F. Williams Summers Professor Wayne Wiegand received a mention and was quoted in the Tallahassee Democrat’s Tallahassee.com site on March 14, 2010. The article was about the upcoming Tallahassee book festival and writers conference:

Following the social, a public panel discussion on “The Power of Books to Shape American Life” will feature FSU library and information studies professor Wayne Wiegand, retired FSU English professor and Florida Book Awards co-founder John Fenstermaker and John Cole, director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress. The event is sponsored by the Florida Humanities Council.

Wiegand, also a Florida Book Awards founder, said he’ll talk about some of the famous people who were influenced by books they checked out from public libraries. His list includes Orville and Wilbur Wright, Thomas Edison, Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.

Public libraries continue to thrive, he said.

“The number of library visitors has increased every year, and circulation has increased every year. Two hundred million people frequent the library at least once a year, and millions of those people visit it over and over again.”