A presentation on the RMS Titanic at North Suffolk Library on Jan. 15 will take participants inside the life of John Smith, the ill-fated ocean liner’s captain, librarian Melinda Brown said.

Presenting on the topic will be John Croswaithe, a U.S. Merchant Marine Academy graduate who spent four decades with the U.S. Merchant Marine and now volunteers at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News.

“The anniversary of the sinking was not too long ago,” said Brown, the library’s head of reference services. “That kind of brought it back into popular attention.”

The presentation, beginning at 6:30 p.m., will probably involve a PowerPoint presentation, and will certainly focus on Smith’s life as a career sailor and events that preceded the disaster, she said.

“He’s going to focus a good deal on Captain Smith and his professional life and the choices and the decisions he made that contributed to the disaster,” she added.

“People know a lot about the Titanic, but they don’t know as much about Captain Smith and what motivated him to make the decisions that he made.”

North Suffolk Library generally holds one or two such events each three months, Brown said, as well as other programs such as computer classes.

“For this type of event, we would have anywhere from 25 people to 100,” she said, adding that the library is “absolutely” keen to spread the work about its free community events.

“We look for high-quality, entertaining and educational events, so we’d like to get as many people to participate as we can.”

For more information on the event, call the library on 514-7150. The library is located at 2000 Bennett’s Creek Park Road.