FARMINGTON — Reid Byers, president of Shiretown Bookers, will speak on “Booking at Brideshead: The Design of the English Country House Library” at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 29, in the University of Maine at Farmington’s North Dining Hall in the Olsen Student Center at 111 South St.

The talk is free and open to the public.

The English country house library has been the model private library for hundreds of years. When asked to describe an ideal reading room, most Americans will describe something recognizable as the book room of a traditional English country house. An odd set of historic forces shaped the strange architectural development of these rooms, but they still inspire library designs all over the world.

Byers has been a U.S. Navy journalist, a Presbyterian minister, a C programmer, and a master IT architect for IBM. He is currently completing an exhaustive history of the architecture of the private library.