Digitization of the world’s great works provides an unprecedented opportunity to democratize knowledge for generations to come, and a name familiar to Georgia Tech is one of the frontrunners.

Join President Emeritus and former Secretary of the Smithsonian G. Wayne Clough Thursday, Jan. 30 from 11 to 12:30 in the Georgia Tech Library’s Seventh Floor Reading Room for his talk,  “Democratization of knowledge through digitization in libraries, museums, and archives.”

Clough will discuss his 2013 book, Best of Both Worlds: Museums, Libraries, and Archives in the Digital Age with a focus on the intellectual process and power of digitization. He’ll also discuss how the process connects streams of knowledge and allows disparate people to bring their intellectual bases together. Additionally, Clough will connect these topics to his latest work, 2019’sThings New and Strange: A Southerner’s Journey through the Smithsonian Collections.

“Digital access can provide limitless opportunities for engagement and lifelong learning,” he said.

Before his appointment to the Smithsonian, Clough was president of Georgia Tech for 14 years. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering from Georgia Tech in 1964 and 1965 and a doctorate in 1969 in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.