2024 Trask Lecture (for LoC Staff only)

The Society welcomes Library of Congress staff to join us for the 2024 Trask Lecture by John Cole. 

The lecture and Awards Ceremony will begin at 3:30 pm on May 30 as part of the SHFG Annual Meeting, being held in the Madison Building on May 30-31. The Trask Lecture will be held in the Montpelier Room. 

Please register to attend the lecture or the lecture and reception following. 

Commendation for John Cole

The Society is pleased to honor Dr. John Y. Cole as the 2024 Trask Awardee, in recognition of his innumerable contributions to federal history over the course of his fifty-five-year career at the Library of Congress.

A librarian and a historian, Dr. Cole served for four decades as the founding director of the Center for the Book, where his commitment to books and reading shaped major Library initiatives, including the National Book Festival and the Library of Congress Literacy Awards. In 2016 he was appointed as the Library’s first official historian, having already been recognized internationally as the “foremost expert on the history of the Library of Congress.”*

Dr. Cole’s interest in Library history emerged from his graduate studies, and over the course of his career he wrote or edited more than a dozen books and multiple articles about the Library of Congress, focusing on the institution’s history, functions, and programs, along with its art and architecture.

With the Trask Award, the Society honors Dr. John Cole’s demonstrated commitment to federal history and his service to the federal history community.

*The Library of Congress and the Center for the Book: Historical Essays Honoring John Y. Cole. Edited by Mary Niles Maack of the University of California at Los Angeles, this 2011 volume features nine essays marking Cole’s dual achievements as a scholar and founding director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.