RBS Faculty
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Current Rare Book School Faculty

Greer Allen has designed publications for Colonial Williamsburg, the Houghton, the Beinecke, the Metropolitan, Yale's art museums, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Rosenbach, the Art Institute of Chicago, Storm King Art Center, and many other libraries and museums. Formerly Yale University Printer, he now serves as Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art. He has been designated Honorary Printer to the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York City. Course: T-70 Printing Design and Publication.
Sue Allen is the foremost authority on C19 American book covers. Her research, lectures, writings, and exhibitions guide librarians and conservators in the selective preservation of English and American bindings of the C19 and early C20. In 1999 she received the annual award of the American Printing History Association for her contributions to printing history. Course: B-90 Publishers' Bookbindings, 1830-1910.
Susan M. Allen is Chief Librarian of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, before which she was Head, Dept of Special Collections, UCLA; Director of Libraries and Media Services at Kalamazoo College; and Head of Special Collections, Honnold/Mudd Library, Claremont Colleges. Course: L-55 Donors and Libraries.
Martin Antonetti became Curator of Rare Books at Smith College in 1997, before which he was Librarian of the Grolier Club. He is President of the American Printing History Association. Course: H-30 The Printed Book in the West to 1800.
Nicolas Barker is editor of The Book Collector. He has written many books, among them Stanley Morison (1972), Bibliotheca Lindesiana (1977), and Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script and Type in the 15th Century (2nd edn 1992). He is the editor of recent editions of John Carter's classic ABC for Book Collectors. Course: M-80 Introduction to Handwriting in the West.
William P. Barlow, Jr is a partner in the San Francisco accounting firm of Barlow & Hughan. He has advised many individuals and institutions on bibliographical tax matters both in a professional capacity and as an officer of library friends' groups. Course: L-55 Donors and Libraries.
Timothy D. Barrett is Research Scientist at the University of Iowa, where he was the director of the Center for the Book between 1996 and 2002. His publications include the standard Japanese Papermaking: Traditions, Tools and Techniques (1983) and other books, articles and videos on the history, technique and aesthetics of both oriental and western papermaking. Course: H-60 History of European and American Papermaking.
Terry Belanger, founding director of Rare Book School, is University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections at the University of Virginia. Courses: H-90 Teaching the History of the Book; I-20 Book Illustration Processes to 1900; I-30 Seminar in Book Illustration Processes.
John Bidwell is Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Pierpont Morgan Library, before which he was Curator of Graphic Arts in the Princeton University Library. He has written extensively on the history of papermaking in England and America. Course: H-60 History of European and American Papermaking.
Erin C. Blake became the Folger Shakespeare Library’s first Curator of Art in 2000, the year in which she completed her Ph.D. in art history at Stanford. Course: I-10 Introduction to the History of Illustration.
John Buchtel is Curator of Collections at Rare Book School. Course: H-10 The History of the Book, 200-2000.
Christopher Clarkson has held conservation positions at the Bodleian Library, the Walters Art Gallery, and the Library of Congress. An internationally renowned consultant on the care of medieval manuscripts and bindings, he is now in independent practice in Oxford. Course: B-40 Medieval & Early Renaissance Bookbinding Structures.
Morris L. Cohen was Professor of Law and head of the law libraries successively at Harvard and Yale before his retirement as in 1993. He is a well-known legal bibliographer and collector. Course: C-70 Collecting the History of Anglo-American Law.
Albert Derolez is Emeritus Professor at the Free Universities of Brussels; he was formerly Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Library of the State University of Ghent. He is the President of the Comité International de Paléographie Latine. He holds the Kenneth and Shirley Rendell Chair in Manuscript Studies at Rare Book School. Courses: M-20 Introduction to Codicology and M-40 Introduction to Latin Paleography.
Mark Dimunation has been Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress since 1998. He is a past chair of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section of the American College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association. Course: H-10 The History of the Book, 200-2000.
Johanna Drucker became Robertson Professor of Media Studies at UVa in 1999; she has also taught at Columbia, Yale, and SUNY Purchase. She has been making artists' books for many years. Among her books are The Visible Word: Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-23 (1994) and The Century of Artists' Books (1995). Course: C-80 Artists’ Books: Strategies for Collecting.
Lucious Edwards, Jr is Archivist, Johnston Memorial Library, and Adjunct Professor of History at Virginia State University. He lectures frequently on the use of African-American primary research sources in the teaching of U.S. history. Course: C-75 Developing Collections of African-American Materials.
Simon Eliot is Professor of Publishing and Printing History and Director of the Centre for Writing, Publishing and Printing History at the University of Reading. He is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies at the University of London. He is editor of the journal Publishing History. Course: H-45 Printing, Publishing, & Consuming Texts in Britain and its Empire, 1770-1919.
Mirjam Foot is Professor of Library and Archive Studies at University College, London. She is the author of many books and articles on the history of bookbinding, including Studies in the History of Bookbinding (1993); The History of Decorated Bookbinding in England (with Howard Nixon, 1992); and The History of Bookbinding as a Mirror of Society (1998). Course: B-70 European Decorative Bookbinding.
Ian Gadd is a lecturer in English at Bath Spa University. He was Munby Fellow in Bibliography at the University of Cambridge in 1999-2000, and a Research Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. He has been editor of HoBo, a web site providing information about history of the book events in the United Kingdom, since 1996. Course: The Stationers' Company and the London Book Trade to 1830.
David L. Gants is Canada Research Chair in Humanities Computing at the University of New Brunswick, and Electronic Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson . He has published articles on bibliographical, digital, and textual matters, and is currently directing the Early English Booktrade Database project. Courses: G-10 Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography.
Matthew Gibson is the Associate Director of the internationally-known Electronic Text Center. Course: L-75 Electronic Texts in XML.
Eric Holzenberg is Director of the Grolier Club in New York City. He is the author of The Middle Hill Press (1997). He has taught a version of this course at RBS since 2001, and has also taught courses on rare book cataloging and rare book librarianship. Course: H-40 The Printed Book in the West since 1800.
Sandy Kita, a Senior Scholar at Chatham College, is the author of A Hidden Treasure: Japanese Woodblock Prints in the James Austin Collection (1996) and The Last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei, Bridge to Ukiyo-e (1999). Course: I-80 Japanese Printmaking, 1615-1868.
D. W. Krummel is Professor Emeritus of Library Science and Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana. His many books on music printing and the history of bibliography include Bibliographies, Their Aims and Methods (1984) and The Literature of Music Bibliography (1992), and he co-edited the Norton Grove handbook on Music Printing and Publishing (1990). He is completing a study dealing with the history of the concept of bibliographical records. Course: H-55 History of American Music Printing and Publishing.
Deborah J. Leslie is Head of Cataloging at the Folger Shakespeare Library, before which she held positions as rare book cataloger at Yale University and at the Library Company of Philadelphia. She is the chair of the RBMS Bibliographic Standards Committee. Course: L-30 Rare Book Cataloging.
James Mosley is Visiting Professor in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. He retired as Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in London in 1999. The founding editor of the Journal of the Printing Historical Society, he has written and lectured extensively on the history of European and English typography. Courses: T-50 Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1450-1830 and T-55 Type, Lettering and Calligraphy, 1830-1940.
Paul Needham became Scheide Librarian at Princeton University in 1998, before which he worked at Sotheby's and at the Pierpont Morgan Library. Among his books is Twelve Centuries of Bookbinding: 400-1600 (1979). He has given Rare Book School Master Classes on early printed books both at the Morgan and at the Huntington. Course: H-25 15th-Century Books in Print and Manuscript.
Stanley Nelson is a specialist for many years in the Graphic Arts Division of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, and he has given many demonstrations and lectured widely on various aspects of typographic history. He is both author and presenter in the 1985 Book Arts Press videotape, From Punch to Printing Type: The Art and Craft of Hand Punchcutting and Typecasting. Course: T-10 Introduction to the History of Typography.
Richard Noble is Rare Books Cataloguer at the John Hay Library, Brown University. He is co-author (with Joan Crane) of Guy Davenport: A Descriptive Bibliography 1947-1995 (1996), and co-editor of The Dramatic Works of George Lillo (1993). Courses: G-10 Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography; G-50 Advanced Descriptive Bibliography.
William Noel has been Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum since 1997. He is the author of The Henry Psalter (1995) and other studies dealing with medieval manuscripts and their illumination. Course: H-25 15th-Century Books in Print and Manuscript.
Nicholas Pickwoad is a book conservator in private practice. From 1992 to 1995, he was Conservator at the Harvard University Library, before which he was Advisor to the [British] National Trust for Conservation. Course: B-60 European Bookbinding, 1500-1800.
Daniel Pitti became Project Director at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities in 1997, before which he was Librarian for Advanced Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the Coordinator of the Encoded Archival Description initiative. Courses: L-80 Implementing Encoded Archival Description; L-85 Publishing EAD Finding Aids.
Michael Plunkett is Director of Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library. He is the author of Afro-American Sources in Virginia: A Guide to Manuscripts (1990) and an electronic edition of the same title published in 1994. Course: C-75 Developing Collections of African-American Materials.
Christine Ruotolo is Lead Information Community Coordinator, University of Virginia Library. Course: L-75 Electronic Texts in XML.
Alice Schreyer has been Director of the Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago since 1991, before which she held positions at the University of Delaware, the Library of Congress, and Columbia University. She was the founding editor of the ACRL journal, Rare Books & Manuscripts, from 1988 to 1993. She is a member of the ARL Task Force on Special Collections. Course: L-10 Introduction to Special Collections Librarianship.
David Seaman became Director of the Digital Library Federation in 2002. He was the founding director of the internationally-known Electronic Text Center and on-line archive at the University of Virginia. Course: L-70 Electronic Texts and Images.
Barbara A. Shailor is Director of the Beinecke Rare Book and MSS Library at Yale. She is the author of the three-volume Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance MSS in the Beinecke Rare Book & MSS Library, Yale University (1984-1993) and of the frequently reprinted The Medieval Book: Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and MS Library 1988). She has published extensively in the area of Visigothic paleography and monastic book production in medieval Spain. Course: H-20 The Book in the Manuscript Era.
Jan Storm van Leeuwen is Keeper of the Binding Collection at the Dutch Royal Library in The Hague. He has published widely in Dutch, English, French, and German on the history of bookbinding. He gives courses in the history of bookbinding at the Amsterdam Restoration School and at the Plantin Society in Antwerp. He is honorary member of the International Association of Bibliophiles and the Amis de la Reliure d'Art. Course: B-10 Introduction to the History of Bookbinding.
Samuel A. Streit is Associate University Librarian for Special Collections at Brown University, where his duties have included renovating the John Hay Library, developing public relations strategies, liaison with the University's Development Office in three major NEH Challenge Grant campaigns, and undertaking a major expansion of The Friends of the Library. Course: L-50 Advanced Seminar in Special Collections Administration.
Merrily E. Taylor is Professor and University Librarian at Washington & Lee University. She has also worked at Brown, Columbia, and Yale Universities. Course: L-50 Advanced Seminar in Special Collections Administration.
Ellis Tinios is Honorary Lecturer in the School of History, University of Leeds; Research Associate at the Japan Research Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and special assistant to the Japanese Section of the Department of Asia, British Museum. He is the author of Mirror of the Stage: The Actor Prints of Kunisada (1996) and On the Margins of the City: Recreation on the Periphery of Edo (with Paul Waley, 1999); and he is a contributor to Masterful Illusions: Japanese Prints in the Anne van Biema Collection (2002). Course: I-85 Japanese Illustrated Books, 1615-1858.
Daniel Traister is Curator of Research Services, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. He has written extensively on the history of books and printing and on topics in English and American literature. He has taught annually in RBS since 1983. Course: H-90 Teaching the History of the Book.
Michael L. Turner spent his life working in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, where he was Head of Special Collections (Printed Books) and subsequently Head of Preservation Services for the library and Oxford University Library Services. In retirement he is currently jointly co-editing volume 5 of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain and serving as President of the Oxford Bibliographical Society. Course: The Stationers' Company and the London Book Trade to 1830.
David Warrington has been Librarian for Special Collections at the Harvard Law School since 1986, before which he worked at the Lilly Library and in the antiquarian book trade. Course: C-70 Collecting the History of Anglo-American Law.
Roger S. Wieck is Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library; he has also held curatorial positions at the Walters Art Museum and the Houghton Library at Harvard. He is the author of The Hours of Henry VIII: A Renaissance Masterpiece by Jean Poyet (2000), Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (1997), Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (1988), and many other books and articles on medieval manuscripts. Course: M-50 Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts.
Michael Winship is Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. He edited the final three volumes of the nine-volume Bibliography of American Literature, and he is the author of American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields (1995). He has taught annually in RBS since 1983. Courses: H-50 The American Book in the Industrial Era, 1820-1940; H-15 The History of the Book in America.
Helena Zinkham worked as a reference and technical services librarian at both the Maryland and New-York Historical societies before joining the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, where she is head of the Technical Services Section. Course: L-40 Visual Materials Cataloging.

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