E PLURIBUS UNUM - Looking Forward – Navigating the library’s digital future
Watch The Virtual Event From Wednesday, January 27, 2021
A conversation with John Palfrey, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Rebecca Blumenstein, Maplewood resident and Deputy Managing Editor of the New York Times, to explore the importance of the modern library to a community’s digital future.
Presented by the Maplewood Library Foundation.
John Palfrey
John Palfrey is President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies. He also serves on the board of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is a founding board chair of the Digital Public Library of America. Palfrey has extensive experience in social change spanning the education, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors.
Prior to joining the MacArthur Foundation, Palfrey served as Head of School at Phillips Academy, Andover, and oversaw the creation of the Tang Institute at Andover, which seeks to reform and democratize excellent teaching and learning. As the Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, Palfrey expanded the Library’s reach and services, finding innovative ways to use digital technologies to enhance the school’s scholarship and teaching. He also served as Executive Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, which seeks to understand cyberspace.
Palfrey has published extensively on the digital era and the effects of new technologies on society, including BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google (2015), and Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives (2008.) He holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge and an AB from Harvard College.
Rebecca Blumenstein
Rebecca Blumenstein has been Deputy Managing Editor of The New York Times since February 2017, where she heads the digital report and focuses on making The Times an essential destination for business, economics and technology coverage. Prior to joining the NYT, Ms. Blumenstein served as Deputy Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal. She joined the WSJ in 1995 as a reporter in the Detroit bureau, and over the years served as the deputy chief of its New York Technology Group, managing editor of WSJ.com, China bureau chief, deputy managing editor and international editor, and Page One Editor. She began her journalism career at The Tampa Tribune, and then later moved to Gannett Newspapers and Newsday, where she covered breaking news and the New York State legislature.
Ms. Blumenstein received a 1993 New York Newswomen’s Award for best deadline writing for her coverage of the aftermath of the Long Island Railroad shootings. In 2003, she was part of a team that won the Gerald Loeb Award for deadline writing for coverage of WorldCom. She oversaw the China team that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2007 and was named to the Aspen Institute’s, Henry Crown Fellowship for 2009.
Ms. Blumenstein holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and social science from the University of Michigan, where she was editor in chief of the Michigan Daily. A native of Essexville, Michigan, Ms. Blumenstein is a long-time resident of Maplewood, NJ, where she lives with her husband, writer Alan Paul and three children.