Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

Choldin to deliver Mortenson Lecture

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Marianna Tax Choldin, the Mortenson Distinguished Professor and director of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will deliver the 2002 Mortenson Distinguished Lecture.

The topic of her talk is “Walls and Windows, Islands and Bridges: Libraries Along the Road to Civil Society.”

The free public event, the 12th annual lecture in the series, will begin at 4 p.m. Oct. 21 in the auditorium of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, 405 N. Mathews Ave., Urbana.

In her talk, Choldin will discuss episodes, scenes and symbols – drawn from her decades of experience with libraries, archives and museums around the world – that illustrate access and obstacles to access. She also will talk about the roles these institutions and the people who work in them play in the movement of societies along the road to civil society.

Choldin became director of the Mortenson Center in 1991. She has traveled worldwide to work with librarians, promoting improved library services, new technologies and especially freedom of information.

In her research, Choldin focuses on censorship in Russia, the Soviet Union and the post-Communist world. A prolific writer, she is best known for “A Fence Around the Empire: Russian Censorship of Western Ideas Under the Tsars” and “The Red Pencil: Artists, Scholars, and Censors in the USSR.”

Choldin has been on the Illinois faculty since 1969. An adjunct professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, she also has directed the Russian and East European Center and the Slavic and East European Library, all at Illinois.

In 1995, Choldin was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. In 2000, the Russian government awarded her the Pushkin Gold Medal for contributions to culture. In 2001, she became the first recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement at Illinois.

From 1997 to 2000, Choldin also chaired the library program of the Soros Foundation, which has distributed millions of dollars to libraries and librarians in more than 30 nations.

Choldin received her doctorate at the University of Chicago.

The C. Walter and Gerda B. Mortenson Professorship and Center were established in 1989 and 1991 respectively with the aim of strengthening ties among libraries and librarians worldwide.

Since 1991, more than 500 librarians from 76 countries have participated in the center’s training programs on the UI campus.

The center has initiated cooperative programs in Central America, Georgia, Haiti, Russia, and South Africa and is exploring a partnership with Colombia.

The Mortenson Web site is at www.library.uiuc.edu/mortenson.

Read Next

Life sciences Portrait of the research team posing together.

Minecraft players can now explore whole cells and their contents

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have translated nanoscale experimental and computational data into precise 3D representations of bacteria, yeast and human epithelial, breast and breast cancer cells in Minecraft, a video game that allows players to explore, build and manipulate structures in three dimensions. The innovation will allow researchers and students of all ages to navigate […]

Arts Photo of seven dancers onstage wearing blue tops and orange or yellow flowing skirts. The backdrop is a Persian design.

February Dance includes works experimenting with live music, technology and a ‘sneaker ballet’

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The dance department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign will present February Dance 2025: Fast Forward this week at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. February Dance will be one of the first performances in the newly renovated Colwell Playhouse Theatre since its reopening. The performances are Jan. 30-Feb. 1. Dance professor […]

Honors portraits of four Illinois researchers

Four Illinois researchers receive Presidential Early Career Award

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Four researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were named recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers. The winners this year are health and kinesiology professor Marni Boppart, physics professor Barry Bradlyn, chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Ying […]

Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

507 E. Green St
MC-426
Champaign, IL 61820

Email: stratcom@illinois.edu

Phone (217) 333-5010