I want to welcome you to this 2024 edition of the Livingstone Undergraduate Research Awards, which the Libraries have awarded to our students at Temple for 20 years with the continuing support throughout that period of Jack Livingstone, our benefactor and donor, himself a 1949 Temple alumnus. I also want to acknowledge the support of Gale, a Cengage company, for the Awards in Diversity and Social Justice and General Education classes, as well as this year’s luncheon. Their support is also appreciated. 

The library stands at the center of the university conceptually in its digital and its physical forms as a transdisciplinary environment that is the repository of intellectual and cultural legacy, a foundational context where intellectual journeys begin. All knowledge and culture is built on prior work and it is the unique role of the research library to gather, organize, provide access to, and preserve the authoritative record of thought and imagination. One of my personal sources of hope is the way each year with these undergraduate research awards we see the incredible intellectual energy and creative vigor of our next generation of thought leaders and creators.