News Archives

Recognizing a Grave and Egregious Pattern; Committing Ourselves to the Work Ahead

We at Rare Book School deplore racism and discrimination in all its forms. Without reservation, we condemn the lethal ignorance and hatred that animates racism and the injustices that come from it. We recognize the loss of Black lives at the hands of law enforcement as among the most grave and egregious of the patterns of systemic racism in our time. No human being should be deprived of the most fundamental of human rights, the right to live. We abhor violence against people of color in all its forms, and we mourn those who have died while struggling for racial justice. […]

Rare Book School and COVID-19

June 3, 2020

Although we have been expecting this announcement, it is still with sadness that we confirm that the University of Virginia will be keeping the campus closed through July and that we are likewise cancelling our courses here in Charlottesville. Since our founding in 1983, the only other summer in which RBS didn’t run a single summer course was 1992, the year the School moved from Columbia to UVA. While we will miss seeing students and instructors in person this summer, cancelling is the best way to keep members of the RBS community safe and healthy. […]

2014 Scholarship Awards Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2014 Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the first winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students. Congratulations!

Recipients of the IMLS-RBS Fellowships and the Fath Scholarships for Artists and Artisans of the Book will be announced in January.

Directors’ Scholarship Fund:

ASECS Scholarship: Christine Griffiths

Atlas Systems Scholarship: Ariadne Rehbein

BSA-RBS Scholarship: Ann Johnson

James Davis Scholarship: Andrew Stewart

SHARP-RBS Scholarships:

• Anne Harding
• Simon Rowberry
• Alexandra Kordoski
• Lauren Williams

William T. […]

RBS Open House Scheduled for 5 December

Rare Book School will host an open house for UVA students, faculty and staff on Friday, 5 December from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to promote the RBS-UVA Fellowship program (for students) and the UVA faculty/staff education benefit, which can be used to attend an RBS course. Students who bring a professor with them to the open house will receive an RBS-themed gift. Light refreshments will be served.

See the RBS-UVA Fellowship page for more information about the program. […]

Nicholas Basbanes Article on RBS Featured in Humanities

Author Nicholas Basbanes joined us for a summer session in Charlottesville this year to give a lecture and conduct interviews and research for an article about Rare Book School. We are delighted that Nick’s article was recently published in Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is now available online or in the print version of the November/December issue. […]

RBS at the Boston Book Fair

If you’ll be in Boston this weekend (14–16 November) for the excellent Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair, please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 617 (floor plan), with printed copies of our just-released 2015 schedule, a slideshow of images from 2014 RBS classes, and more.

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J., Assistant Director & Curator of Collections Barbara Heritage, Assistant Curator of Collections Tess Goodman, and Director of Communications & Outreach Jeremy Dibbell will all be at the Fair, […]

RBS Announces 2015 Course Schedule

We are very pleased to announce the 2015 Rare Book School spring and summer course schedule! Along with 26 courses in Charlottesville, RBS will also offer courses at the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington; in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts and the Library Company of Philadelphia; and at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

Eight new courses are on the schedule for 2015: Reference Sources for Researching Printed Americana (L-45); Digital Approaches to Bibliography & Book History (L-100); The Bible and Histories of Reading (H-105); […]

RBS Receives Grant for Additional RBS-Mellon Fellowships

Rare Book School has been awarded a grant in the amount of $757,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a third cohort of fellows for the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography. Forty fellows currently participate in the program; RBS will admit an additional twenty fellows to the program in the spring of 2015. The aim of the program is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities by introducing doctoral candidates, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty to specialized skills, methods, and professional networks for conducting advanced research with material texts. Fellows will receive funding and stipends for RBS course attendance, […]

Now Accepting Applications for RBS Scholarships, IMLS-RBS Fellowships

We are now accepting applications for the 2014 scholarship cycle. To begin the application process, please log into your myRBS account (or create a new myRBS account). On the Home screen, click the “Apply for a Scholarship or Fellowship” button on the left side of the page. If you have any trouble with myRBS, see the FAQ page or email rbs_programs@virginia.edu.

Applications are now open for RBS Scholarship Committee scholarships (for first-time RBS students); Fath Scholarships for Artists and Artisans of the Book (for first-time RBS students); William T. […]

RBS Featured in Washington Post Video

Rare Book School is the subject of a new five-minute video from the Washington Post:
[…]

RBS Faculty Member James Reilly Receives Preservation Award

RBS faculty member James Reilly, director of the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), has received the 2014 Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award, given annually by the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Preservation and Reformatting Section (PARS). The award recognizes the contribution of a professional preservation specialist who has been active in the field of preservation of library materials. James received the award on 28 June, at the ALCTS Awards Ceremony during the 2014 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

See the ALA press release for more information on the award. […]

RBS Announces 2014 Summer Lecture Series Schedule

The staff at Rare Book School are thrilled to announce the exciting lineup for this summer’s lecture series. The schedule is packed with talks by specialists who will speak on a wide array of subjects, from braille to zines and engraving to word processing.

The lectures are free and open to the public. All talks will take place on Monday and Wednesday evenings at 5:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (unless otherwise noted) on the lecture schedule. […]

Now Accepting Applications for October Courses

Applications are now being accepted via myRBS for three Rare Book School courses being offered in October:

• Advanced Rare Book Cataloging Workshop (L-35), taught by Deborah J. Leslie. 20–24 October at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
• Book Illustration Processes to 1900 (I-20), taught by Terry Belanger. 27–31 October at Rare Book School in Charlottesville.
• Introduction to Illuminated Manuscripts (M-50), taught by Roger Wieck. 27–31 October at the Morgan Library &

[…]

RBS-Mellon Fellowships Awarded

RBS is pleased to announce that the selection process for the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in Critical Bibliography is now complete: a second cohort of 20 RBS-Mellon Fellows has been chosen. The aim of the fellowship program is to reinvigorate bibliographical studies within the humanities by introducing doctoral candidates, postdocs, and junior faculty to specialized skills, methods, and professional networks for conducting advanced research with material texts. Read more about the 2014–16 fellows. […]

Announcing the 2014–15 RBS-UVA Fellows

The 2014–15 cohort of RBS-UVA Fellows has been selected. The new fellows are:

• Nora Benedict – Ph.D. student, Department of Spanish
• Mary Draper – Ph.D. student, Department of History
• Ben Lee – Ph.D. student, Department of English
• Ethan Reed – Ph.D. student, Department of English
• Christina Kilby Robinson – Ph.D. student, Department of Religious Studies
• Allison Wolf – CLAS ’15, Department of English
• Gretchen York – Ph.D. student, Department of EnglishEach of the fellows will attend an RBS course this summer,

[…]