March 10, 2015 Kislak Lecture to Examine Forensic Imaging of Historic Manuscripts, April 9

The study of historic manuscripts is being pushed to new boundaries by advanced imaging technologies now available. The scope of these new technologies and their implications for the field will be the subject of the eighth Jay I. Kislak Lecture at the Library of Congress.

The lecture and discussion will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 9, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public. Tickets are not needed. The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is hosting the program with assistance from the Library’s Geography and Map Division.

Michael B. Toth, president of R.B. Toth Associates, will be the keynote speaker. Toth leads and manages projects utilizing advanced technologies for cultural-heritage studies around the globe. With more than 25 years of experience with technical integration, program management and strategic planning, he has led teams of scientists, scholars and technical experts as they help museums, libraries and other institutions make more data widely available for all. Toth was the program manager for the Archimedes Palimpsest Project at the Walters Art Museum and the Waldseemüller Map Project at the Library of Congress.

A roundtable discussion on the use of digital imaging techniques will follow Toth’s lecture. The conversation will focus on how new techniques help reveal hidden and previously unavailable information in ancient, medieval and modern manuscripts, and how these technologies advance the way scholars in the humanities and sciences interact with each other across disciplines. The conversation also will consider how broader global analysis, research and collaboration occur through the posting of images freely online. John Hessler, curator of the Library of Congress Kislak Collection, will moderate the conversation, which will include Toth; William Noel, University of Pennsylvania; Chet Van Duzer, John Carter Brown Research Fellow; and Fenella France, chief of the Preservation, Research & Testing Division at the Library of Congress.

The Kislak Lecture is a component of the Kislak American Studies Program, established at the Library of Congress in 2004 by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation. Previous lecturers were Jared Diamond, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Michael Coe, Jonathan Spence and David Stuart.

In addition to the lecture series, the Kislak gift includes an important collection of books, manuscripts, historical documents, maps and art of the Americas. A permanent rotating exhibition of materials from the Kislak Collection, “Exploring the Early Americas,” opened in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building in December, 2007. The exhibition can be viewed online here. The Kislak gift also provides for fellowships to study its materials.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 158 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.