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Ken Herold, director of library information systems, participated in a 2003-2005 mapping study, "Knowledge Map of Information Science," a Critical Delphi study with an interdisciplinary panel composed of 57 leading scholars from 16 countries. Results have recently been published at www.success.co.il/is/index.html summarizing the findings of the study, an investigation of the theoretical foundations of the field.

Hamilton College’s Burke Library received the donation of Adirondacks murderer Chester Gillette’s diary from his grandniece in a ceremony on March 6. Gillette was convicted of the 1906 murder of his lover Grace Brown at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks. The diary was written between 1907 and 1908 while Gillette was in Auburn prison, awaiting his execution.

On March 6, Georgetown University professor of justice and peace studies and philosophy Dr. Mark Lance spoke in the Science Center Auditorium. Marianne Janack of the Hamilton philosophy department introduced Lance, pointing out that in addition to his scholarly work, Lance has been an activist for more than 20 years.

The final rounds of the annual public speaking competition were held on Saturday, March 3, in the Chapel. Students were selected based on their performance in the February 10 preliminary rounds and competed for three different prizes: The McKinney Prize, The Clark Prize, and The Warren Wright Prize. Michael Blasie ’07 won three of the six awards.

Carl A. Rubino, the Edward North Professor of Classics, has published a chapter titled "The Consolations of Uncertainty: Time, Change, and Complexity" in Reframing Complexity: Perspectives from the North and South, a book edited by Fritjof Capra, Alicia Juarrero, Pedro Sotolongo, and Jacco van Uden (ISCE Publishing, 2007). The book includes essays by scientists and philosophers from the US, Europe, and Latin America. Rubino's essay reflects his long-time collaboration with the Belgian scientist Ilya Prigogine, who received the Nobel Prize in 1977.

Hamilton College’s Burke Library will receive the diary of Adirondacks murderer Chester Gillette, whose murder of his lover Grace Brown in 1906 became the basis for Theodore Dreiser’s classic An American Tragedy. Marlynn Murray, the grand-niece of Chester Gillette, will donate the diary he kept for the months before his execution to Hamilton College in a ceremony on Tuesday, March 6, at 11 a.m. on the main floor of Burke Library. It will be preceded by a reception at 10 a.m. The public is invited to attend both events.

Dr. Mark Lance, professor of philosophy and justice and peace at Georgetown University, will speak at Hamilton College as part of the Diversity and Social Justice Project’s “Activism in Academia” series. His lecture, "Activism and Academe and the politicization of the classroom," will take place on Tuesday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m., in the Kennedy Auditorium of the Science Center. Lance received a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988. He has published more than 25 articles on such topics as relevance logic, normativity, meaning, Bayesianism and sexual identity. His specialties are in the areas of philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophical logic, and metaphysics. Lance also frequently writes and speaks on anarchist theory and social justice activism.

Two West Point cadets accompanied by West Point Judge Advocate Corps Department of Law Professor Major John Dehn participated in the Hamilton College Washington D.C. program’s class on Feb. 28.

William R. Kenan Professor of Government Cheng Li, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has made several presentations recently, traveling across the country to various venues. On Feb. 23, Li spoke at Florida Gulf Coast University on the school’s public radio atation, WGCU. He addressed the complex issues facing China now and in the future. On Feb. 27, Li traveled to Naples, Florida, to present two talks to 1,500 enthusiastic members of the Naples Council on World Affairs.

Kyoko Omori, assistant professor of Japanese, gave a talk in the Nichibunken Evening Seminar in Kyoto, Japan, on March 1. The title of her talk was “The Art of the Bluff Among Japanese Migrants: Popular Literary Modernism in the 1920s.” The Nichibunken Evening Seminar provides an English-language forum at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in which visiting research scholars, visiting research fellows, faculty members, graduate students, and other guests can discuss current research on Japan. Meetings are held approximately 10 times a year; the March 2007 Evening Seminar was the 117th in the series. In keeping with the interdisciplinary character of this Center, speakers and audience members offer distinctive perspectives from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.