September 18, 1997

Contact:
Craig D'Ooge (202) 707-9189

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Historian Wayne Wiegand To Present Lecture on "American Libraries as Reading Institutions" at the Library of Congress

The Center for the Book will present a lecture by noted library historian Wayne A. Wiegand at 4 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 31, in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Memorial Building. Organized to coincide with the annual conference of the American Studies Association being held in Washington on Oct. 29-Nov. 2, the program is free and open to the public. Mr. Wiegand's topic is "The Ubiquitous American Library: A Look at an Understudied Yet Essential Reading Institution in the 20th Century." His talk will be published by the Center for the Book in its Viewpoint series.

Mr. Wiegand's most recent book, Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey, was published in 1996 by the American Library Association. Mr. Wiegand, a distinguished historian and library educator, is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Science and co-director of the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America. He and Kenneth Carpenter of Harvard University Library are the co-editors of a project, sponsored by the Center for the Book, that aims to produce a three-volume history of libraries and American culture.

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress was established in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books, reading, and libraries. For further information, visit the Center on the World Wide Web at http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/.

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PR 97-148
9/18/97
ISSN 0731-3527