For immediate release | February 22, 2011

Raj Patel to deliver keynote session at ACRL 2011

91´«Ã½

CHICAGO – Raj Patel, activist, academic and author, will be the keynote speaker on Thursday, March 31, from 4:30 – 6 p.m. at the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference held March 30 – April 2 in Philadelphia. Themed “A Declaration of Interdependence,” ACRL 2011 is the premier professional development event dedicated to meeting the interests of academic and research librarians.

Known internationally as an authority on the world economic system and the international food crisis, Raj Patel will discuss how growing global “interdependence” impacts the sharing and dissemination of information and ways in which the library profession can support global equality and social justice.

Patel is the award winning author of five books including “Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear Us?,” “Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System” and his 2010 New York Times best-seller, “The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy.” He will be signing “The Value of Nothing” immediately following the keynote presentation.

Currently, Patel is a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for African Studies, an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First.

ACRL is the largest division of the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½), representing more than 12,000 academic andresearch librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at , Facebook at and Twitter at .

For more information on ACRL 2011, please visit the conference Web press kit at , or contact Jennifer Petersen, 91´«Ã½’s PR coordinator at 312-280-5043, jpetersen@ala.org.

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