31st Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture

Engineering Change in Libraries: A Pathway for Meaningful Action

Is your library wanting to build community?

Join colleagues from around the world in learning and planning globally to create change locally.

The aim of Engineering Change in Libraries is to understand the Other and mobilize our libraries to provide more effective and equitable services and programs to underserved communities. Inspired by Dr. Agnes Kaposi, a catalyst for change and 31st Annual Mortenson Distinguished Lecture, Engineering Change is organized into two components: (1) the lecture (setting the context) and (2) a two-session workshop for library staff and stakeholders to engineer change in libraries in a process of understanding the Other and planning globally to create change locally.

THE LECTURE – “Engineering Change and the Power of Information: Otherness, Exclusion, Propaganda, Dislocation,” November 8, 2021

We all have a story to tell. Our stories are influenced by our family’s history and how they tell it, our homeland, the political forces around us from our birth, and our emotional life, innate intelligence, education, and resiliency.  And luck.

Dr. Agnes Kaposi is a Hungarian-born British engineer living in London. She has lived through some of the most cataclysmic events of 20th and 21st centuries — the Holocaust, the Communist regime in Hungary, becoming a UK citizen, breaking the glass ceiling in industry and academia in the 1960s, and working internationally as a researcher, consultant and educator. At 89, she helps adults and young people to learn from her story about the encroaching forces of nationalism, ethnic hatred, sexist prejudice and fear of the “other” in our midst. Libraries, at times forbidden to her and at times a respite, have played a strong role in her life.

Libraries as public spaces can play a leading role in building a compassionate, engaged civil society. But the challenges of our communities and our patrons today are many: economic and racial exclusion; the barrage of “fake news” and propaganda; and the brutality of dislocation and relocation.

Join us for a lecture with Dr. Kaposi, who brings nearly a century of perspective as she tells her life story and the role of information as a source of power/control over advancing otherness, exclusion, propaganda, dislocation, as well as the catalyst of transformation in engineering change. A conversation will follow, moderated by Dr. Valerie J. Matsumoto, to connect Dr. Kaposi’s experiences with those of other marginalized and dislocated groups worldwide, such as Japanese Americans, to identify similarities and differences across time and locations, as we aim to understand the Other and rethink some of the most pressing issues that libraries face in promoting equitable communities in our information-intensive and networked society. Valerie J. Matsumoto is a Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Asian American Studies, and the George and Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair on the Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community at UCLA.

THE WORKSHOPS

• Inaugural Workshop on Dislocation
  Feb 15, 2022; 8:00-9:30 am CT session 1 | March 15, 8:00-9:30 am CT open consultation | April 19, 8:00-9:30 am CT session 2  |  FREE registration <click here> for Inaugural Workshop on Dislocation.
• Workshop on Propaganda
  March 1, 2022; 4:00-5:30 pm CT session 1| April 5, 4:00-5:30 pm CT open consultation | May 3, 4:00-5:30 pm CT session 2  |  FREE registration <click here> for Workshop on Propaganda.

For details, see the Engineering Change in Libraries webpage. 

Dr. Agnes Kaposi was born in Hungary in 1932, a year before Hitler came to power. She started school at the outbreak of World War II. Many of her family and friends were murdered in the Holocaust, together with half a million other Hungarian Jews, but a series of miracles and coincidences allowed her to survive. She worked at age 11 as a child labourer in the agricultural and armament camps of Austria and was liberated by a rampaging Soviet Army. She struggled through post-war hardship to re-enter Hungarian society, only to be caught up for a decade in the vice of Stalinism. In 1956, the Hungarian revolution offered the opportunity to escape. Entering Britain as a graduate engineer, she started a family and built a career as a researcher, educator and consultant. She was the third woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is the author of a recent memoir co-written with historian Laszlo Csosz of University of Budapest, Yellow Star-Red Star (i2i Publications, Manchester).

More information on Dr. Agnes Kaposi here.

Dr. Valerie J. Matsumoto is a professor in the Department of History and the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA. In addition to her book City Girls: The Nisei Social World in Los Angeles, 1920-1950, she is the author of Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982 and co-edited the essay collection Over the Edge: Remapping the American West. She was the first recipient of the Toshio and Doris Hoshide Distinguished Teaching Award, received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, and has twice received the Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring and Teaching from the UCLA Asian American Studies Graduate Student Association. In 2017 she was appointed to the George and Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair on the Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community.

More information on Dr. Valerie J. Matsumoto here.

Yellow Star-Red Star is the poignant memoir of Dr Agnes Kaposi, a Hungarian-born British engineer, educator, author and Holocaust survivor.

Dr Agnes Kaposi was born in Hungary in 1932, a year before Hitler came to power. She started school at the outbreak of World War II. Many of her family and friends were murdered in the Holocaust, together with half a million other Hungarian Jews, but a series of miracles and coincidences allowed her to survive. She worked as a child labourer in the agricultural and armament camps of Austria and was liberated by a rampaging Soviet Army.

She struggled through post-war hardship to re-enter Hungarian society, only to be caught up for a decade in the vice of Stalinism. In 1956, the Hungarian revolution offered the opportunity to escape. Entering Britain as a graduate engineer, she started a family and built a career as a researcher, educator and consultant. She was the third woman to become a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Her memoir is thoroughly researched and written with compassion and optimism, without self-pity. The tone is light and there is plenty of irony and even humour.  The narrative is underscored by the historian Dr László Csősz and illustrated by maps, documents, archival images and family photographs.  This book goes beyond the recollections of a survivor – it is an appeal to all of us to fight against prejudice and for human rights.

Source: http://agneskaposi.com/

AUTHOR FEATURES:

“120 Over 80 – Meet Our Golden Generation!” Jewish News (UK) featuring Dr. Agnes Kaposi (14 January 2021)

BOOK REVIEWS:

Escape from the Ghetto by John Carr (Golden Hare Books) featuring Yellow Star-Red Star by Agnes Kaposi (February 2021)

Yellow Star-Red Star Review – The Methodist Recorder by Revd Bruce Thompson (21 January 2021)

The Story of An Extraordinary Life – The New Polemicist Review by Francis Beckett (29 October 2020)