John B. Hench, vice president emeritus for Collections and Programs at the American Antiquarian Society and winner of SHARP’s 2011 DeLong Book Prize, will deliver a talk titled Never Far from Books at Monmouth University on Wednesday, November 13, 2013, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in Wilson Hall, room 104. The event is free and open to the public. Hench is the author of Books into Weapons: Propaganda, Publishing, and the Battle for Global Markets in the Era of World War II (Cornell 2011).
What happens to people who love ink and paper books in the electronic and information age? Is there a place for them? What kinds of educational and career paths are open to them? How can they make friends, money, or influence people, programs, or institutions? What about influencing a nation?
John B. Hench will answer these and other book and history lovers’ questions during his lecture. He describes his talk, Never Far from Books, below:
All through my life, I have never been far from books—lots and lots of books, actually. I grew up in a house in Minnesota with a father who was both a random accumulator of books and a discerning collector of them. Through school, college, and graduate school, books were, of course, the tools of the trade. I spent most of my academic career at the American Antiquarian Society, which boasts the best collection of American printed materials through 1876. But for me, unlike most scholars, books have never been simply tools, but also the objects of my professional responsibilities, research, and publications. Luckily, I also played a role in the burgeoning application of photographic and electronic means to preserve and disseminate the kinds of books that have surrounded me. Now, in 2013, I still love books, but I also really like my Kindle, which means I’m never, ever, very far at all from a book, or at least its avatar.
This event is the second annual lecture in a series on “Ink and Electricity: Advancing Liberal Learning in the Digital Age,” sponsored by the Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Monmouth University. Please direct inquiries to Kristin Bluemel, Wayne D. McMurray Chair in the Humanities, English Department, Monmouth University, 732-571-3439 or kbluemel@monmouth.edu.