Annual Dinner

Annual Dinner and Business Meeting

2009 FAMBL Dinner Photos

2008 FAMBL Dinner Photos

2007 FAMBL Dinner Photos

The annual dinner and meeting is held in spring, usually early April. This event begins with a reception from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. and is followed by a brief, business meeting and a speaker who delivers the annual E. Bruce Kirkham lecture.

Annual E. Bruce Kirkham Lecture

The Friends' annual dinner has included a speaker each year since its inception. At the 2000 dinner, Provost and President of the Friends Board of Governors Warren Vander Hill announced that future presentations at the annual dinner would officially be known as the "Kirkham Lectures." The named lecture honors Dr. E. Bruce Kirkham, professor of English at Ball State and the first executive secretary of the Friends. Dr. Kirkham conceived and started the Friends group when the A. M. Bracken Library opened in 1976, then served as executive secretary until his retirement from Ball State in 2000. Dr. Kirkham returned to the university in 2001 to give the first Kirkham lecture at the Friends dinner.

The Kirkham Lecture is published and distributed to members of the Friends each year. We are pleased to now make these lectures available on this web site.

2009	"Movers and Stakers: Stories along the Indiana National Road" Mrs. Nancy Carlson
2008	"George Dale: Then and Now" (.pdf) Mr. J. Andrew Dale
2007	"The Middletown Digital Oral History Collection" Hurley Goodall, Warren Vander Hill, and John Weakland
2006	"Civil War Battlefield Preservation"(.wmv) Mr. Frank Bracken
2005	"In Defense of Literary Biography" (.pdf) Dr. Gary Scharnhorst
2004	"Amazing Discoveries and Inventions and Other Productions of Muncie Doctors" Dr. Phil Ball
2003	"Bernard Shaw, Theatre, and Pedagogy: A Backward Glance into the Future" (.pdf) (PowerPoint) Dr. Michael M. O'Hara
2002	"Native American Music" (.pdf) Dr. Luke Eric Lassiter
2001	"Libraries, Mrs. Stowe, and Me" (.pdf) Dr. E. Bruce Kirkham