Charles Henry

March 13 & April 3 (repeat), 2019.

What is a library? Charles Henry, President of the Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) and former Director of Libraries at Vassar College, walks us through the door of that question as he is interviewed on February 27, 2019 for Radio New Zealand's popular program Nine to Noon  by that program's host Kathryn Ryan. He goes on to discuss CLIR's role in organizing the creation of a truly global digital library, and the promise of this effort for preserving cultural memory from threats of war and climate change. He also speculates on the potential of digital technology to enable literal discovery through the uncovering of hidden information.

34:19 minutes.

Robert O. McClintock

Morningside Park Stairway with Seligman Fountain, New York City

May 3, 2017.  

We continue our series on the value of the liberal arts in contemporary society with a conversation with Robert O. McClintock, John L. and Sue Ann Weinberg Professor Emeritus in the Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education at Teacher's College, Columbia University in the City of New York, about his monograph, Formative Justice: To Make of Oneself What One Can and Should Become.

Text of Formative Justice (pdf).

44:28 minutes.

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Louis Rose

April 19, 2017.

Louis Rose, Executive Director of the Sigmund Freud Archive at the Library of Congress and  Professor of History in the Departments of History and Political Science at Otterbein University talks about his new book,  Psychology, Art, and Antifascism: Ernst Kris, E. H. Gombrich,, and the Politics of Caricature (Yale 2016), as well as the Sigmund Freud Papers and their newly announced digital archive.

“In 1934, Viennese art historian and psychoanalyst Ernst Kris invited his mentee E. H. Gombrich to collaborate on a project that had implications for psychology and neuroscience, and foreshadowed their contributions to the Allied war effort. Their subject: caricature and its use and abuse in propaganda. Their collaboration was a seminal early effort to integrate science, the humanities, and political awareness. In this fascinating biographical and intellectual study, Louis Rose explores the content of Kris and Gombrich’s project and its legacy."


39:01 minutes.

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Charles Henry

December 3, 2014.

Charles Henry, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources, former CIO and University Librarian at Rice University, and a former Director of Libraries at Vassar College, talks about CLIR, its history, mission, and programs, as well as the role of liberal arts college libraries in the implementation of a coherent information infrastructure for higher education.

44:19 minutes.

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Dan Cohen

May 7, 2014.

Dan Cohen, Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America, discusses the DPLA, its organization, programs, and aspirations on the occasion of its first anniversary. 

"[T]he DPLA will go beyond its basic mission of making the cultural heritage of America available to all Americans. It will provide opportunities for them to interact with the material and to develop materials of their own. It will empower librarians and reinforce public libraries everywhere . . . ."  -- Robert Darnton, NYRB May 22, 2014

39:39 minutes.

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Joseph A. Dane

April 10, 2013.

Joseph A. Dane discusses his book, What Is a Book?: The Study of Early Printed Books, Published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2012.

“Joseph A. Dane is one of our most brilliant and prolific scholars of the early book, and this volume culminates a lifetime of research. For the general reader, it will offer a compelling survey of book history and book making. For the specialist, it will offer insights into the techniques of printers and the lives of collectors. For anyone concerned with how we read the past, and for anyone fascinated by the book as typographical artifact, What Is a Book? will be deeply valued." -- Seth Lehrer, UCSD.

49:56 minutes. 

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Lisa Kaborycha

November 14, 2012.

Lisa Kaborycha, Director of Academic Affairs at the Medici Archive Project and Professor of History at the University of California EAP in Florence, talks about the project and its extraordinary educational and research programs. This December the Medici Archive Project will launch its BIA digital interactive platform on the Web, which will eventually provide digital access to between three and four million letters and other documents in the archives of the Medici Granducal Collection, and promises to revolutionize research in early modern studies across the disciplines.

42:02 min. 

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