Would you like to hear the Archivist of the United States speak? If you are near the Durham area, there is an upcoming opportunity to do so  –  Duke is hosting two lectures that may be of interest:

• On March 3, 2010 – Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and co-founder/faculty co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, will discuss “Gaming History: The Battle for Narrative Control in the Digital Age.”
• On March 22, 2010 – David Ferrerio, Archivist of the United States, will present a lecture titled “Are We Losing Our Memory? The View from the National Archives.”

Both lectures are free and open to the public.  These are part of Duke’s Office of the Provost lecture series and more information can be found at http://www.provost.duke.edu/speaker_series/.

Now, interestingly enough,  your host just realized that the very first Archivist of the United States was Robert Digges Wimberly Connor.  I recognized the name immediately because RDWC (as I’ll call him) was from Wilson County,  North Carolina and is a great-grandson of one  of my family’s slaveholders, Robert Diggs Wimberly.  RDW very likely owned my 4th great-grandfather, AllenWimberly (I don’t have proof yet, just A LOT of circumstantial evidence).   RDWC graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1899, and now, thanks to their yearbook collection up to 1966 being online, you can find him listed in the 1899 Hellenian.   As an item of note – Duke’s yearbooks are also being placed online.

But I digress…. check out these lectures if you can!