Digital Vellum: How Can We Avoid the Coming Digital Dark Ages
Category: Event Calendar
Date and Time
- Thursday, Aug 21, 2025 6pm - 7pm
Location
City Council Chambers (in the Civic Center)
Details
"The Father of the Internet is Worried." Come find out why!
In this free Library talk in the City Council Chambers, Shakespeare scholar and former Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, DC) Michael Witmore, will talk about the challenges of preserving cultural materials and documents that exist in only digital form. Unlike the works of Shakespeare, which are documented in printed books that have survived over 400 years, important cultural, political, and historical materials created today may not survive for longer than a single human lifetime. In this lecture, Witmore will discuss work he is doing with internet pioneer Vint Cerf (Google Chief Internet Evangelist) to preserve important historical and cultural artifacts for distant human posterity.
“A resident of Longmont since 2024, Michael Witmore is a scholar of Shakespeare and rhetoric, a digital humanist, and former director of a library and cultural institution. He served as the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., from 2011 to June 2024, during which the Folger Shakespeare Library conceived and completed an $81.5 million, four-year renovation project. He currently consults on digital preservation and cultural accessibility.” (from Wikipedia)
