Caelin Bragg
Lantern Staff
“You can go to France, but you can’t become a Frenchman. You can go live in Turkey or Germany, and you can’t become a Turk or German, or any other nationality. But people who live anyplace in the world can come to America and become an American. That is our heritage and that is our challenge,” Kansas Senator Bob Dole said in a speech to the graduating class of Butler in 1993.
Dole’s political history has been preserved by the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, and their senior archivist, Audrey Coleman, visited Butler hosting a session on Dole’s historical political documents.
The session, “Politics on Paper,” was held at the L.W. Nixon Library in El Dorado on Wednesday, Nov. 15.
“I come off like Alex Trebek with all my knowledge,” Coleman said in the session, regarding her archivist knowledge.
Coleman started her interest in archiving during her graduate years after working in libraries since high school. She began work at the University of Kansas’ local history library, which grew her interest into heritage of Kansas.
“I’m most interested in Senator Dole’s materials I guess as they represent the kind of leadership that we can aspire to be, today or anytime,” Coleman said. “The example that he showed in life and then as showed in his documentary record is just really fascinating. I think it tells us a lot about the social fabric, the fabric of community and what it takes to be a leader.”
Butler has hosted many of these types of sessions in the last 10 years. The events are spearheaded by the Director of Library Services Micaela Ayers and the Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences Susan Bradley.
“My intention with any of these presentations stems from the time I was in undergraduate school at State University of New York at Albany, and I noticed lectures going on that weren’t part of my college curriculum,” Ayers said. “They were just available, and I could drop in on any of them, and I did, and I felt like I learned something that was small at the time, but I’ve remembered it all my life. I thought it was a wonderful thing to be able to just have access to scholarly communication that way.”
Coleman wishes that people take away the importance of archiving historical records and how they can give insight into the heritage of a society, and the fact that these historical records are accessible both in terms of availability and readability.
“What you must remember is that mistakes happen, and that the breaks will not always go your way,” Senator Dole said in his speech to the 1993 graduating class of Butler. “The difference between success and failure is what you do after you’ve run into difficulty or made a mistake. Do you throw your hands up and quit? Or do you take your lumps, learn your lessons and keep going?”
