Faculty at Home: Rebekah Irwin

Please join Rebekah Irwin, Director and curator of Special Collections, for a talk entitled “Old Books, New Kids: Special Collections in the 21st Century.”

Sometimes described as a “museum for old books,” Special Collections could more accurately be described as a petting zoo. Each year, thousands of students visit to touch the animal-skin pages of old books, flip through newspapers, and smell aging paper from the medieval to the modern era. Given that all of Middlebury’s current undergraduates were born after the year 2000, and most reach for a phone before a book, Rebekah will describe how she teaches students not merely to appreciate old books but to understand that the history of the book is at the heart of understanding technological innovation.

Rebekah Irwin is the director and curator of Special Collections. In this role, she oversees the College’s rare book and manuscript collections, the College archives, digital projects, and the preservation of Middlebury’s library collections. Rebekah has served on national and international professional committees, including as a member of the Library of Congress and UNESCO World Digital Library project, and as chair of the Digitization in Special Collections Task Force of the American Library Association. Before arriving at Middlebury in 2011, Rebekah worked for a decade at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Register at this link.