News Archives

A Protocol to Protect Cultural Collections in the Age of AI

One of the bedrock principles of Rare Book School is meticulous care and vigilance for the integrity of the human record. We encourage rigor in methods and in ethics practiced by libraries, special collections, archives, museums, and in the book trade. Our shared vision focuses not just on finding answers in books, but in communicating the practice by which we arrive at our inferences, including transparency about the sources and methods we use.

A threat of the new age of AI is that some models can deracinate information from its sources, effectively removing the necessity to “show the work” and any responsibilities to the repositories from which data has been drawn. […]

RBS Treasurer Victoria D. Harker Elected Vice Rector of UVA Board of Visitors

On 20 February, RBS Board Treasurer Victoria D. Harker was unanimously elected Vice Rector of the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors (BOV), effective immediately.

In a recent UVA Today story, Harker said, “It is an honor to be selected to serve as the vice rector of the Board of Visitors. I am grateful to my colleagues for the trust they have placed in me, and I look forward to working alongside Rector Brown and the entire board to support this great institution and advance its important education, research and health care mission.”

Read more about Harker and her previous 17 January appointment to the BOV by Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger on the RBS website. […]

Remembering Joan M. Friedman

It is with profound sadness that we announce the death of Joan M. Friedman on 14 February 2026. With professional talents spanning rare book curation and general accounting, Joan was an ardent early supporter of Rare Book School (RBS) and a long-serving Treasurer from 2007 to 2019.  

Her early association with RBS goes back to its Columbia University origins at the School of Library Service, co-teaching the illustration processes course (I-20) with Terry Belanger from 1983 into the late 1980s. That class annually made a highly memorable field trip to New Haven, where Joan was Curator of Rare Books at the Yale Center for British Art.  […]

Impact Story: Marshall Scholars Piper Farmer & Jack Wallace

When the Marshall Scholarship program announced its new cohort of scholars in fall 2025, the list included two Rare Book School staff members: Summer Session Assistant Piper Farmer and Program Assistant Jack Wallace. Wallace and Farmer were selected from a nationwide pool of more than 1,000 applicants, representing numerous professional and academic fields, to receive this prestigious honor. According to the Marshall website, the scholarship aims “to enable intellectually distinguished young Americans, their country’s future leaders, to study in the UK.”  

Farmer is completing a degree in Literatures in English, with a minor in History of Art and Creative Writing, […]

Impact Story: Cataloging Medieval Manuscript Fragments in Chicago

Medieval manuscript fragments can be particularly challenging to catalog: they are severed from their original codicological contexts, exist in various states of preservation, differ in size, and many times have been incorporated in situ as pastedowns or binding strengtheners within later books. Cataloging such items can be a time-consuming process, though with the rewarding outcome of piecing together missing parts of a puzzle. For Chicago librarians Megan Kelly and Rebecca Flore, Rare Book School has been integral to helping them do this work as they strive to make the medieval collections in their respective libraries more accessible to researchers.  […]

Remembering Our Friend Richard C. Ramer

Rare Book School mourns the passing of rare book antiquarian Richard C. Ramer, who died on 31 January 2026. In addition to being a member of the Grolier Club, Mr. Ramer was also a generous supporter of Rare Book School.  

We are honored to share this remembrance of Mr. Ramer, courtesy of his family, and to celebrate his legacy:  

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our great friend, colleague, and mentor, Richard C. Ramer (1942-2026). A rare book antiquarian based in New York with an additional office in Lisbon, Portugal, […]