Librarian of Congress to receive John E. Dolibois History Prize

October 26, 2005

Librarian of Congress and internationally celebrated scholar James Billington will receive the John E. Dolibois History Prize Thursday, Nov. 17, from The Michael J. Colligan History Project of Miami University Hamilton and the Hamilton Community Foundation.

The prize, in honor of Ambassador Dolibois, is given for substantial and sustained efforts to promote the teaching of and learning about history in the community and throughout the nation.

A renowned historian in Russian history, Billington reflects on the true meaning of the sudden and radical changes in America’s relations with the world during a lecture beginning at 7:30pm in Parrish Auditorium, Nov. 17. The event is free and open to the public.

Billington, who earned his doctorate from Oxford University and taught history at Harvard University and Princeton University, of which he also is an alumnus, was sworn in as the Librarian of Congress on September 14, 1987. He championed the Library’s “American Memory” national Digital Library Program, www.loc.gov. The program makes freely available online nearly 10 million American historical items for the collections of the Library and other research institutions. These unique American Memory materials and the Library’s other Internet services, which include THOMAS (a congressional database), the online “card catalog," exhibitions, information from the U.S. Copyright Office, and a Web site for children and families called “America’s Library,” handled more than 3.3 billion transactions in fiscal year 2004.

In response to hearing of his honor, Billington said, “My life as an historian has been devoted to the attempt to immerse myself in the intellectual and artistic creativity of a foreign culture (Russian) in order to understand and trace the development of (1) its core characteristics as expressed within the culture itself; and (2) the forces that suddenly, radically change the culture.”

A celebrated author, his latest work is Russia in Search of Itself published in 2004. The book will be available for purchase during a reception following the lecture.