SJSU SLIS | SLIS | Events | 2005 Lazerow Lecture

4th Annual ISI Samuel Lazerow Memorial Lecture

Friday, April 22, 2005
Fairmont Hotel, Empire Room
2005 Lazerow Flyer (PDF)

Dr. Martin's Lecture Slides (PDF)

Our speaker was Dr. Robert Martin, a distinguished archivist, librarian, scholar, and educator, and presently the Director of the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Dr. Martin’s topic was “Putting Culture Online: The Role of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Creating Digital Cultural Content”. This lecture was hosted by SLIS and sponsored by Thomson Scientific.

In 2001 President Bush nominated and the U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Martin to be director of IMLS, an independent, federal grant-making agency that supports the nation’s libraries and museums. Since Dr. Martin assumed the directorship of IMLS, the agency’s budget has increased from $232,321,000 to $280,564,000. Dr. Martin has been a member of the Council of the American Library Association (ALA) and President of Beta Phi Mu, the national honor society for Library and Information Studies, and he has served on the editorial boards of scholarly library journals such as American Archivist and Library Quarterly. Prior to his appointment to IMLS, Dr. Martin was Professor and Interim Director of the School of Library and Information Studies at Texas Woman’s University. From 1995 to 1999, he served as Director and Librarian of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission where he led a dramatic expansion of the agency’s statewide library resource-sharing program and coordinated the development of new school library standards for the state. Dr. Martin was Associate Dean of Libraries for Special Collections at Louisiana State University from 1985 until 1995. Before that, he worked in the archives and special collections at the University of Texas. Bob Martin has authored, co-authored, or edited many publications, including two works on the historical exploration and mapping of the American southwest which are widely cited in historical literature. He is married to Barbara Stein Martin, a Professor in the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas. He is a native of Houston, Texas.