Gold to Gigabytes: The Past, Present, and Future of Money
The UCI Libraries Present
The Opening of our Fall Exhibit
Gold to Gigabytes: The Past, Present, and Future of Money
Featuring a talk by
Catherine Eagleton,
Curator of Modern Money, The British Museum
With remarks by
Bill Maurer,
UCI Professor of Anthropology and Law
Director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
Friday, October 5, 2012
5:30 pm
Langson Library, UC Irvine
Reception and exhibit viewing to follow immediately
Reservations requested by September 28
The UCI Libraries is pleased to announce the opening of an exciting new exhibit, Gold to Gigabytes: The Past, Present, and Future of Money, on Friday, October 5th, at 5:30 pm in Langson Library. Gold to Gigabytes explores the anthropology of money by tracing the evolution of currency from ancient beginnings to its present state and broadly illuminating new trends in the exchange of money and alternative currencies.
Topics portrayed in the exhibit include the rise of credit cards and cashless transactions, the development of alternative currencies like Bitcoin, and the creation of new technologies for electronic payment and banking, such as "mobile money." On display will be library materials as well as research materials from UCI's Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) in the School of Social Sciences. There will also be a video documenting shifts in money from the automatic cash register to online, virtual world currencies. The exhibit is curated by staff in the UCI Libraries and IMTFI.
Our special guest speaker, Catherine Eagleton, Ph.D., will give a talk titled, Collecting the past, present, and future of money. As the curator of Modern Money at The British Museum in London, Eagleton oversees a collection of more than 150,000 objects, including coins, paper money, tokens, credit cards, and other money-related objects from the last 300 years.
The program will include remarks by Bill Maurer, UCI professor of anthropology and law and director of IMTFI, a clearinghouse for research on mobile money and poverty alleviation worldwide. Maurer is a cultural anthropologist who conducts research on law, property, money and finance. He is also the associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Social Sciences, and co-director of the new Intel Science and Technology Center in Social Computing at UCI.
A light reception and exhibit viewing will follow the presentation. The event is free and open to the public. Space is limited; reservations are first come, first served. Please go to http://give.lib.uci.edu/money to make an online reservation. For further information please call 949.824.4651 or email partners@uci.edu.
The UCI Libraries Exhibits Program promotes the diverse holdings and scholarly and cultural value of the Libraries’ collections to the campus and community.
- To support the Libraries' Collection Enhancement Fund, please go to: http://www.uadv.uci.edu/CollectionEnhancementFund.
- To sponsor this exciting event and highlight the work of local/global companies that are participating in the transformation of money and payments in our society, please contact Julie Sully at jsully@uci.edu.
Gold to Gigabytes will be on display through April 2013 in the Langson Library Muriel Ansley Reynolds Gallery during regular library hours.