The purpose of this course is to teach students how to tell the difference between the various relief, intaglio, and planographic printing methods used in printed book illustration in the period before the domination of photographic processes. The emphasis of the course will be on process rather than on connoisseurship, on execution rather than design, and on the practical rather than the theoretical.

Almost the sole medium of instruction will be actual examples of original prints drawn from the substantial BAP collection, many of them divided into suites or -- as they are known locally -- packets of twelve prints all from the same (or a very similar) source. The twelve students in the class study the packets under close supervision, using 8X loupes and 30X microscopes (both provided), as necessary.

During the course, students will make and print a linoleum cut, a zinc etching, and an acrylic drypoint. These are exercises in reproductive -- not creative -- work: no artistic ability of any kind whatsoever is either necessary or expected.

This course is open to all those with an interest in the subject. Class sessions will include lectures, discussion, and visits to local booksellers and the UVa's Special Collections department. Note that this is not in general a hands-on course; its intention is to give relative newcomers the broadest possible general overview of the field.

Topics include: (1) definition and purpose of rare books and rare book collections -- the determinants of rarity and of value, the appropriateness of rare book collections in libraries, developing criteria for identifying rarities in the general collection, the commitment to security and quality of the collection; (2) collection development -- ascertaining areas of strength and building to them, learning the processes of acquisition (the rare book market and its practices), creating a new field for collecting, building a reference collection to serve the unit, relating collections within the library to each other; (3) technical processing: discussion of catalogs, calendars, and shelflists; describing individual books and collections; relating the rare book collection to the general collection of the library; elementary repair techniques; conservation and planning for growth; lighting; readers' and staff facilities; (4) relating the rare book collection to its various clienteles and to the public: special interest groups and their needs, the curator in the classroom, preparation of exhibits, use of the media for publicity, Friends of the Library groups, fund-raising activities, publications; and public relations.

The course is aimed primarily at archivists who process and describe collections in finding aids, though it will also be useful to repository administrators contemplating the implementation of EAD Version 1.0, and to technologists working in repositories.

The course will cover the following areas: the history of EAD and its theoretical and technological foundations; an introduction to Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and Extensible Markup Language (XML), including discussions of authoring and network publishing tools; a detailed exploration of the structure of EAD; use of software tools to create and publish finding aids; discussion of conversion techniques and methodologies, and templates for the creation of new finding aids; and the integration and management of EAD in an archive or library.

The class will jointly encode and publish a finding aid that will illustrate a wide variety of essential EAD and SGML concepts. Students will also encode one of their own finding aids.

Applicants must have a basic knowledge of archival descriptive practices as well as experience using word-processing software with a graphical user interface. Some experience with the World Wide Web and HTML will aid the learning process.

In the personal statement on their applications, prospective students should indicate their relevant archival background, the extent of their previous experience with computers in general and graphical user interfaces and EAD in particular, and describe their role (present or future) in the implementation of EAD in their home institution.

This course is intended for persons who want to develop a better understanding of the physical description of books, particularly those books produced before about 1850. Each class day is divided into four parts: lecture, homework, lab, and museum. Daily lectures concentrate on methods of determining format and collation, and of describing type, paper, illustrations, binding, and the circumstances of publication. Students prepare for daily laboratory sessions in which they work, under close supervision, with progressively more difficult examples of various formats and collations. During the daily museum periods, students have extensive hands-on access to the celebrated BAP realia collections: tools and equipment, samples and examples, self-teaching packages, and the like.

This course will provide a wide-ranging and practical exploration of electronic texts and related technologies. It is aimed primarily (although not exclusively) at librarians and scholars keen to develop, use, publish, and control electronic texts for library, research, or teaching purposes. Drawing on the experience and resources available at UVa's Electronic Text Center, the course will cover the following areas: how to create archival-quality etexts, including digital image facsimiles; the necessity of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) for etext development and use; the implications of XML; text analysis software; and the management and use of Web-based SGML text databases. As a focus for our study of etexts, the class will create an electronic version of an archival document, mark its structure with SGML ("TEI") tagging, create digital images of sample pages and illustrations, produce a hypertext version, and make the results available on the Internet.

Applicants need to have some experience with the tagging of HTML documents. In their personal statement, applicants should assess the extent of their present knowledge of the electronic environment, and outline a project of their own to which they hope to apply the skills learned in this course.

This course -- restricted to working catalogers experienced in AACR2r, MARC, and general cataloging principles and practices -- will provide training in the application of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books (DCRB). Lectures, discussion, and exercises will center around the following topics: DCRB and the differences between rare book and general cataloging; basic concepts of edition, issue, and state; the organization of the cataloging record, including levels of detail and variety of access points; problems in transcription, format and collation, and physical description; recent developments in codes and standards; the uses and requirements of special files; and setting rare book and/or special collections cataloging policy within an institutional context. The goal of this course is to provide an introduction to each of the primary elements of the rare book catalog record, so that students will be equipped to begin cataloging their institutions' rare book and special collections materials. Although some attention will be given to post-1800 books, the primary focus will be on books of the hand-press era.

In their personal statement, applicants should describe their experience with machine-readable AACR2 cataloging and provide a brief description of the types of materials they expect to catalog. They are also encouraged to mention specific problems they have encountered (or anticipate encountering) in their work, whether of a concrete nature or concerning broader issues in cataloging policy.