James H. Billington

View Webcast (4 minutes - requires RealPlayer to view)

Thursday - June 19, 2003
8:00 pm - 9:30 pm

Keynote: Women and the Law

James H. Billington was sworn in as the Librarian of Congress in 1987, the thirteenth person to hold the position since the Library was established in 1800. He has championed the Library's "American Memory" National Digital Library (NDL) Program, which has made freely available online millions of historical items from the Library’s collections. He also created the Library's first national private-sector advisory group, the James Madison Council, whose members have supported the NDL Program, purchased acquisitions for the Library's collections, and funded many other Library programs. Billington earned his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College. Following service with the U.S. Army and in the Office of National Estimates, he taught history at Harvard University and then at Princeton University. From 1973 to 1987, he was director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Among his many awards, Billington has received twenty-nine honorary degrees. He is the author of Mikhailovsky and Russian Populism (1956), The Icon and the Axe (1966), Fire in the Minds of Men (1980), Russia Transformed: Breakthrough to Hope, August 1991 (1992) and The Face of Russia (1998), the companion book to the three-part television series of the same name, which he wrote and narrated for the Public Broadcasting Service.