James Davis Scholarship

RBS began offering scholarships in 2001 with resources provided by the School’s James Davis Scholarship Fund. The scholarship was established in memory of the late James Davis, who was UCLA’s Rare Books Librarian and a long-time RBS staff member. Since its inception, the Fund has provided financial support for many RBS students. As of 2022, RBS now offers the James Davis Scholarship to two students each year who show an especially strong record of good citizenship and stewardship in the bibliographical community.

Applications will be accepted directly by RBS. To apply, please submit an RBS scholarship application by the 1 November deadline. See the main scholarship page for application instructions. Scholarship applicants will be considered for all awards for which they are eligible. Participation in the RBS scholarship program implies acceptance of the scholarship Terms and Conditions.

Previous Winners

2024 – Jullyana Araujo, Tonika Ellis
2023 – Catherine Blauvelt, Claire Lavarreda
2022 – Amy Dawson
2021 – Sarah Scarr
2020 – Jerome Scully
2019 – Juliette Paul
2017 – Malcolm Noble
2016 – Juan-Pablo Gonzalez
2015 – Jessica McQuillan
2014 – Andrew Stewart
2013 – Maria Lin
2012 – Alena McNamara
2011 – Gabriella Miyares

James Davis and the Scholarship Fund

James Davis attended his first Rare Book School in 1985. He joined the RBS program staff in 1986, and he returned annually thereafter, both throughout RBS’s Columbia years and then on to Virginia in the 1990s. He used to say that he already had as much management as he wanted to do at home (he was Rare Books Librarian at UCLA); at RBS, he developed a collection of non-administrative duties he made entirely his own, stretching from one end of each RBS week to the other: from mugshot photographer on Sunday night to course evaluation editor over the succeeding weekend. In between, he did the bulk of the RBS supplies-and-equipment shopping, edited Museum labels, acted as the Director’s conscience (“It’s just me: Jiminy Cricket!”), and made himself generally available to do whatever had to be done next. He was unfailingly interested in RBS students, and he spent a great deal of time talking to them both at breaks and after class in the evening.

We expected him as usual at the RBS January 2000 session, but he stayed home to undergo what he told us was a fairly routine bypass operation. In the event, he never regained consciousness after surgery, and he died in the hospital on February 3rd.

The RBS staff operates on the principle of interchangeable parts: there are few jobs that can’t, if necessary, be done by whoever’s handy. But nobody on our staff was like James Davis, who combined a vast knowledge of RBS’s collections and customs with an unflaggingly sunny disposition, and RBS cannot be the same without him.

Over the years, we have had many discussions with both RBS students and RBS prospective students about the need for scholarship support for our courses. Here, finally, is a program that has the potential to grow to become a force of considerable benefit to the field of rare books. Present and future contributions to the James Davis Scholarship Fund endowment are welcome. Checks should be made payable to the James Davis Scholarship Fund and sent to Rare Book School.