Announcing the

2024 Bernard H. Breslauer Lecture

"What is a Library?"

given by

Richard Ovenden

Bodley’s Librarian

In the 21st century, with the rise of mass digitization, all-pervasive social media, and AI, as well as the culture wars, the role of the library in society is being challenged as never before. Richard Ovenden’s 2024 Breslauer Lecture will attempt to answer a fundamental question: “What is a Library,” looking at past and present philosophical bases for libraries, and outlining the ways in which libraries are responding to the question today.

Richard Ovenden has been Bodley’s Librarian (the senior Executive position of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford) since 2014, and Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums since 2022. Prior to that he held positions at Durham University Library, the House of Lords Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh. He was educated at the University of Durham and University College London, and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, and was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019. 

Richard serves as President of the Digital Preservation Coalition, and as a member of the Board of the Council on Library and Information Resources (in Washington DC). He holds Fellowships of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2023. He was the recipient of the Walford Award for Knowledge Management and the Premio Acqui Storia (Testimone del Tempo) in 2021. He writes extensively on libraries, archives, and information management, and is the author of Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge (Harvard University Press 2020), and writes regularly for the Financial Times, the London Review of Books and The Atlantic. 

Lecture and Q & A in the Grolier Club's main exhibition space

followed by a reception.

This event is free with a suggested donation, and open both to

ATBL Supporters and to the public.



About the Bernard H. Breslauer Lecture Series

The first American Trust for the British Library (ATBL) Bernard H. Breslauer Lecture was delivered in 2006 and ever since has been given annually. Bernard H. Breslauer was a distinguished antiquarian book dealer and collector. Breslauer, born in Germany, was forced to flee Germany under the National Socialist regime first for Italy and then to the United Kingdom. Following the war, Breslauer resumed his work as a bookseller in London before emigrating to the United States in 1977. Breslauer’s bequest to the ATBL forms the foundation of the ATBL’s endowment, a percentage of interest from which is restricted by the terms of Breslauer’s will to be designated for the acquisition of rare books and manuscripts for the benefit of the British Library’s collections.