Matheny-WhitePat_20180828_Transcript pt1.pdf

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Part of Pat Matheny-White Oral History Interview

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Pat Matheny-White
Interviewed by Stephen Beck
The Evergreen State College oral history project
August 28, 2018
Beck: This is Stephen Beck. I’m here with Pat Matheny-White at her kitchen table. It’s August 28, 2018,
and this is part of the oral history project. I’m glad to have a chance to interview you, Pat.
Matheny-White: Yes, I am appreciating this has stimulated me to do a lot of thinking about the past
that I’d kind of set aside. Also it will be nice to have some contact with you, because we’ve semi-known
each other over the years. Knew your parents well.
Beck: Right. Let me start out by asking some questions about your early life. You were born and grew
up in Minnesota, correct?
Matheny-White: Right. I’m from Blackduck, Minnesota, which is a little town 80 miles south of the
Canadian border. I grew up with a large extended family in a small community of 600 people, but the
school was a consolidated school, so it was about twice that, if not more. It’s interesting to look back at
the roots or the seeds of who I became that go back that far. I went to my 50 th high school reunion and I
was amazed at the connection, and realized that I was, in essence, raised by the people that I went to
school with as well as this extended family, because we all went—a number of us—through all 12 years
together. So it was really quite interesting how we had a hard time the first time we got together for a
dinner. We didn’t have nametags [laughter] and [we were] trying to recognize each other! But the
connections were there. So I have pretty strong roots there, and family roots, people who settled there
in the late 19th century or whatever.
Beck: When you were last year or were visiting any of the memories of the time, did you find any
connections between your upbringing there and your later career? You mentioned something along
those lines.
Matheny-White: Yes. I had a wonderful piano teacher and a music teacher, and that was such a
trajectory for me in my academic career. I got my B.A. in music performance history at Macalester
College, which is a liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, so that has its roots there.
Also, we had a Spanish teacher, which you might not expect in a small town, and he was very
influential. He was studying for his master’s degree at Bemidji State University. Have you heard of it?
Beck: I have, I have. [laughter]
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Matheny-White: So he would come not only teaching Spanish. He was a Native Mexican and part of
what he did was to invite us to his home. We also went to a conference in Minneapolis of students
studying Spanish. I got a taste of another culture through that, but also of academics, because he would
come in bleary-eyed from writing a paper on Camus or somebody, and he would share all of that. Then,
in addition to speaking his native language, he loved Italian, so he was always comparing. [laughing]
There are some different roots there, since later I did this Chicano and Latino Artists in the Pacific
Northwest.
Also very close to the Native culture. The Red Lake Indian Reservation was not that far away
and there were six students in my class who were off the rez. It seemed there were always these
mixes—we were Scots-Irish/English/Dutch, so then there were the Scandinavians, the Finns—so it was
really quite a diverse community. But then, of course, there were the standard biases and so forth. I
think it was a special time. I look back at it as giving me a very good foundation for what happened to
me later.
Beck: You mentioned that you went to Macalester, and you did a major in music, was it?
Matheny-White: Right. There are these kind of competing private colleges in Minnesota—Carleton and
St. Olaf and so forth. Also one of the influences in Blackduck were the Presbyterian ministers, and they
also were not just ministers, but I was very impressed how my mother was cared for and ministered by
them, but also they were intellectual stimulation. We used to have this youth group and we would get
into very intense discussions.
Macalester was a Presbyterian school, but very liberal. There was an experimental curriculum
when I came there, which was a four-one-four curriculum, which was four classes for two semesters,
and then the one was where you could concentrate on a special project or do independent work, or
there were one-month classes.
Beck: Kind of a January term sort of thing?
Matheny-White: Yes. So, there’s that influence [laughing] being in the first classes that were studying
in that curriculum.
Beck: So you were in the first year of the experimental curriculum?
Matheny-White: Yes. Also you had a choice of having a full major, if you really knew what you wanted
to do, or you could have a minor, and mine was in music, but I really took classes from all of the faculty
that were special. In my freshman year, my English teacher was James Wright, who was a well-known

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poet. So they were very influential. My piano music mentor was there. I remember a sculptor was
Italian. And I took a political science class from G. Theodore Mitau, who had run Hubert Humphrey’s
Senate or whatever before he ran for Vice President.
Beck: Sorry, Mitau?
Matheny-White: Yes, he was the political science faculty person, and he had run Humphrey’s campaign.
Beck: His presidential campaign?
Matheny-White: No, I think he was in the Senate. This was prior to running for Vice President. But a
pretty influential person in the Democratic Party. So there was quite a—I took a class from an
anthropologist whose text had become the standard. So it was an excellent college. And it also had
international students, and there were opportunities for people to work and study abroad. The World
Press Institutes was on campus, which were journalists from all over the world who would come there
to experience American culture or whatever.
My first year at Macalester was 1963, and that’s where my experience of John F. Kennedy’s
assassination happened. So I had that whole experience of watching television in the dorms and being
totally absorbed with that for days. And I will never forget the look on James Wright’s face. I was in his
class when it was announced that he had died. There was a kind of community spirit there that was
shared by all of us.
Beck: That actually leads me to wonder. These days at Evergreen certainly, and I think at a lot of
colleges, if a major event happens, it’s brought right into the classroom and it’s discussed a great deal.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Did that happen at the time?
Matheny-White: Yes, and one of the themes running through the entire curriculum, I think, was
existentialism. Now, I had planned to go to seminary, etc., and there was a whole kind of Christian
existentialism that was happening in literature, music. It was affecting every discussion, I think, on
campus. And we had a literature faculty member commit suicide. So, it was an intense time,
philosophically and social issues, etc.
I drew on my Macalester experience a lot when I was teaching at Evergreen, and in the mode
that I taught. I also worked in the library. That’s why I ended up deciding to go that route with my
graduate work.
Beck: What is that exactly that you decided to go into librarianship?
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Matheny-White: I worked in the library all the time. I was there under scholarship, but also worked
and work-studied the whole time. Jim Holley was the dean of the library and he had a great deal of
influence. And I succeeded pretty well. I was running the science library in the summer on the campus.
Beck: That’s impressive as an undergraduate.
Matheny-White: Yeah, but it was summer and not a lot of demand. But still, it gave me the sense that
this is something I could do and be in an academic environment. I keep saying I went away to college
and never left. [laughter]
Beck: That’s true for a lot of us!
Matheny-White: Right. I had decided that’s the route I wanted to go. I realized that I didn’t have the
major in music. I wasn’t going to continue to do performance, though I did two major full recitals where
I was playing eight hours a day during January as part of the preparation. So I sort of had in my head
that, well, my undergraduate was my avocation and then I’d go the other route.
This is an interesting parallel to Evergreen possibly. Because of the curriculum, when I applied
to graduate school, they said I didn’t have all the credits I needed, particularly in—I continued to study
Spanish, so I was rejected. Then I talked to Jim and he wrote this long letter explaining the curriculum,
so then I got in on a provisional basis—which was kind of ridiculous—because I hadn’t taken one part of
the SAT. So two weeks after I graduated Macalester, I was in line registering for classes at the University
of Denver. Then I took that SAT, which I passed with flying colors. [laughter]
From there, after Denver, then I got a position at Southwest Minnesota State College, which was
a brand-new state college in Minnesota. It was doing some innovative things in the curriculum. I was an
instructor, so I was faculty, and taught a freshman seminar, but I was focused on preparing the non-print
collection, particularly the music. So, when Jim became dean of the Evergreen Library, as he was
moving west he stopped and interviewed me. That’s how I came to Evergreen.
Beck: What was your first position? What did Jim hire you as or to do?
Matheny-White: He had this concept of a multimedia library, which I’ll want to talk about.
Beck: Okay.
Matheny-White: And what he needed, he had contracted with Richard Abel Company in Portland to
buy all the books that were the standard books for college libraries, but he wanted to extend all of that
to integrate the non-print collection. He knew my experience from Macalester and from the University

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of Denver and from my teaching, so I came on a temporary, one-year appointment, using capital funds
that he had for the initial collection.
I was to develop the non-print collection, and then I was to see that all of the books and all the
collection got on the shelf—so, developing all of the cataloging and the processing. And there were no
standards for Library of Congress cataloging of non-print material at that time.
Beck: There weren’t? So you had to make it up as you went along?
Matheny-White: I developed the standards for cataloging non-print materials. There were some
beginnings, but . . . And as part of that, I came and collaborated with the development of the
Washington Library Network. The Washington State Library librarians were very much involved, so I had
resources within the library community to do that.
Beck: Was the Washington Library Network already established, or was that part of establishing it?
Matheny-White: No. Once again, Evergreen was ahead of the game. [laughter] Jim reached out to the
Washington State Library—Maryan Reynolds was the librarian—and they started talking about
cooperation and networking and so forth. So when I arrived, there were discussions going on about a
resource sharing amongst the State Library, King County Library and Evergreen.
Those early discussions resulted then in the Western Washington Library Network, and then
became the Western Library Network, which was the resource for most of the online cataloging,
accessing the Library of Congress system.
Beck: That was really right there at the beginning.
Matheny-White: Yeah. I was right in the middle of all this technical development at Evergreen, and
cooperatively with the other libraries. I was going to meetings. A lot of them were at Washington State
University. I used some of their acquisitions system. That was an intense part of my job.
Then I was meeting with faculty about developing the non-print collection. That’s how Sid
White and I began working collaboratively together. We went to the University of Washington to see
what their resources were for slides and for visual imagery. I worked with Don Chan and Charlie Teske
on the music collection. But I also reached out and talked with David Ray, who was the drummer for the
Mud Bay Blues Band, where we would go and dance. [laughing] But he had connections all up and
down the Coast with musicians, so I ended up buying the Arhoolie [Records] catalog of blues music and
jazz music. Then I bought everything that was in the [Smithsonian] Folkways catalog. So that was

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another intense interaction, and getting to know also work with the faculty, and thinking about the
curriculum.
Beck: I’m curious about the extent of the non-print collection as it started out. At least at the
beginning, you mentioned that sheet music was part of that, as well as slides as well as audio recordings
of various kinds.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: What other kinds of things were part of the collection at the beginning, and how did it grow from
there?
Matheny-White: One peculiar thing that was in the collection was a bearskin rug. [laughter] That was
kind of a joke, I guess, or a story to tell. Jim had acquired it in Yosemite, I think, coming out on his trip.
But it was really very broad. Everything was supposed to be new. We were to have repair kits for
bicycles. On media loan, it had the equipment for everyone.
I would like to talk about what captured me at Evergreen when I came. It was Jim’s vision of the
Library that really spoke to me. It was interesting, when he came and interviewed me, he then sent the
letter to hire. And all he had to show me was this little brochure of the Evergreen State College and
what it was to be, but it did have what the charge was at that time. I think this was publishing Opening
Fall 1971, but it had been prepared for them. Then there was this ’69 report of the Evergreen State
College. Then his letter [laughing] May 5, 1970. I quote:
I’m sending under separate cover a packet of materials on the college. Here’s what we’re up to. I continue to be
rather depressed and pessimistic about our being able to do anything substantially different than the conventional public
institution of higher learning. We’re suffering all too early from what Stanley Idzerda, the President of St. Benedict, refers to as
“hardening of the categories.”

So it kind of revealed this intense discussion that was going on among the early faculty, the
planning faculty. That was a very intense time. He had organized a conference on learning strategies.
He says, “I hope my pessimism doesn’t turn you off, and here is what the possibilities are.”
Beck: What was the date on that letter?
Matheny-White: That letter was May 5, 1970.
Beck: So that’s really right before the planning year.
Matheny-White: No, it was during the planning year. No, no, no, no.
Beck: Yeah, the planning year . . .
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Matheny-White: . . . started in September of ’70. So this is amongst discussions that they had these
people come in and consult. So, yes, it was even before the . . .
Beck: This brochure that you referenced first. It looks like it’s about an eight-page or 12-page little flyer
that’s black and white with a few photographs, and a few sketches of what they imagine the campus
might look like at the time.
Matheny-White: Well, it had architectural drawings.
Beck: Right, architectural drawings. Accurate, as far as it goes.
Matheny-White: Yes. So I was taking quite a risk [laughing] to come.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But I also had in mind that I decided that I was going to travel the world being a
librarian; that I’d go somewhere and be a librarian for two years and travel on. I was ready after two
years at Southwest Minnesota State to go somewhere.
Beck: A one-year position might have looked about right to you at that point.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: I wanted to ask you just maybe to open up a little bit more. Jim referenced in the letter the
“hardening of the categories.” Whose phrase was that?
Matheny-White: It was Stanley Idzerda, who was President of St. Benedict College, and it was one of
the people that he brought to this conference on learning strategies at Evergreen. Also then what we
have is this full set of documents of all of Jim’s thinking, and what was happening at that time.
He would write these position papers. The first one was stating his position as a librarian, as a
generalist. I know Sid wrote position papers or whatever, so there is that kind of documentation in the
archives. But this what I was committed to, and what he laid out here; that it was a generic library with
all kinds of forms of materials—conventional print, art forms, three-dimension realia, microforms. All of
our periodicals are in microform, and we had special collections of historical material. Audio-visual
forms, magnetic tape, laser storage, etc. He was thinking, very far thinking that everything would be
prepared for the catalog in machine-readable form, and aiming toward whenever the computers would
catch up. For instance, at circulation, we had the mode in which we could implement machine-readable
cataloging that then they could use for checkout. It was punched cards that went through this machine.
[laughing] They’d have to batch these every day and take them down to the computer service center.
But still, there was this vision of doing that.
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He also envisioned a generic library would eliminate physical boundaries. In other words, the
library would be reaching out and meeting people. He also saw students as whole beings, and being
served. And cooperating with other departments, administration and with academics. So he saw what
he says is “students and teachers engaged as colleagues.” This is one of the kind of conflicts that I
observed, and others, that there were those [whose] mode was to think of co-learning with students,
and then others who, you know, well, we have this expertise and we need to maintain this teacherstudent role. That was a part of a conflict at that time, philosophically some differences and people on
quite a spectrum.
Beck: That the faculty and the institution as a whole is the bearer of knowledge and tradition, and it’s
that institution’s responsibility to pass it along to the essentially empty and passive students.
Matheny-White: Right. [laughing]
Beck: That’s a bit of a caricature, but nevertheless, that’s the basic idea. And on the other side there’s
the idea of the faculty, the students and everyone in the institution being involved in a cooperative
educational [unintelligible 00:30:40].
Matheny-White: Right. And I think with that spectrum of thought and experience, there were a lot of
intense discussions. Everything was challenged and everyone had—there was 20 people around the
table and it was sort of smoke coming out of the trailer. [laughter]
Beck: You’re talking about the planning year?
Matheny-White: The planning faculty, yes.
Beck: The planning faculty, the planning staff, and everybody involved in those early discussions. And I
imagine there was probably as many different visions as there were people in the room.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. That’s right. Which reminds me, I want to talk about a project that Sid and I
worked on after retirement called Founding Visions.
Beck: Okay.
Matheny-White: It’s a video of people talking in this mode. [laughing] You know, what were their
visions?
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: We did a video of the planning faculty. I can’t remember which—I have it here
somewhere—of, was it 10 years, five years? Ten years, I think. Where we asked them what was their
vision when they came, and what were the results at that time? What [was] their assessment?
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Beck: Just to go back to Jim Holley’s vision, what stands out to me so far from it is, first of all, the idea of
having—the print collection is just one aspect of a much broader, as it were, repository of media and
information and even tools that are available within the library. And the other part of it that stands out
is the lack of clear boundaries, that is to say that it’s really inter-penetrated with the rest of the
institution and with the community at large; and that it reaches out well beyond what you think of as
the library proper. Is that essentially it?
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Is there more that you would want to say about his vision that stands out that I’ve left out about
it?
Matheny-White: I think that’s the core of it. With the collection, also Dave Carnahan was the Associate
Librarian and he came from community college experience. And there, he came from a media services,
so there would have been the separation, the library and then the media services. So what was
happening is that they were trying to mesh us into the multimedia library, so that people would think
more broadly and critically of the use of information in any format.
Beck: And having a media services person be part of the library right at the very beginning was crucial
on that.
Matheny-White: Right. Let me just see. There’s a breadth of thinking here. He was saying we needed
to maximize utilization of information, theory and technology, so it’s thinking about the collection, it’s
thinking about space and so forth, but it was also about the theoretical basis for analyzing information
and so forth.
And then budgeting. There, you really hit the categories, and it doesn’t fit. So he was talking
about there would have to be a non-comparable activities category.
Beck: Okay, yeah. It really does go deep, as I see it.
Matheny-White: There was a lot of thinking.
Beck: The idea of what constitutes knowledge, what constitutes information, what a library is for
seemed to be really touched by the way in which he was thinking about the Evergreen Library.
Matheny-White: Right. He was a leader in the American Library Association. He had been working with
people on a new library science program at the University of Iowa. So he was in the forefront of a
college library movement. Along with it was the integration of the librarians as faculty.
Beck: Yes. Which was an early feature at Evergreen, wasn’t it?
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Matheny-White: I think Susan Smith Perry [Susan Perry Smith] was first, and I think in probably ’75 to
’77, I became faculty in ’78. It took a lot of discussion from 1970 to then. But also, a lot of discussion for
what the requirements were for faculty they were hiring. They were to be interdisciplinary, so we had
to fill that mode of being interdisciplinary. That’s why we were to have skills to go out and teach, or
have degrees or whatever, to go out and teach in the academic curriculum, which would be unique to
Evergreen. In another university, it would be that they would be on the tenure track and do all that was
required of faculty as well as doing the library functions.
Beck: So, doing double service essentially.
Matheny-White: Yeah. And that’s what I did my whole time at Evergreen. [laughter] Because here I
was in this milieu of media processing, and yet I was working with faculty, and then I got a sabbatical to
be able to focus on art history for me to do my first rotation into the faculty.
Beck: But really, right at the beginning, I think you mentioned that you were involved in faculty hiring
for the first teaching year when you were working on the planning year.
Matheny-White: Right. And then I served on other faculty hiring committees. That was my main
governance.
Beck: Yes!
Matheny-White: Yeah, it’s really quite overwhelming. [laughter] And I was 24 years old.
Beck: What was it like being 24 years old, and being a woman, and coming to be working with this
group of planning faculty in 1970? What was the experience?
Matheny-White: Well, I do have memories of the first time eating crab and clams and seafood at
faculty parties. Monica Caulfield was my supervisor. She was the Readers Services part of the
development of the Library, so she was more involved with faculty functions. She went to all the
meetings. She then became head of Reference when we opened. She was supporting what I was doing,
both in acquisitions—but she didn’t have expertise in cataloging and processing and all of that.
We went to this party at Sid White’s house. [chuckles] One of the many parties where Greek
music was being played. Sid showed one of his multimedia slide tape performances. And then, with a
little wine and so forth, Beryl Crowe and Dave Hitchens would start preaching. [laughter] So it was
really . . .
Beck: What sort of preaching was that?

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Matheny-White: What did they call it? Here, I’ve got . . . yeah, Beryl was an Okie and Dave was . . . I
can’t remember where he was from.
Beck: I think he was from Oklahoma.
Matheny-White: I think so. But we had this tribal guide at Evergreen. Jim Holley was Father
Graybeard, Dave Hitchens was Brother Dave, derivation from his famous party act, The Salvation Radio
Show. [laughter] Preacher was Beryl Crowe, and again, derivation The Salvation Radio Show. So that
was my introduction to the wild faculty parties. Then later, we would go up top Fort Worden and roast .
. . let me get this right . . . roast a kid on the beach on Mother’s Day. [laughter] That was one of our
parties, and I have some nice photos of that.
But it was just wonderful camaraderie. That was a whole new experience for me. But also what
was interesting is that a lot of people’s marriages were falling apart—the intensity, the change—and
there was Sid and I getting to know each other. I didn’t think that we would get married, but we did
decide to do that, [but] each having our independent roles. Some people on campus didn’t know we
were married. And out of each of our independence, we collaborated.
Beck: When did you two get married?
Matheny-White: In January of ’72.
Beck: Okay, so pretty early.
Matheny-White: Early.
Beck: There was something I wanted to ask about that you were talking about. Oh, I guess I wanted to
ask a little bit more about Jim, because he left the college pretty early on, and you mentioned conflicts
that he had.
Matheny-White: Right. He had this hope and dream, as many people who came to Evergreen had. I
certainly became very engaged with his hope and dream, and now I’ve been observing how, through
time, we really did fulfill it, but it took time. And so the conflict, I think, was that he was writing position
papers, he was bringing in resources, and he was ready to challenge and engage with his ideas.
Also, having the multimedia library brought a scope of thinking—generally that kind of broad
scope, I think, was in conflict particularly with Charles McCann. He wanted his books and so forth, and
he didn’t grasp the whole concept. And when looking at these position papers, Jim was very clear, he
was very thorough, very personal about what he believed. And in some ways—Joe Shoben was the Vice
President. Jim came on very early on, and he was the Dean and he made sure—but then Joe Shoben
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came in as a Vice President of what Jim called “spare parts,” which meant Student Services and the kind
of peripheral to the core of academia.
There’s a position paper [Joe] wrote in response to Jim’s, but I discovered it was Shoben who
outlined almost a separate supplementary curriculum. I found [that] in reexamining that. So he had
that the Library could offer, kind of as Jim described it, reaching out to the student in ways other than
just what was happening in the classroom or the programs, and also that the Library should be
proposing curricular ideas.
Beck: This was Joe Shoben who was saying this?
Matheny-White: Yes, and Jim, in response to Jim’s concept of the full multimedia, full generic Library.
Beck: So really developing what Jim . . . and extending it in certain ways.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: And Joe was doing this as the Vice President for Student Affairs of Student Services or something?
Matheny-White: What was his title? Let me search a minute.
Beck: That’s fine. But it just strikes me that the Library, at least today, is under academics
organizationally. Was it then as well?
Matheny-White: It’s under the Vice President Provost. Well, with cutbacks, Joe Shoben’s position was
cut. He left, but he fired Jim as he was going out.
Beck: Joe fired Jim?
Matheny-White: Well, he was for Charles McCann. [laughing]
Beck: Oh, I see. It’s interesting.
Matheny-White: Yeah. But what I want to focus on [sighs] is the intensity of the time, and the visions
that people had, and the conflicts that arose. Sid got very discouraged early on, and I could tell his story,
but that’s not what I’m going to do. So everyone was kind of struggling with roles, and where they fit,
and who they were going to teach with, but doing it in really a core vision of thought in what needed to
be taught in response to what was happening in the world.
Beck: Right.
Matheny-White: Okay, let me find Shoben. He was Executive Vice President.
Beck: But not a particular division of the institution?

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Matheny-White: Well, there were people then that were reporting to him. So Jim became a dean
under rather than being . . . so categories started developing. [laughing]
Beck: Right. These days, the Dean of the Library reports to the Provost, the Vice President of Academic
Affairs and Provost.
Matheny-White: Dave Barry was the Vice President.
Beck: He was the first Provost.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: But this must have been all in the first year or two of the college opening, wasn’t it?
Matheny-White: Right. Then Dave Carnahan became acting dean, and he wrote a position paper
reinforcing, because he was very committed to Jim’s ideas. And then Jovana Brown was the next
permanent dean, which my conflict there was [laughing] I wanted a woman to be hired, but because of
her academic background and what I thought she could contribute to what our mission was, our raison
d’être was. I remember being called into Dean Clabaugh’s office and him drilling me on whether this
was something—you know, whether I was just doing it because she was a woman and da da da.
Beck: This is when my memory really kind of starts about Evergreen politics, and I think it’s a little bit
later, but I do remember at least some vague controversy—not controversy perhaps but just conflict
around Jovana Brown. That might have been in the mid-to-late ‘70s or somewhere around that.
Matheny-White: Yes, there definitely was. I really prefer not to talk about that.
Beck: That’s fine. Well, so many of these conflicts, as you said, they’re very intense and very heated. So
once the college opened, what were you then doing after you did your first year? You were hired on a
one-year contract.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: After that expired, were you simply renewed for another contract, another [for] one year?
Matheny-White: Monica and I looked at each other in like July of that first year and said, “I wonder if
we should talk with somebody about whether we should come in the next day?” [laughter] Then we
talked to Jim, and, of course, he then took care of all of the paperwork, etc., and we got our letter of
appointment from Joe Shoben. So she was head of Reference, I think, and I was Technical Services
Librarian.
Beck: Were those one-year positions or were they more permanent than that?

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Matheny-White: I think it was yearly, or it might have been . . . it would have been a standard
whatever.
Beck: I guess there was one other thing that we had talked about on the phone earlier about the
difference in the way faculty were treated early on as opposed to staff or librarians?
Matheny-White: We weren’t faculty at that point. There were these discussions going on and it was
one of the agendas that Jovana had, and it was through her efforts that we got faculty status. It was
from her discussion with the deans and so forth that requirements for that, that we would be having to
teach other than just library research. We were already teaching a workshop—it was called Between
the Covers—and we were regularly integrating with the planning of programs. But this kind of
reinforced that process. A main part of our contract was that we were working with curriculum
development, and then that we would teach and try to integrate what we were teaching in Between the
Covers into the program. That was a major effort that has been a very positive thing, and has had major
influence in the academic library world.
Beck: So early on librarians were not faculty; considered staff or . . .?
Matheny-White: Yes, administrative exempt, some of the kind of upper-level administrative.
Beck: Right, some of the associate VPs and other people at Evergreen have that sort of status. But
there was that vision from very early on that librarians should be faculty.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: Jim had that and it sounds like Dave Carnahan did as well.
Matheny-White: Yeah, he was Associate Dean, so, yes. And also for Media Services as part of that was
that they were teaching workshops and so forth, but there was also integration there happening. Like
Peter Randlette and some of the Media Services people were teaching.
Beck: There was a movement towards integrating the Library and Library staff as fully as possible into
the curriculum, into the college, into the academics. But it sounds like from what you’re saying that
Jovana Brown did really a lot of the heavy lifting in making sure that that actually happened
administratively; that librarians became faculty and to set up procedures around that.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: Do you recall any of the discussions or any of the ways in which that happened, resistance that
needed to be overcome or anything of that sort that you’d like to talk about?

14

Matheny-White: I wasn’t involved directly with discussions that I recall. Susan Smith was onboard then
and she was the coordinator of User Services. I was still kind of in the backroom in Technical Services,
and then I started, as we hired staff and got ourselves reorganized—that’s another whole thing because
I need to talk about the successes and failures of this integrated generic library. So I was having to deal
much longer with Technical Services kinds of things, and then once things were running there, then I
started doing Reference and became a Reference Library faculty person. Did my rotation and became
coordinator of User Services. Through this, I always had this balancing act between internal leadership
in the Library and being a faculty person. And that was constantly happening at the same time. So, I
was doing two jobs [laughing] and kind of rotating in and out of what I did.
And then I had a real commitment to a kind of community-based leadership role, which started
of this idea of tribal processes and being a community right from the beginning with Jim. We were the
library group. But it gained more depth with me. An important book for me in that regard is from the
Center for Conflict Resolution, A Manual for Group Facilitators: A Handbook for Consensus DecisionMaking and Building United Judgment. I was a consensus decision-maker, so I spent a lot of time with
all of the staff, talking about issues, getting their ideas, in preparation for a meeting when we could
make a decision.
Beck: Is that really at the heart of what you’re calling community leadership?
Matheny-White: Yes. I would be meeting with deans on budget and I would say, “I have to go back to
the Library. I’ll get back to you.”
Beck: Get opinions from people.
Matheny-White: And I don’t think that’s happening anymore.
Beck: Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening in the Library myself, but I can say that those things occur
fitfully elsewhere in the college.
Matheny-White: I know. And that’s the core of the planning faculty, its intensity. And then it would
happen in curriculum planning. Remember all the faculty retreats?
Beck: Yeah.
Matheny-White: Position papers written. Does that still go on, or is it within, you know . . . ? Anyway,
something to think about. [laughter] When I despair about what I hear about what’s happening on
campus, I despair about people being able to do their best thinking, and cooperative thinking.

15

Beck: Right. Well, one of the central structures—there are certain prerequisites you have in order to
have those discussions, and some of them are very simple, aren’t they? You need to have time and you
need to have space. In some sense these are literal, but in another sense they’re somewhat
metaphorical. What’s the forum? What’s the space within which people could come together and have
those kinds of discussions? What time is there available to do that?
Matheny-White: We used to stop every activity on campus and come together, all those sessions in the
Library. What’s that open space?
Beck: The entrance to the Library, that great big hall?
Matheny-White: Yeah. The teach-ins and dialog and seminars were spent if there was an issue on
campus. You stopped business and you come together.
Beck: Was your sense, when those discussions happened, when those seminars happened, people
showed up across the—
Matheny-White: There was no student governance, there was no faculty governance. So what we did
was we got together.
Beck: Everybody, right? Faculty, staff, students, administrators all in the same room.
Matheny-White: No, that’s kind of impossible as you grew. [laughter]
Beck: Well, there’s a matter of scale. You’d need a room big enough to hold all, don’t you?
Matheny-White: Yeah. So I think more what happened is there would be teach-ins within a program.
But then there would be an opportunity for a forum.
Beck: One thing is you do need to have a room big enough to hold everyone. You need to have the
space, you need to have time where things stop and people can dedicate their time to that. But I think
you also need to have the sense from people across the campus it’s worthwhile to show up. Right?
Matheny-White: Someone has to organize.
Beck: And that they’ll be listened to.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: That it isn’t a dog-and-pony show, as it were. That was the sense that you had was that people,
when they went to the meetings, that there would be actual consequences.
Matheny-White: We had covenants, and we were to resolve our conflicts.
Beck: And sometimes at those meetings . . .?
16

Matheny-White: Well, whatever format could work. Paul Gallegos used to stop things and hold a
forum in the lecture hall. Anyway.
Beck: I remember Paul telling me about being part of the 1984 program as a student. I don’t recall the
details of that, but I gathered at least that he was a real student leader in that program and may have
done some of that as a student.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: But then, of course, later he went on to work for the President. So when you’re thinking about
when he would stop things and hold these forums, was that as a staff member later on or early on?
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: So really both, you’d say?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Actually, I was kind of thinking about—you were asking about the
implementation in the beginning of the college and so forth.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: So I kind of went off on a tangent there, but when the college opened—wait a minute.
Let me go back to the issues of implementing the generic library.
Beck: Yes, you mentioned that you wanted to talk about its successes and failures.
Matheny-White: Right. I was in demand within the Media Services group, and then probably more so
within the Library, to share what we were doing. It got down to a nitty-gritty of we wanted everything
to be shelved together, or a representation of things to be shelved. We were working with 3M to
develop books for cassettes. In other words, we purchased LPs and then we had this massive project
with media loan people in the early days to tape all of those onto cassettes, and then we would circulate
the cassette, thinking we were okay legally that we could do that. But then we had to put the cassettes
in something, so then we developed these audio books. All this was crafted by 3M in plastic and so
forth.
Beck: I remember those. There may still be a few out there, but they were book-sized. They looked like
a standard book.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. So then we bought art prints, because there was this whole idea that
students should be able to have artwork on their walls. So we created a plastic sleeve of cardboards.
We would store them, but then we wanted to have a representation with the books, so we had these
little, thin plastic things with the photo of the . . . [laughter]. Crazy!
17

Beck: What was the thought behind that?
Matheny-White: Well, we wanted to integrate everything on the shelves.
Beck: Physically.
Matheny-White: We pushed it physically. [laughter] Crazy! So then all of these little, thin plastic
containers appeared in the end section. We started shelving them and they all fell off! [laughter] Then
we had to put a little wooden strip so that they would, instead of going like this, like a binder would, it
would be flat so they wouldn’t fall off the shelves.
Beck: Because they were in these sleeves . . .
Matheny-White: . . . they were like binders.
Beck: Yeah, they were like binders that gave a little sort of triangle.
Matheny-White: . . . with a sleeve with a photo in it.
Beck: Right. So you can’t really shelve those because the thin end, you know . . .
Matheny-White: Duh. There was a reason why you shelved them in a flat file place, and people knew
to go there to get them, because they can be integrated in the catalog, but then, you know. So I’ll go
back a little further.
Richard Abel Company was contracted to buy the books and process them to be shelf-ready.
Then I was developing the means to make the non-print shelf ready, and to develop the cataloging.
Then we contracted with Xerox Bibliographics—which I think they created that company—we were their
main contractee—so that they could develop a database and then be able to sell an online catalog for all
of those materials.
So when I purchased all the non-print, it was a drop-shipped to Xerox Bibliographics, with my
models for how they were to catalog it. They would get the 3M, so they could process it and it would be
ready for the shelf. Xerox Bibliographics was the lowest bid, and we got a notice of canceling the
contract because they didn’t realize when all of this material started arriving what they had to do to set
up this whole operation.
Beck: So they weren’t able to handle it.
Matheny-White: Uh-uh. So then there was a period of negotiation, and we had so I was involved in
supplying the information for all of that.
Beck: Did they eventually fulfill the contract?
18

Matheny-White: No. [laughter] We got financial compensation. So, opening day, there was no Library
because the Library building wasn’t ready. So we had people in various places around town holding
seminars; Phil Harding giving lectures in the Episcopal Church and da da da.
But then when we opened like in November, a big, huge truck full of books arrived from Richard
Abel Company, and so I put a notice out [that there were] 40 tons of books arriving, and asking people
to come and shelve books. State Library people came da da da. So, they arrived at the loading dock and
crews started getting ready to put them on the shelves. And then we discovered that—what was it?—a
third of them didn’t have any call numbers.
Beck: They hadn’t been labeled with call numbers? They’d been cataloged but not . . .?
Matheny-White: But there’s something like cataloging in publication, so the Library of Congress
cataloged it prior to publication and then the call numbers were not assigned.
Beck: So they weren’t really shelf-ready at all.
Matheny-White: No. So we had developed a caged area [laughter] in the third floor of the Library to
house these, because we didn’t know where to put them on the shelves. So, as we started unpacking,
those that were ready for the shelves were shelved, but then there were these boxes of books that
didn’t have call numbers, labeled call numbers.
Beck: So that became an in-house job to catalog all of those, or at least to prepare them for shelving.
Matheny-White: But see, Jim’s vision for Technical Services was that there wouldn’t be one; that it
would be all contracted out.
Beck: Okay. That didn’t work out so well, though, in this case.
Matheny-White: No. And that we hired paraprofessionals and, you know, clerical people to do any kind
of processing, particularly for things we would start to order and have to do in-house because of the
Xerox Bibliographics. So, we had an opening day collection of some books. [laughter]
Beck: How long did it take to then process that other third of the books that weren’t . . .?
Matheny-White: Probably about 10 years, both the non-print and the . . . so it was an ideal that didn’t
get realized in a lot of ways. But we created personnel and space assignments to try to integrate still
with media loan being upstairs, considering media equipment to be circulated, like all the other
materials. And then the circulation of all the materials was centralized. We had rare books, because
they needed to be protected. Then we had to keep the government documents, even though that was a
small collection because we had access to the full government documents at the State Library.
19

Beck: So there were some failures of this model, but it sounds like there were some real successes. We
still do have today Media Services integrated with the Library, librarians are faculty, and rotate into the
curriculum through the Library. I would say also that the Library maintains—at least in many respects—
the idea of being an open library, to be integrated fully into the curriculum and reaching into the
community.
Matheny-White: Right, we adapted. And the catalog is fully integrated, more so than most people
would do. We catalog government documents, we catalog everything. That was fulfilled, the concept of
having this generic library, but putting it all on the shelves physically together was a bomb.
Beck: Right. That didn’t work out so well.
Matheny-White: Then there’s a position paper written by me and Dorothy Briscoe—who was hired as
the coordinator of User Services—a thorough account of the whole collection and its status. I mean, it’s
incredible. I don’t know how many hours I used to spend on that. And then, a proposal for funding to
take care of it. Let me just find this so we know what the timeframe is. Here we go.
“Getting It Up, or a Library Group Status Report on Acquisitions and Processing.” 1973. What
was decided was to use the remaining capital budget—which would have been for more acquisitions—
to hire people to do the work.
Beck: To actually process this backlog.
Matheny-White: We had 2,000 books that still needed to be cataloged and processed, and 2,200 audio
and 30 film strips. Oh, here, you can get the whole sense of what was in the Library—art prints, audio—
which would be music—books, charts, film strips and loops, games, maps, microfilm, films—because we
did end up purchasing some, of course—music scores, pictures, slides, 3D objects.
Beck: Including the bearskin.
Matheny-White: Yeah, I think it had died its second death! [laughter] So there were 75,000 books—
our goal was 100,000—and 85,000 microfilm, 12,000 slides, 2,500 pictures, 1,000 maps, 8,000 audio, art
prints.
Beck: So, a varied collection.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. In terms of the collection, the dream is online computers. That’s where you
can access information in any form.
Beck: That piece has been advanced quite a bit, I would say. Up until just a few years ago, I still had old
bound copies of journals from my graduate school days. At one point I looked at those and said, “Why
20

the heck am I holding onto these things?” [laughing] Because it’s all available through JSTOR or any
number of other sources.
Matheny-White: And the Library has kept up with the technology. George Rickerson, and then with
Steve Metcalf and people working on cooperative—the interlibrary loan. What is the name now of the
current catalog?
Beck: Summit.
Matheny-White: Yeah.
Beck: It’s certainly my best friend because books come very quickly. Usually if I order them Monday or
Tuesday, they’re in by the end of the week. I know I’ll have them to look at. There are also some books
that are available just online that are of some use.
Matheny-White: I don’t know how I survived at all. [laughter]
Beck: I know. It seems, though, one of the things that I’m taking away from the general tone of the
conversation is that there were visions that people had, and those visions didn’t get implemented
immediately and fully, but with a lot of hard effort, many of those things did become realized, at least in
some form, in some limited form. Success wasn’t immediate, but there was success over the longer
term.
Matheny-White: Right. When I retired in ’95, when I was 50, because of the chemical exposure I had at
Evergreen, I left on a very positive note. Jim Holley died that year also, and I had given a memorial for
him. I left saying that his dream was alive, because Sarah Pedersen—the Library was holding discussions
on what it meant currently for them to be a multimedia library, and that this was their primary reading.
So that was 25 years later. [laughing]
Beck: Right. So it was still alive.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: I’m wondering, maybe we could go back a little bit though, because I would like to talk about
ways in which the college developed and your career developed and the Library developed during
maybe the first five or 10 years of the college. What were some of the major changes or trends or
developments that you saw during that period? How did the Library settle out? How did the college
settle out during that period?
Matheny-White: For me, it was moving from the technical sort of aspect of the Library into the teaching
and into the faculty role. We hired catalogers and we had a whole department. Jim gave me a terrible
21

time about building my empire [laughter] but there is evidence that it needed to be done. So for me,
that was a major personal change. So in 1978, I was teaching in Form and Content with Hiro Kawasaki.
The two of us designed it. It was late 19th, early 20th century art history.
Beck: That was ’78-’79?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. I went into a part-time the quarter before and taught a class in music. I was
the music part and Hiro was visual part. They needed to accommodate more enrollment, so Dave
Powell and Chuck Pailthorp joined with Hiro in the fall. They thought there would be some attrition, but
Dave and Chuck wanted to stay.
It was my first teaching. There was a lot of trauma. I can remember this meeting with Jovana
where they were questioning whether I could pull my weight. Barbara Smith got involved and so I
remained in the program, and Hiro was a very good support for me. I gave my first lecture on women
composers in the 19th century and got applause. [laughter]
Beck: So there was some question about your continuing in the program.
Matheny-White: Yes.
Beck: You were on the faculty at that point, and this was your first rotation into teaching.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. And I have read things from other women faculty, of their experience with
an all-male team other than them—Marilyn Frasca, LLyn De Danaan—and that was something that a
woman on the faculty had to deal with. Because there is something called academic arrogance.
[laughter] But also, I didn’t perform well in a public faculty seminar that was held that first year because
I was doing all my Library stuff and teaching music. They had a bit of basis for questioning, but I think it
was more than need be.
It was working through that first full-time teaching experience that was . . . a change. Also, I had
an interesting approach to teaching writing, because I had been involved with some of Sid’s teaching of
the critique process for students when they’re producing their work, and I used that same process for
writing. I asked people to write whatever was the topic, but then that they would share that within a
critique. There was a process where you read or you talked about what your idea is, and the response
was, in terms of questions and clarification and giving feedback, not criticizing. So it was all about ideas.
Beck: Right, and asking questions of clarification. But the feedback would be their observations?

22

Matheny-White: Are they expressing themselves about their ideas? Just like a person’s idea of what
their painting is about, and they’re getting responses. They’re conveying their idea and then people
responding, and there’s a whole loop then of creativity that develops over that.
Beck: People giving feedback would explore the ideas.
Matheny-White: Right, rather than the sentence structure. Or, if they said, “I don’t know what you
mean here,” then you speak to that.
Beck: That was something Sid had developed as kind of a critique for visual art perhaps, or for writing as
well?
Matheny-White: He was working a lot with multimedia, so it was word and image.
Beck: So you used that as a basis for doing writing critique in Form and Content.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: Did that work well then?
Matheny-White: Yes, I had positive evaluations from—this was within the seminar. Anyway, I met the
challenge. [laughing]
Beck: Good! Do you think that other faculty borrowed that method at all? Do you feel that it
disseminated to some extent, or was it just something you did with your seminar group?
Matheny-White: I don’t know that it was accepted. I used it a lot, and there would be some in my later
planning or whatever, but I don’t know. I think it was more my adaptation not something that was used
regularly in the critique process in the arts.
Then also I was able to do more teaching and to integrate into the curriculum more. So I was
growing from all of that technical work to being the full librarian, as envisioned. And I think that’s a very
positive thing that’s developed within the Library; that it has been a success.
Beck: I wanted to ask about the way in which teaching responsibilities meshed with Library
responsibilities. I don’t know if this is a change or if it’s just my own misconception, but my sense is that
faculty librarians who are teaching actually rotate out of the Library and, at least currently, are not
responsible to continue to maintain the same level of work in the Library while they’re teaching.
Matheny-White: Right. But, while we’re in the Library, we are also integrating ourselves into teaching.
I would do like a three-, four-week bibliographic instruction or whatever you might put a label on it, but

23

helping them with their research projects, and how to develop them through using the Library and doing
analyzing resources and so forth.
Beck: But it sounds like, at least in your experience in Form and Content . . .
Matheny-White: That was full-time.
Beck: . . . that you were teaching full-time but you still had to maintain—
Matheny-White: No, I rotated out. And it was one quarter, because schedule-wise, that’s what worked.
I think people are doing out for a year now and teaching.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But while you’re trying to do Library leadership and [laughing] also working with the
teaching is a lot to balance. Also to maintain the Reference Desk, which I was dedicated to—other of my
colleagues weren’t so much, and I understand that’s changed so that there are more staff people at the
Reference Desk.
Beck: Yes.
Matheny-White: But that’s also part of the contraction of staffing and budgets.
Beck: It is.
Matheny-White: I also became a leader in working with the faculty who rotated in, which was a
wonderful thing.
Beck: When did that start? Do you know when?
Matheny-White: It was from the beginning.
Beck: From the very beginning, faculty were rotating into the Library.
Matheny-White: Right.
Beck: That struck you as a really valuable thing?
Matheny-White: Mm-hm. Very helpful in our dialog of them learning about resources, our talking
about acquisitions—because did collection development—I just asked them to experience all of that.
Beck: Well, I know that faculty who I know of who rotated through the Library did develop a different
sense of the Library and its role within the college as a result of that experience. It seemed to be a very
valuable thing for the college as a whole.
Matheny-White: Right.

24

Beck: This was about how you were personally developing during that first decade and what changes
were happening in your career. But what would you say about changes in the Library generally, changes
in the college generally? Did you get a sense, was the revolution betrayed or was the dream fulfilled or
anything of that sort?
Matheny-White: I think what I was speaking about when I left is that seeing that it had succeeded. I’ve
been gone for quite a while now, so I don’t know. I mean, I talk with people and so forth. So I left on a
fairly high note, but I had to leave. But then, the Friends of the Library was flourishing, having readings
of the faculty and others. That continued. So I think it was just a matter of responding to the progress
of technology and being able to take advantage of that; continuing the philosophy of the generic library,
and particularly of the teaching.
Mainly the issues were budgeting and the cutbacks that we would have; the space development
that we kept—I don’t know how many times I’ve written capital budgets to try to expand the Library and
all being crushed. Then you go through this constant rotation of budgeting, where you develop ideas
and then it’s all about cutting. I was acting dean for one quarter.
Beck: When was that?
Matheny-White: Hmm . . . let me look at my resume. I need some help here. [laughter] 1990. And
within that time, I prepared both a capital budget, and operating budget and a Title III Grant application.
Beck: That’s a pretty full plate.
Matheny-White: I did it with consensus. [laughter] I would meet with all of the various groups—Media
Services and Acquisitions—and work out the priorities and the narrative. Then we would decide. I’d
work with all these different units and then come up with the final budget and then approve. We’d all
have these Library meetings. That was pretty intense.
Beck: Was that a period where there was a lot of cuts on the horizon?
Matheny-White: There would have been guidelines, but I wasn’t there then for the final cutting and
slashing. [laughing] This was just the middle. I can remember going into a meeting where we, I think,
got the Senate budget. That was usually the last. We’d submit the grand and then you’d have the
Governor’s budget and then you’d have the Senate budget. So there needed to be cuts and so forth,
talking about them. I went to a meeting of all the budget heads in academic area—you know, the
deans—and nobody wanted to say anything. [laughter]

25

So I said, “Well, the Library could cut this and we could do that,” and started the discussion. I
remember Wyatt Cates saying [whispering], “Pat, why are you doing that?” Well, there was all this
support, so we came out pretty well. [laughter]
Beck: Those sort of meetings—
Matheny-White: I mean, I had confidence in that we had done a careful job, and that this is what was
needed because I knew what the goals were, etc. And I knew that we had developed enough support.
Beck: Maybe this is jumping ahead a bit, but you mentioned when you retired in 1995 at the age of 50.
Matheny-White: Mm-hm.
Beck: And one central reason for that was a chemical spill that happened in the Library. Do you want
to talk about that? I’ve heard rumors about this. I don’t really know the story.
Matheny-White: Okay. I’ve had to live with this all my life. My life now is about health and keeping me
going, and being able to live in the world, thanks to Evergreen. [laughing] I have a little file here that I
kept. We’re talking about so much, I can’t keep track of it all.
Beck: I know.
Matheny-White: That’s it. Air quality. It happened in December ’92. They had been remodeling the
photo labs on the first floor and did not do much about ventilation. We were having a workshop up in
the Reference area, and also the television studio floor was being refinished. This would have been
during Christmas break. They thought they were venting—they had a fan off-gassing—what they were
doing down in the television studio, when in fact, it was sucking it in and sending it in and sending it
through the Library Building through all the ductwork.
We were right above the TV studio teaching, and we all started getting symptoms—burning
eyes, headache, breathing, thought we were going to pass out—and we had to exit the building. People
had to leave and they couldn’t enter again. Here’s one compound had toluene xylene ether acetate
ethylene aliphatic hydrocarbons. All of these horrible chemicals. So I’m damaged for life. I react to all
kinds of chemicals, chemical sensitivity. And I don’t detox well. There are people who survived all that
and have done well, but my liver doesn’t detox for me. And I’m doing it all naturally. I have paradoxical
responses to drugs and anything chemical. And formaldehyde is prevalent everywhere. Every
fragrance, every perfume has formaldehyde in it. Cigarettes have formaldehyde in them, and that’s one
of my key responses.

26

So, I was accommodated. Bill Bruner was the Dean then and he accommodated so that we
could work outside of the Library Building. They brought in biological engineers, and they did a lot of
cleanup. They hired someone to monitor this, and whenever any kind of chemical was going to be used,
they’d analyze it and try to diminish the effects of it, or warn people to be gone. They were also taking
up asbestos [they found] down in the Student Services area, so they’d been taking up carpets also.
Beck: They had been taking out carpets at the same time?
Matheny-White: I think it was pretty much. So there’s this whole stew. And then there was discovery.
They had to clean all the ducts. Discovery of things not having been vented. We used to have the print
center in the Library—the print shop that went down into the basement—in the Library, and all of those
machines were not vented.
Beck: Really?
Matheny-White: Computers weren’t vented. Xerox machines weren’t vented. We had curtains that
were absorbing all of this.
Beck: And it all went through a centralized air circulation system?
Matheny-White: HVAC system. And the air input to it was off the loading dock. So that’s why we now
have all the deliveries and so forth away from the building.
Beck: So it used to be all the auto exhaust would come in.
Matheny-White: Trucks that would back up to [laughter] the loading dock and all of that would go into
the system.
Beck: That really made it impossible for you to continue to work at Evergreen.
Matheny-White: Right. So we held all meetings outside the Library. Barbara Bergquist, who was my
assistant in the Reference area—because I was convener of Reference at that time—she had an office in
the Seminar Building. I started having all the Reference meetings at my home, which was only a mile
away.
So then we decided we could be in the Library for two hours at a time, so I did two hours at the
Reference Desk; the rest of the time I had meetings in other buildings or I was at home. But I was still in
very bad shape, so I decided to retire and then work in the Library, being accommodated but working at
the Reference Desk for two two-hour shifts—you know, the five-year contract for retired faculty. I did it
one quarter.
Beck: And that was it.
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Matheny-White: Mm-hm. So, I had another career. [chuckles] Sid and I continued to collaborate.
We’d been collaborating on grant projects—the Chicano/Latino Project and the Peoples of Washington
exhibit and the book. Sid continued to consult on other art projects, exhibit projects, so we collaborated
on that. Then that got frustrating because Sid didn’t have the support for him to be able to really carry
out a project. It was difficult to be dependent on other people with funding and so forth.
Then we started on kind of personal productions, traveling and producing video productions.
Sid started doing genealogical work on his family. We’d been doing all these histories of people in
Washington, so we focused on us. He was able to find his father’s birth certificate in Romania, and we
traveled to Romania. He gave a presentation on his genealogy work at the Temple, and then we showed
the Romanian Odyssey.
Beck: We’re going on two hours in this conversation, and I’m wondering maybe if we could pick up at
another session. It strikes me that the brief comments that you’ve just made about the project work
that you did with Sid, and then your own work, it’s worth expanding on it. I think we could have another
conversation.
Matheny-White: Yes. And I’d also talk more about my teaching.
Beck: Yes, I would like to know more about your teaching.
Matheny-White: Because that was meshed with some of this project work.
Beck: Good. And I think the only other topic that I can think of right now beyond those two that I think
would be worth talking about is just some more general reflections about Evergreen as an institution,
the Library as an institution. We could maybe have those three topics for the next time.
Matheny-White: Yes, that would be good.
Beck: All right. Thanks for this, and I’m going to go ahead and turn off the recording.

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