but that would be true. And the service wing provided not only for the wall and the concrete flooring of that patio, but the patio furniture for the students to use. It was a student area, which is the only area they had at that small campus—one building. Then the plans were made for the move-in to grant; both for that building and for the new library building, was most of the planning done by Jerry Dye? Yes. The architects were generally pretty good about consulting with the people who would be using the facilities. I don’t know how much they used. There were little follow-ups; they had the, for example, so-called rear door exit, the one exit door, which was wired for sound if anybody opened it up and they were not supposed to leave as an emergency—a buzzer would sound off. And then they screwed up in another way; when you came in, what would be the regular entrance to a library, the staff came in, or anyone could come in, and it was dark—the light switches were down at the far end by the emergency exit, and so they had to fumble their way through the dark to get down there. But other than that, I think Jerry helped in the general planning at Grant Hall. It was during this period of time that Jerry came with the request, is it UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 4 possible to get the microfilm of the New York Times—getting back, as I recall, in 1851. Well, as a kind of a side issue here, you recall, Alice, most of our students were part-time students. Yes. And so, we devised what we called the evening division. And of course, there were times when the president and the Board of Regents were a little confused, because our evening division ran from eight in the morning until ten at night; it wasn’t just in the evening. For these part-time people, they paid by credit fee, and this was normally put into the so-called evening division. Well, I got an approval from Dr. Wood and then the president (unintelligible) himself to have all of those credit fees put into the evening division funds. Now out of the evening division funds, then, we could hire part-time instructors, get operating materials, books, and other things. So, it was, while it was perfectly legal, it was a little peculiar. It wasn’t until Mr. Humphrey became the comptroller of the business manager of the university system—that was before he came chancellor—finally, he said that this could not happen anymore. But for a period of ten years, roughly ten years or close to eight years, we were able to do that. Well, from those funds, then, that was the only location, because we did not get any appropriations that amounted to anything. So I told Jerry that I would get the approval from then-President Armstrong, to purchase roughly the first half of the New York Times microfilm addition. So, this came to $5,000. Well, that was the first half. I caught him under (unintelligible) type of president somewhat unaware, so I guess he didn’t examine it too much, so we got it. Well, then we put in the requisition for the second half, and that was fairly close to $5,000 also, the president was rather irked and said that we couldn’t do it. But I pointed out to him, while we had the first half, so we really ought to have the second half to go along with it. So he gave in, and he brought it up (unintelligible), and I assume that they’ll—well, they still have the collection, and of course, I think it’s been a great use for a UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 5 number of people. We did a number of these things, particularly from the library’s faculty needs, operating material, and so on—didn’t get nothing to (unintelligible), but our regular budget was so small that we just have—they couldn’t do the sort of the thing. And so it was kind of beg, borrow, and steal. And of course, we did a lot, and I think Jerry has started this very nicely: getting people in the community to make donations, not only in books or journals, magazines, whatever, but also funds. And more than once, I would have people call or come in and see me and say, “Well, I don’t have much money; I can only contribute $5,” and I would say to them—of course, that was in light of what $5 would buy in those days—“that would buy at least one book. That means you’re contributing to all of these students not only this year but for years to come.” So, we went off with the nickels and dimes as well as the larger grants. And then, as the library moved and became larger, then, I think this great support from the community for the university and the library continued to grow and increase. I remember when we moved into the new building—do you remember the shower room in Grant Hall? Yes. Did you see it right before we moved? I don’t recall it—something flashes of all the boxes stacked. That’s right. I think that shower room was stacked floor to ceiling completely with donations which had never been unpacked or processed. What were your—would you like to say a little bit about Jerry Dye and your impressions of him? You have spoken a little bit. Well, I really like Jerry; I was impressed from the time when he first joined us—rather dynamic, courteous, he was aggressive without being obnoxiously aggressive. He was certainly concerned UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 6 about the library and the functions in trying to get student helpers and penny, nickel, or dime that he could scrape together. I think he provided good leadership at that time, and a very difficult time (unintelligible). It seemed to me he got along well with everyone. Well, as I said, he was certainly interested. He was often disappointed he didn’t get more money for the library for the students, faculty—and for a while, he was with us, I think he did a very, very good job. I hated to see Jerry go, but of course we had another fine replacement. So, things worked out well anyway. Whose idea was the round building? Was that Jerry’s, or was that the architect’s? That was the architect’s. By that time, I don’t know how much Jerry had been actively involved in it. I had some context, initially, the idea of the presentation of how they would put it, where they would put it, and so on. At one time, some of the consulting that come over in San Francisco that the Board of Regents hired had put the library in a very peculiar position. And of course, we wanted it, in the recommendation of all the faculty and certainly to carry it out, to be as centrally located as possible rather than off to the side. I don’t recall, now, the rationale for using the round, or circular-type, building, except that it would be different. They wanted to avoid a big boxy affair, I presume. Some of the things that they had initially, that pool near the front entrance, what with all the dust flowing and people riding horses across the desert, they come up and water their horses, dogs coming in to cool off—they soon converted this to a desert-type planter, which was probably wiser than the initial architectural decision. I think, as I remember, perhaps one of the deciding factors of the round building, or something that was favorable, was that while it was one story, one person could very easily supervise it, which our staff was that limited. Yes, I think that was one of the important things, and of course, the building was built with the idea that a second story is so constructed so additional stories could be added, which UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 7 subsequently happened. But I think there were a lot of people—oh, I couldn’t say a lot—I suppose there were some people that looked upon it in a, well, kind of a stance in terms of being a round building-type thing. And yet, if you stopped to think of our buildings, they’re all different, and I think this is part of the flavor of our campus—certainly ivy in the golfing club wouldn’t be very appropriate in the desert setting. Do you remember how long they expected that first floor of the round building to last before it needed to be built on? No, I don’t recall whether it would be, say, like a decade, and when this was discussed, I just spoke up or shook my head and said, “Well, I think they ought to plan for an addition sooner than that. And I think that around with that after, you know, a couple years went by and the increase in our students, increase in the size of our library holdings, that this was undoubtedly a great necessity. I would say, initially, right from the beginning, we could’ve used two floors instead of just one, not that we would be able to fill it up, but I think it would’ve been much easier. But then they were constrained by the amount of appropriations. Where was the first graduation held, the first student graduation we had? That was in what we now call the old gym. That was in 1964—twenty-eight, as I recall, twenty-eight, twenty-nine—boy, I’m forgetting everything—some of these things you thought you would never forget. But it was a meeting of the Board of Regents when that decision was made about developing the (unintelligible) program, and I recall that I was asked—this was probably in 1958—as to when I thought would be our first graduating class. Well, ’59, might have been somewhere in that vicinity. This was a little difficult to try and project, so out of the clear blue sky, I pick the year 1964 for our graduating class; our programs would be such that perhaps this would be logical. This was probably in the (unintelligible) in 1960 when finally the discussion of UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 8 the Regents came up. And I use this, my argument, that the year 1964 is the Centennial for the State of Nevada. So this would be a Centennial graduating class, the first graduating class in the centennial year, and at that time, of course, there were some members of the Board of Regents who were not only raised or lived in Nevada, but were born in Nevada, so this, I think, touched their heartstrings a little bit, and they approved 1964. In the meantime, then, we were elect with a very difficult situation: how in the world are we going to get the programs going? I think the fact that this had been decided, increased our enrollment, and with the increase in enrollment, the greater offerings that we could make. And as we increased offerings, more people came. By the same token, you may recall that in 1964, the State of Nevada had issued the Centennial medallions, which were sale. I think, at that time, they were $6 each. Well, I had gotten the idea of talking to President Armstrong, would it be possible to use something like the Nevada medallion as they use (unintelligible) medal, or up in the Reno campus started the tradition. Well, he said it couldn’t be done, or you could only buy one at a time. No person could buy more than one. Well, I had already done some context—one of the members of the Board of Regents, or former member of the Board of Regents, and some other friends, people I knew, were on the commission. And so, they agreed that if I could get $606, they would sell us 101 of them—or, no, $600, they would sell us 100 of them. Well, I talked to, at that time, member of the Las Vegas Rotary Club, so I talked to the Board of Directors and asked them if they would like to make a contribution to education of $600 to buy these medallions so that they could be presented to the highest ranking student who had spent four years at, then, Southern Nevada University. And Marge Phillips, who was an alum of the University of Nevada at Reno and a very strong supporter of Nevada Southern presented us with one—that made a total of 101, which would last everyone up through and including the year 2064. I directed a letter, and it’s supposed to be in UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 9 some safe deposit box where they keep these, to the then-Governor of the State of Nevada in the year 2063 when the legislature meets trying to convince them that they ought to make available for Nevada Southern Nevada University another 101 Bicentennial medals; so for another 100 years of graduation, the outstanding should be awarded. And I’m pleased to say that this is done. I feel a little, well, I wish that it could be presented at graduation; they say, well, either they’re not available or they’re not able to get the data in sufficient time to award them at graduation. I still think that could be done where they could make a big play for it in front of relatives, friends, the class, the public, because this is an honor for that recipient. But apparently, what becomes of tradition changes over a period of time, and not too long a time at that. Speaking of anniversaries, I was asking Mr. Ericson, or reminding him that, possibly, a twenty-fifth anniversary for the university or the library could come up, but whether it’s passed or not, if you were going to set a twenty-fifth anniversary for the university or the library, what would you base it on? Well, if it’s in the library, I think the establishment for the library in Frazier Hall in 1957, because prior to that time, while they had a, you can say, a library, you look at the collections, books donated by faculty teaching in their given area, and by college people. But really, I think the real start was with Mary Lee Bundy making the acquisitions, Jerry Dye coming in as a formal position of librarian, and then the expansion from there. To me, that would seem more realistic, because the library, really, was begun then, and where it would come in twenty-five years since then. I don’t know if that would be in the line of thinking about the people, I don’t know. The university probably would have to be predated—when did it go from extension classes to being a real branch? Would you? UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 10 Well, that occurred when I came down here in July of ’57. The Regents had given that long title of Southern Regional Division of the University of Nevada La—you know, so on and so forth. The argument, well, politics of the time prior to that was that it would be set up, quote/unquote, “like a junior college.” This was to be able to convince people from the so-called north would resist the establishment of another whole university. And so Dr. Fredman Stout’s attitude was, “Well, let’s get the foot in the door, we’ll start on a one-year basis, and then a two-year, (unintelligible),” said, “well, it will be like a junior college.” The intent, however, is to really make it a four-year institution. Well, prior to July 1, ’57, it was really an—the records so indicated that, in the registrar’s office up in Reno, any classwork taken was extension. The setting aside, then, of—or, setting up—the dean to be in charge down here; otherwise, everything was run through Reno—the decision through Dr. Wood’s office, dean of statewide development and academic vice president, which of course, if we were to grow, and even the small size was extremely inconvenient. This didn’t mean that we had full autonomy—far from it. That didn’t occur until after they got the chancellor and then became president in his own right on this campus as well as the northern campus. So, the idea was to give us some autonomy, day-to-day operations, our program, curriculum, and so on like that. But we still were pretty well under the Reno campus on a number of things. That’s (unintelligible) times we changed as we grew, and once we started to (unintelligible), of course they couldn’t hold us back. Calling it Southern Nevada University, the university was a bit pretentious at that time, was it not, to call it a university? Well, of course. Any university is a collection of a number of different colleges, actually. And in one sense, I suppose we could say that that was possible. We weren’t colleges; we had moved to division, and then from division—say, the social science division of education, and then to UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 11 college of education, etcetera. So, it was pretentious in size and in programming; yet, at the same time, while the both of the courses we were offering, the freshman and sophomore courses, we also were offering graduate-level courses to the teachers in the community. So, that was a big, wide gap in there, and of course, they were limited. But we were still doing that, and with the approval of parts of the administration, the Board of Regents and all. But this is why, of course, the name Tumbleweed Tech and a few other appellations were given by some of the people, hopefully, and that’s to be expected. We certainly, with one building—no university. We started out as a regional division; that made a little sense. But if we were to grant degrees from down here, then we needed to be a university in name as well as, hopefully, in (unintelligible). Back in the early days, it was pretty much, well, people had assigned duties and titles, but for some occasion, everybody pretty much did everything, as I remember. Is that true? That’s true. It wasn’t that we couldn’t make things clear cut; it was that our staff was so small and limited that people did double or triple duty; for instance, Mrs. Mitchell, who was part-time counselor and part-time sociology instructor. Then the people like Herb Derfelt teaching education courses, then as Nellis Air Force Base wanted us to give courses out there, I said, “Okay, put Herb in charge.” So, Herb arranged and developed a good program and expanded from that. People like the radiologists in the community wanted to develop some courses. So I said, “Okay, Herb, you’re in charge of that.” He had two or three different hats, and by the way, (unintelligible) radiology course came (unintelligible) course that we now have a baccalaureate program. So, from small, little beginnings, there are a lot of things that could develop. I still remember registration times in those days. As I remember, they cleared out all the campus offices, right? UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 12 Yes, and those were the days when they had to use what they call a railroad ticket. There were about six copies of the schedule and other information; one was given to the dean’s office, one to the registrar’s office, one to the students—I don’t know where they all went to. Thank goodness they got rid of that. But this was true. And everyone got in on the registration, and I remember it was rather typical that we would not finish up totaling not only the money but the numbers of students, and because we had so many students in each class, the decision as to whether we could run the class or not, did we have enough money to cover those classes—we probably wouldn’t finish up until around two o’clock in the morning. And of course, two cars, one with the money, and the other following to kinda protect for making the (unintelligible) closet—we did things that, well, I suppose we didn’t always like to do them, but they had to be done. And I think with the small faculty and staff we had, everybody really worked together and worked together well. It was truly amazing, all the things they did. When I first came down, the average load of our instructors was fifteen credits a semester. I was able, during that first year, to get this down to what average, to twelve one semester, thirteen credits maybe another semester, bringing it down to a reasonable limit. And we could only do that by hiring part-time people. And by the way, in this community, the scientific community in the Test Site, the EPA and you name them, we were able to bring in some very, very well-qualified instructors. And this help, I think we had as many or more part-time instructors as a regular-paid (unintelligible) staff. And as I remember, it was hard to tell the students from the faculty, because frequently, the faculty looked younger than the student. Well, one of the very, very pleasing things, which was not only true here—it was around the country—but the number of so-called older people beyond what is the usual—what used to be considered the typical or usual college age—not only teachers, but people in the community. For UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 13 instance, having (unintelligible) Segerblom teach a course in art. Old people would come in and take courses from him—they weren’t interested, necessarily, in going for a degree, but as an offering of interest in the community. And this is one thing we’ve tried to do in our limited way of not only teaching our own students, but to go out and be part of the community. We used to send instructors for (unintelligible) up to, where is that, Panaca, Pioche?—to teach classes up there for the teachers, go up once a week. Well, that’s a pretty good distance, and it’s not always easy. But here again, that fact that we would feel the need to giving the service in the community, and we look as service in our community as being the viewpoint beyond just the immediate Las Vegas vicinity, though most of our attention, of course, was in this area of the community. Is there anything else about the library that you can remember, specifically whether the reactions to it of the community to having a library and—were you in on any decisions to open it up to the community, or was that left up to Jerry Dye? Well, Jerry, I don’t think, would make the decision himself. Knowing Jerry, he wanted to get approval for it, but I know he strongly approved for it. I think all members of the staff—I know I certainly felt that anything we can do, opening up the community, would lend greater support for ourselves. If they came out to use our materials or use the facilities, they would find that, perhaps, there were gaps or needs that maybe they would then feel a greater pressure for maybe making a contribution. And so, I think Jerry’s leadership in providing for, let’s open it up to the community with a very wide and very good (unintelligible). And many times, people would say how much they appreciated the fact—you’ll have to recall that, at that time, we didn’t have the county library system or all the libraries that now exist in this community. So, there was really only one other library besides the university library. UNLV University Libraries William Carlson 14 And that was Las Vegas, and you paid $25 a year if you did not own property within the city limits, as I recall, right? That is correct. You almost left an arm and a leg there any time you checked out books. I shouldn’t just make it sound that critical. They had their problems of circulation and getting books back and so on—I can understand that. But they were very jealously guarding against the county and the so on. I was really pleased to see the countywide setup established and the projects that they have. And I think maybe—well, I know some of our people who have gone through here are working in the library system and have developed programs other than the issuance of books; that is very healthy and very good for the community. Now, I think the opening up of not, not only for our students, but anybody who had a library card within the county or the city, was free to use our facilities. I imagine the push for this partly came from our technical and science community that were building and living in this area, wouldn’t you say? Oh, yes. There was no question. And of course, they felt, I think, the most disappointed, as the work was not available. And this brought them, from them, suggestions on how to acquire more, getting a government documentary—I forget the exact title now. Government depository. Depository, that’s right. And that came through what was then the Southwest Radiological Laboratory, which is now the EPA. And they themselves would make contributions of books they had and monies and efforts behind fundraising, things of this nature. [End of recording]