Smithsonian Libraries

Clay Shirky Lecture Postponed

Today's scheduled lecture by Clay Shirky in NMNH's Kerby Room will be postponed due to a family emergency. We apologize for the inconvenience and will announce a new date and time shortly.

The Art of African Exploration

In the town of Ujiji in what is now Tanzania, Henry Morton Stanley, sent by a New York newspaper to track down the missing Dr. David Livingstone, finally found the man on this day, November 10, in 1871. Many had believed the ailing missionary and explorer to be dead. 

Their meeting has become legendary - even in its day it was the focus of media attention.  African exploration was a hot topic in the Victorian era in both the U.S. and Britain, capitivating the public's imagination with tales of adventure and discovery and paving the way for the West's colonialist claims on the continent. 

In a forthcoming SI Libraries exhibition, set to open December 9th at the National Museum of Natural History, African exploration is examined using an array of visual materials that emerged from that critical and complex time.  All but a few of the items on display come from the Russell E. Train Africana Collection (kept in the Cullman Library), a collection rich in illustrated and original materials.  Included in the exhibit are collectibles and ephemera, lantern slides (like the one shown above), early guide books, scientific illustrations, travel narratives, and actual explorer's sketches and journals, spanning from 18th century accounts of voyages to original field sketches from the early 1900s. 

We hope you'll come out next month to see some of these uncommon and intriguing items.

 

Clay Shirky to speak in Future of Libraries, Museums and Archives series

Clay Shirky

Finding Content as a Social Problem

~POSTPONED~

The lecture has been postponed.  Please check back for new date and time!
this lecture will also be recorded and the video available a few days later at the following URL:
http://www.sil.si.edu/lectures_40th_Shirky.html

Clay Shirky is an adjunct professor in New York University's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on the interrelated effects of social and technological network topology -- how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.  Mr. Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of technologies such as peer-to-peer, web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web. Mr. Shirky has written extensively about the internet since 1996, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, Wired, Release 1.0, Computerworld, and IEEE Computer.  His latest book is Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.

On the occasion of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ 40th anniversary, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL), Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA) and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) present another in a series of speakers to address the Institution on the future of libraries, museums and archives in a digital world.