April 16, 1999
The event, which is free and open to the public, will be from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, May 1, in the Spencer Research Library auditorium.
David McKitterick, librarian of Trinity College Library at Cambridge University, England, will be the keynote speaker. Among the panelists will be KU graduate and Rhodes Scholar Breon Mitchell, who is now a translator of German literature and a professor of comparative literature and Germanic studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Mason, who has worked at KU since 1957 when she was named special collections cataloger, was appointed head of Special Collections in 1963, and Spencer Librarian in 1975. In 1990, she received the first Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Librarianship in recognition of her exceptional contributions to the KU Libraries and her international leadership in rare-book and special collections.
Mason's work has been instrumental in building world-class special collections at KU. She joined the Special Collections staff four years after it was organized, and she led it into the Kenneth Spencer Research Library when that building opened in late 1968.
The Spencer Research Library will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, May 1, for tours and the viewing of exhibitions. A buffet luncheon, an evening reception at the Outlook, the chancellor's residence, and a banquet combined with the spring meeting of the KU Friends of the Library are also planned.
For more information or to register for these events, contact James Helyar at (785) 864-4334 or see the Web site at http://www.ku.edu/~spencer/vivat.html. Registration is requested by April 19.