November 7, 2004 Kluge Center at Library of Congress Opens Series on Digital Issues

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress presents the first in a series of lectures on "Managing Knowledge and Creativity in a Digital Context" at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 15, in the Montpelier Room of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E. The event is free and open to the public, and no reservations are required.

This evening lecture series, which presents some of the best known names in digitally networked communications, begins with a talk by David Weinberger, an expert on "blogging." Coauthor of the best-selling book "The Cluetrain Manifesto," Weinberger is also author of "Small Pieces, Loosely Joined : A Unified Theory of the Web," a frequent commentator on National Public Radio and author of articles in magazines such as Wired and the Harvard Business Review.

Weinberger, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Toronto, was senior Internet adviser to the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. He is now a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, where he is working on a book about how the digital age is changing the most basic ways that information is organized and classified. Weinberger will discuss how and in which situations Web logs, or blogs, work and how and why they are valuable in children's education.

All of the other programs will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Mumford Room, sixth floor of the Madison Building. Other speakers and dates in the series include the following.

Monday, Dec. 13 (tentative): Brewster Kahle, digital librarian, director and cofounder of the Internet Archive. Kahle will explain how and why capturing material on the Web is important and discuss the challenges of selecting pertinent content.

Monday, Jan. 31, 2005: Brian Cantwell Smith, dean of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. Smith, the author of "On the Origin of Objects," combines degrees in computer science and philosophy and is an expert on the interdisciplinary convergence brought about by digitization. His talk is titled, "And Is All This Stuff Really Digital After All?"

Monday, Feb. 14, 2005: David M. Levy, professor at the Information School of the University of Washington. Levy is the author of "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age," and he will discuss the shift of the experience of reading from the fixed page to movable electrons and the effect that has had on language.

Thursday, March 3, 2005: Lawrence Lessig, professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is the author of "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace" and an expert on the issues of copyright and "copyleft." He is the inventor of the revolutionary concept and application Creative Commons, which invites the right to use material under specific conditions.

Monday, March 14, 2005: Edward L. Ayers, dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. Ayers is the author (with Anne S. Rubin) of "The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War" on CD-ROM. Among the questions Ayers will address are the implications for the creation and distribution of knowledge in today's digital environment.

Monday, March 28, 2005: Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gershenfeld is the author of "When Things Start to Think." His new concept Internet Zero (0) proposes a new infrastructure for the existing Internet that would give an IP address to all electronic devices -- from light bulbs to Internet addresses and URLs -- and interconnect them directly, thereby eliminating much intermediating code and server technology. His topic is "From the Library of Information to the Library of Things."

The moderators and coordinators for these events are Deanna Marcum, associate librarian for Library Services, and Derrick de Kerckhove, holder of the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology at the Library's John W. Kluge Center.

The Papamarkou Chair in Education and Technology was established at the Library of Congress by a gift from Alexander Papamarkou (1930-1998), an investment banker who was generous in his support of the arts, education and medicine, in honor of his grandfather, a Greek educator. Holders of the Papamarkou Chair focus their research on the Library's role in education and examine the impact of education and technology on individuals and society.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world's best thinkers to distill wisdom from the Library's rich resources and to stimulate and energize interaction with policymakers in Washington. For more information about any of the fellowships, grants and programs offered by the center, contact the Office of Scholarly Programs, Library of Congress, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, DC 20540-4860; telephone (202) 707-3302, fax (202) 707-3595, or visit the Web at www.loc.gov/kluge/.