John Horgan, the Burns Library Visiting Scholar, will give a public lecture Nov. 19 at 4:30 p.m. on “Journalism—The First Draft of History?” Typically treated by historians as a secondary source—and not necessarily a reliable one—journalism is now being studied in its own right as an essential component of social and cultural history in the widest sense. A former writer and editor for the Irish Times, Horgan is the author of a number of acclaimed political biographies, including studies of Mary Robinson, Sean Lemass and Noel Browne. He was elected to the Irish Senate and later to the Dáil and European Parliament. He was a professor of journalism at Dublin City University from 1983 to 2006. The following year he was appointed Ireland’s first Press Ombudsman. He is teaching a course at Boston College on the politics of constitutional change in Ireland from 1922-2013. His lecture will be held in the Thompson Room of the Burns Library. A Q&A with Horgan was recently published in the Boston College Chronicle.