Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce the 2010 Johannah Sherrer Memorial Lecture in Library Service will be held Friday, September 24 at 3:00 pm on the campus of Lewis & Clark College. This year’s lecture should appeal to public, special, and academic librarians, as Dr. David Carr, Associate Professor Emeritus from the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science, presents “Think with Me: The Possibilities of Public Conversations in Cultural Institutions”. His talk is abstracted below:

The formative legacy of any democratic culture or learning community is borne and embodied by its library. At its best, it is a living, constructive institution where experience and knowledge increase. The aspirations of a community — what it wants to become and what it hopes to give to its children — require a generative public conscience and provocative voices. More than a record of our time and place, the library is a record of us as we embrace or turn away from our challenges. We require a place that holds both pages and voices, electrons and arguments; and more: a place where thoughtful citizens will strive to become something together.

In 1999 the Johannah Sherrer Memorial Lecture in Library Service was established by Watzek Library director James J. Kopp to commemorate the contributions and legacies of a respected friend, colleague, and champion of service. Johannah Sherrer served as Director of the Aubrey R. Watzek Library from July 1993 to September 1998, when she passed away. This year’s event will be particularly meaningful as we will also be remembering Dr. Jim Kopp, who passed away on August 5. We believe that Jim, a scholar librarian with intellectual interests including history, literature, philosophy, and the humanities, would have found this year’s lecture especially interesting.

Further information is available on the Johannah Sherrer Memorial Lecture web page. If you have any questions or require additional information, please let me know. We hope you can join us at this special event.

Sincerely,
Elaine Gass Hirsch
Library Advancement Coordinator
Aubrey R. Watzek Library
Lewis & Clark College