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.

Emily S. Warner

April 18, 2018.

Emily S. Warner, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art at Vassar College, talks about the exhibition she composed with her students in Art 385,  Surveys and Souvenirs: American World's Fairs 1876-1939, on view in the Vassar College Art Library March 12-June 29, 2018. 

"Sell the cookstove if necessary," novelist Hamlin Garland wrote to his parents in 1893; "You must see the fair." Garland's comment captures the excitement and urgency that drew 27 million visitors to the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, one of several world's fairs that dominated American cultural life around the turn of the century.  From 1876 to 1039, over 15 world's fairs opened in American cities, showcasing the nation's industry and art, and introducing Americans to a world of foreign goods and accomplishments.  Drawn chiefly from materials in the Archives and Special Collections Library at Vassar College, this exhibition presents the rich material culture of American world's fairs, from surveys and guidebooks to photogaphs, children's literature, poster stamps, and souvenirs.  Many of these objects tell official stories from the fairs, promoting messages of American progress, imperial expansion, or scientific advancement.  They also tell more personal stories, as material objects that were used, gifted, inscribed, and collected.  Together, they paint a vivid picture of American world's fairs during a time of intense national growth and consolidation, as the country celebrated its centennial, closed its Western frontier, and arrived at the eve of World War II.

Gargoyle Bulletin post with images from the exhibit.

American World's Fairs 1876-1939 videos on Youtube 

Susan Hassler

April 4, 2018.

Susan Hassler (VC '76), Editor-in-Chief of the  journal of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), IEEE Spectrum, talks about STEM, publishing, higher education, and trends in technology in this installment of our series on the value of liberal arts education in contemporary society. She has been included in “Folio 40: The Most Influential People in the Magazine Industry” and was inducted into min magazine’s Editorial and Design Hall of Fame in 2011.

IEEE Spectrum is the flagship magazine and website of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences. Its charter is to keep over 400,000 members informed about major trends and developments in technology, engineering, and science. Under Susan Hassler's editorship, Spectrum has won numerous awards for both its print and online efforts, including three Grand Neal Awards and a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the Thought Leader category.

Gretchen Goldman

November 23 & December 7, 2016.

Gretchen Goldman, Research Director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, talks about the role of science in public policy, including issues ranging from scientific integrity in government decision-making to political interference in science-based standards on hydraulic facturing, climate change, sugar, and chemicals. Dr. Goldman holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in atmospheric science from Cornell University. She has authored pieces for Science, The New York Times, NPR, The Boston Globe, Reuters, Politico, and Bloomberg.

44:57 minutes.

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Union of Concerned Scientists website: http://www.ucsusa.org/

UCS Science Network (for scientists): http://www.ucsusa.org/science-network 

UCS on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/unionofconcernedscientists

Mary-Kay Lombino

May 4, 2016.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Emily Hargroves Fisher 1957 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, discusses the exhibition on view April 29 - August 21, 2016: "Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy."

Astronomy can be traced back to antiquity with its origins in religious and mythological beliefs; its study has been closely linked to artistic endeavors since the Renaissance. Touch the Sky is a multi-media exhibition of images of the moon, sun, planets, and stars made by artists since the nineteenth century. Artistic observation of the skies was advanced by the dawn of photography in 1839, when Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre attempted to capture an image of the moon, and in 1865 when Lewis Rutherfurd, inventor of the first telescope designed for astrophotography, made top-quality spectroscopic images of the moon. Since then, artists’ enthusiasm for recording and interpreting the grandeur and mystery of the cosmos has not waned. The exhibition includes work by nineteen artists, including Vija Celmins, Chris McCaw, Sharon Harper, David Malin, Mungo Thomson, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nancy Graves.

44:12 minutes.

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Mary-Kay Lombino

April 22, 2015.

Mary Kay Lombino, Emily Hargroves Fisher 1957 and Richard B. Fisher Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, discusses the exhibition on view April 10 - June 14, 2015 entitled Through the Looking Glass: Daguerreotype Masterworks from the Dawn of Photography.

40:16 minutes.

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Alix Christie

February 18, 2015.  

Writer, journalist, and printer Alix Christie, (VC'80) talks about her historical novel, Gutenberg's Apprentice (Harper Collins, 2014).

"If ever there were a historical novel with up-to-the-minute resonance, this is it. As we go through another information revolution, Christie’s novel takes us back in brilliantly-observed detail to the first – the invention of the printing press. Her characters are engaging, the world as beautifully crafted as one of Gutenberg’s hot-metal letters, and the themes more relevant now than ever."

51:42 minutes

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Lisa Gitelman

September 17, 2014. (SEASON OPENER):

Lisa Gitelman, Professor of English and of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, will discuss her book Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (Duke University Press, 2014).

"Paper Knowledge is a remarkable book about the mundane: the library card, the promissory note, the movie ticket, the PDF (Portable Document Format). It is a media history of the document. Drawing examples from the 1870s, the 1930s, the 1960s, and today, Lisa Gitelman thinks across the media that the document form has come to inhabit over the last 150 years, including letterpress printing, typing and carbon paper, mimeograph, microfilm, offset printing, photocopying, and scanning. Whether examining late nineteenth century commercial, or "job" printing, or the Xerox machine and the role of reproduction in our understanding of the document, Gitelman reveals a keen eye for vernacular uses of technology. She tells nuanced, anecdote-filled stories of the waning of old technologies and the emergence of new. Along the way, she discusses documentary matters such as the relation between twentieth-century technological innovation and the management of paper, and the interdependence of computer programming and documentation. Paper Knowledge is destined to set a new agenda for media studies."

42:10 minutes.

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Wolfgang Ernst

February 19, 2014.

Wolfgang Ernst, Chair of Media Theories at Humboldt University, Berlin, talks about media archaeology and his book Digital Memory and the Archive, published last year by the University of Minnesota Press.

"Digital Memory and the Archive offers the most compelling and insightful account published to date of how and why objects matter. Moving beyond textual analysis, its careful, theoretically rigorous engagement with the relic—the physicality of the archive—promises to change the direction of the digital humanities. Thanks to this book, we will all now be addressing the microtemporality of archives and the mechanics of remaining. Finally, a definitive collection in English of one of the most brilliant and influential media archaeologists."   -- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

32:24 minutes.

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Mary-Kay Lombino

April 17, 2013.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, talks about the exhibition: "The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation," on view in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center April 12 through June 30, 2013.

“Filled with images from a trove of artists from Ansel Adams to Andy Warhol, this is the first volume to explore the Polaroid camera’s indelible influence on the history of photography."

45:55 minutes. 

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Thomas Warger

December 5, 2012.

Thomas A. Warger, lead author of the Edutech Report, former CIO (Bryn Mawr), and a leading consultant in academic information systems, talks about the changing landscape of technology-enhanced learning at American liberal arts colleges, and the path toward developing more innovative and effective learning and research environments. 

52:12 min.

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