This year’s Presidential Lecture Series at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics may have a familiar feel to it for longtime attendees of Dole Center events.

The institute is returning to a theme in the 2004 installment of the annual lecture series — President Abraham Lincoln.

Four experts will be in Lawrence to talk about the nation’s 16th president, including former Dole Institute Director Richard Norton Smith.

It’s a good time to be talking about Lincoln, as 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, said Jonathan Earle, the institute’s associate director for programming. He said he anticipated more than 1,000 books would be written on Lincoln in the coming year.

“This is going to be the year of Lincoln,” Earle said.

Earle should know, as Lincoln is the history professor’s research specialty.

Smith is scheduled to begin the series on Feb. 8. He is the former director of the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. He is a scholar-in-residence at George Mason University and working on a book on Nelson Rockefeller, Earle said.

Earle said the institute has invited the authors of two of the most anticipated Lincoln biographies set to debut in 2009. Michael Burlingame will discuss his two-volume “Lincoln: A Life” on Feb. 17. Ron White will speak on his “A. Lincoln” on March 2.

The series will conclude with Kansas University assistant professor of history Jennifer L. Weber, who has written a book called “Copperheads,” named for the anti-war Democrats who opposed Lincoln. She is scheduled to speak on March 10.

All events will begin at

7:30 p.m. at the Dole Institute and are free and open to the public.