News Archives

Position Announcement: Executive Director and Librarian of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

Yale Library seeks an innovative and passionate leader to serve as the next Executive Director and Librarian of the Lewis Walpole Library (the “Library”). Reporting to the Associate University Librarian for Yale Library Special Collection and Director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Executive Director will be responsible for establishing a vision and setting priorities for the Library that will broaden its reach and visibility, enhancing research and scholarship about the eighteenth-century British world. For additional information, please see the full position description. […]

Spring 2026 Public Lectures by Katherine M. Ruffin

RBS faculty member Katherine M. Ruffin, Director of the Book Studies Program and Senior Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College, will give two lectures at Harvard and Yale Universities in Spring 2026. Both talks are free and open to the public. […]

RBS General and Buice Scholarship Awards for 2026 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the 2026 recipients of its General Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students. Congratulations to these recipients! […]

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, […]

Virginia Governor Spanberger Appoints RBS Board Treasurer and RBS Supporter to UVA’s Board of Visitors

Victoria D. Harker, Treasurer of the RBS Board of Directors, and Peter M. Grant II, a loyal RBS supporter, were both appointed to the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors (BOV) by Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger on 17 January 2026.

Victoria D. Harker is former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for TEGNA Inc. and has held leadership roles on many public-company and non-profit boards. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from American University.

Harker’s 17 January appointment to the BOV marks the third time she has served on that body. […]

Rare Book School Summer 2026 Course Applications Now Open

Rare Book School (RBS) is now accepting applications for its summer 2026 courses. This year’s schedule features almost 50 in-person and online courses, including nine new courses. Courses in Charlottesville will once again be offered at RBS’s home in the University of Virginia’s Edgar Shannon Library.

RBS has launched new partnerships and course locations this summer: York in the United Kingdom, North Bennet Street School in Boston, and the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center. […]

Summer Positions Available: 2026 Rare Book School Summer Assistants

Rare Book School is hiring summer assistants to provide support in managing course sessions, catering, and other tasks related to the running of our 2026 summer programming in Charlottesville. This is an exciting opportunity to participate in a leading humanities organization and aid in the RBS’s mission of creating a “community equipped to advance historically informed understandings of our cultural heritage.”

RBS is seeking conscientious, detail-oriented, and service-driven undergraduate and graduate students as well as early-career professionals to work as summer assistants in Charlottesville during the following weeks and weekends:  […]

Rare Book School Mourns the Passing of William T. Buice III

It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of William T. Buice III on 10 November 2025. A lawyer and book collector, Bill was an outspoken advocate for Rare Book School (RBS) as well as for the book collecting community and the wider nonprofit world. 

As the second Chair of the RBS Board of Directors (2008–2014), Bill helped build the Board in ways that propelled its culture of philanthropy and fiduciary oversight. Among his many accomplishments as Board Chair was overseeing the successful transition of RBS’s directorship from Terry Belanger to Michael F. Suarez, S.J., in 2009. […]

George Washington’s Mount Vernon Seeking Special Collections Processing Archivist

George Washington’s Mount Vernon is seeking to hire a Special Collections Processing Archivist. The position reports to the Chief Librarian and works closely with the Special Collections Librarian to ensure proper care, documentation, management, and access to special collections holdings. This position is primarily responsible for tracking and managing data entry, electronic and physical documentation for receiving special collections manuscripts and books, relating to accessioning, loans (internal and external), and deaccessioning.  The Archivist processes, describes, and houses Special Collections manuscripts and archival collections.

S/he will coordinate with the Technical Services Librarian, who is responsible for cataloging rare books, […]

SoFCB Junior Fellows Gain Hands-On Experience at NYC Field School

Founded in 2017, the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) is a Rare Book School program that seeks to advance the study of texts, images, and artifacts as material objects through capacious, interdisciplinary scholarship. Each year, the Society, which now numbers more than 100 members, selects ten early-career scholars to join the program as Junior Fellows through an open application process that considers their work with textual artifacts. Junior Fellows come from a variety of fields ranging from literature, medieval studies, history, and art history to musicology, anthropology, religious studies, classics, and more. […]

CFP: 21st Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop

The Call for Papers for the 21st Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop, to take place 30–31 January 2026, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has been extended to 14 November 2025 […]. The workshop is organized by Charles Kuper (Classics) and R. D. Perry (English) and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

This year’s workshop explores the issues of “destruction and preservation.” As anyone working in the premodern period knows all too well, culture is fragile. It is beset by forces that would rather destroy it, sometimes intentionally, as when authorities make certain things verboten or seek to suppress them,

Boston Book Launch: “A Printer with My Hands: The Life and Work of Carl P. Rollins”

A Printer with My Hands: The Life and Work of Carl P. Rollins

The Boston Book Launch

6 November 2025 from 6 to 8 p.m. ET at the Katherine Small Gallery (108 Beacon Street, Somerville, MA 02143). No ticket required.

The staffs of Katherine Small Gallery and the New England chapter of the American Printing History Association invite you to celebrate A Printer with My Hands: The Life and Work of Carl P. Rollins, a new book by Katherine M. […]

Applications Open for RBS Online Course on Publishers’ Archives

Are you interested in exploring how publishers’ archives illuminate the history of the American book? Apply now for Rare Book School’s Winter 2026 online course, H-95v: Reading Publishers’ Archives for the Study of the American Book, taught by noted bibliographer and book historian Michael Winship. This 22-hour course meets Mondays and Thursdays from 26 January to 26 February 2026. Apply by 1 December 2025 for first-round consideration; applications received after this date will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the course is full. […]

Position Announcement: Dietrich American Foundation Collection Fellow, Wesleyan University

The Dietrich American Foundation (DAF) collection, on long-term deposit from the DAF and administered by Wesleyan University’s Special Collections & Archives (SC&A), is a superb group of more than 1000 books, periodicals, manuscripts, printed ephemera, and related materials focusing on early America. Particular strengths include the Seven Years’ War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812. The collection includes one of four copies of the first printing of the Star Spangled Banner’s sheet music, Ben Franklin’s personal annotated copy of Second Protest, With a List of the Voters Against the Bill to Repeal the American Stamp Act… (1766), […]

See You at the Boston Book Fair!

If you’ll be at the 47th annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair from 7 to 9 November, please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 427, with information about our courses, fellowships, job opportunities, and more.

RBS staff members Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Barbara Heritage, Zoe Langer, Andrew Kuhn, and Katie Hodges-Kluck will be at our table as well as on the show floor. We look forward to seeing you at the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston soon! […]