SILS’ 75th Anniversary Grand Finale set for Sept. 17

Vartan GregorianSept. 6, 2007 – The grand finale of the School of Information and Library Science’s (SILS) 75th anniversary is set to take place on Sept. 17, 2007, which coincides with the date the school first began teaching classes in 1931. The finale will begin at 3 p.m. in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall.

Our distinguished keynote presenter will be Dr. Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. He will present, "In Praise of Reading." Dr. Gregorian is the 12th president of the corporation, a post he assumed in 1997. Prior to this position, he was president of Brown University for nine years. For eight years prior to his work at Brown University, he was president of the New York Public Library. Dr. Gregorian is the recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

The Carnegie Corporation provided SILS with its first grant of $100,000 to enable the school to operate for three years and to make permanent its conditional accreditation from the American Library Association.

Dr. Gregorian will be joined at the finale by James Moeser, chancellor of UNC- at Chapel Hill, and James B. Hunt, Jr., former governor of North Carolina.

Please plan to join us at Memorial Hall on Sept. 17. It is sure to be a grand finale!