Black to speak at Trans-Atlantic Dialogues conference

Alistair Black
Alistair Black, Professor Emeritus

How do heritages travel? How is trans-Atlantic tourism shaped by heritage? To what extent have traditions crossed and recrossed the Atlantic?

Professor Alistair Black and fellow scholars from both sides of the Atlantic will gather in Liverpool, UK, July 13-16 to discuss these questions. Trans-Atlantic Dialogues on Cultural Hertiage: Heritage, Tourism, and Traditions is hosted jointly by the University of Birmingham’s Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage and the University of Illinois’s Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy.

Black will deliver a talk titled, “The Mid-Twentieth Century Librarian as Observer, Ambassador, and Tourist: Towards a History of Excursions by British Librarians to the United States.”

From the abstract: Visits by librarians to the United States are an overlooked aspect of trans-Atlantic cultural exchange. Although there is a long tradition of cultural visits by individuals who have had an interest in library and book heritage as a facet of a broader intellectual motivation, it was not until the rise of professional librarianship in the last quarter of the nineteenth-century that visits were organized with the specific purpose of employing recorded experience to expand library provision and improve library services. By the mid-twentieth century, travel by British librarians to view library developments in the United States had become an established feature of British librarianship. Visitors fulfilled the tripartite role of observer, ambassador, and tourist...This paper forms part of what can become a much larger study of British librarians who in the formative decades of the library profession undertook excursions to the United States to study its library systems.

Black’s research interests include the history of librarianship and information management; the history of corporate magazines, corporate libraries, and information bureaux; and the history of library design. He teaches courses in information history, library buildings and society, historical foundations of the information society, public library history, and libraries in film. Black was named the 2014-2015 Centennial Scholar at GSLIS, which recognizes outstanding accomplishments and/or professional promise in the field of library and information science.

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