News Archives

Announcing the Nancy Norton Tomasko Fellowship

In December 2019, scholar-collector Mark D. Tomasko donated $100,000 to establish the Nancy Norton Tomasko Fellowship, which will annually fund the studies of a Junior Fellow in Rare Book School’s Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB). Mark has endowed this fellowship in memory of his late wife Nancy Norton Tomasko, a trailblazing book historian, who documented Chinese handmade paper, as well as aspects of Chinese bookbinding and woodblock printing. Nancy also collected travel material to Asia before 1950, including guides, view books, maps, and ephemera. Awards will be made to applicants specializing in Asian materials or the history of paper and papermaking (any region or period), […]

RBS Announces M.C. Lang Fellows in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

With pleasure, Rare Book School announces the inaugural cohort of M. C. Lang Fellows in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources. Congratulations to all, and we look forward to welcoming you to RBS this summer!

• Margaret Boyle, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College
• Bartholomew Brinkman, Associate Professor of English at Framingham State University
• Caleb Dance, Assistant Professor of Classics at Washington and Lee University
• Berton Emerson, Assistant Professor of English at Whitworth University
• Jacob Heil, Digital Scholarship Librarian at the College of Wooster
• Anne Peale,

[…]

RBS Mourns the Loss of Hans Tausig

It is with great sadness that we acknowledge the passing of Hans Tausig, who served as the inaugural Chairman of Rare Book School’s Board of Directors beginning in 2002, and remained a highly valued member of the Board until 2017. Hans spoke of his deep love and appreciation of rare books and the mission of Rare Book School, saying: “It’s not just the illustrations and lettering that makes these old works so special. Book binding itself is an art form few people know about or understand. Rare Book School is just one way to ensure that we continue to teach people about these great artifacts. […]

RBS Scholarship Awards for 2020 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the recipients of its Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students and the final cohort of NEH-GBHI Scholarships. Congratulations! […]

Apply Now for Summer 2020 Courses

Applications for summer 2020 courses are now being accepted via our online application system, my RBS.

Along with 21 courses in Charlottesville, courses will be held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Lillian Goldman Law Library, and Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Library Company of Philadelphia; the Free Library of Philadelphia; Amherst College; Indiana University Bloomington; the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; the Thomas J. […]

RBS Announces Summer 2020 Schedule

The summer 2020 Rare Book School course schedule is available! Along with 21 courses in Charlottesville, courses will be held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Lillian Goldman Law Library, and Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University; the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Library Company of Philadelphia; Amherst College; Indiana University Bloomington; the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; […]

RBS Receives Gift to Support the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources

Rare Book School has received a gift to establish the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources, a two-year program designed to animate humanities teaching and equip educators (both library/curatorial staff and tenured or tenure-track faculty) to enlarge their students’ historical sensibilities through bibliographically informed instruction with original historical sources. Open to faculty and librarians at liberal arts colleges and small universities in the United States, this fellowship program will teach teachers how to discern and convey the human presences in original textual artifacts, to inculcate wonder in their students through guided contact with original textual artifacts. […]

Register Now for RBS Seminar at Winterthur & University of Delaware (10–12 November)

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-day seminar at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware Library on Monday and Tuesday 11–12 November 2019, preceded by a group dinner on Sunday, 10 November.

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators, collectors, and librarians of all kinds who care for, research, and teach with ephemera collections, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. The cost to attend the seminar is $500.

As space is limited, signup for the seminar will be handled on a first-come, […]

RBS Scholarship & Fellowship Applications Now Available

We are now accepting applications for the 2019 Rare Book School scholarship and fellowship cycle.

Applications are open for all RBS-awarded scholarships (for both first-time and returning RBS students), for the SoFCB Junior Fellows Program, and for the new Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage. For general queries about scholarships or fellowships, see the FAQs page. Participation in the scholarship/fellowship program implies acceptance of the scholarship and fellowship Terms and Conditions.

To begin the application process, […]

RBS Receives Grant to Support the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage

Rare Book School has received a $1.5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage, a six-year program which aims to advance multicultural collections through innovative and inclusive curatorial practice and leadership. Forty-five fellows who identify with diverse racial or ethnic communities and/or who work primarily with collections that document minority, immigrant, and non-Western cultural traditions will participate in this program over six years.

Comprising three overlapping cohorts of 15 fellows each, the fellowship will seek to fulfill four core goals: 1) developing skills for documenting and interpreting visual and textual materials in special collections and archives; […]

Announcing the 2019–21 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows & 2019–20 RBS-UVA Fellows

We are pleased to announce the 2019–21 Junior Fellows in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, as well as the 2019–20 cohort of RBS-UVA Fellows. Many congratulations to all the Fellows; we much look forward to seeing you at RBS soon!

The 2019–21 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows are: […]

RBS Announces 2019 Summer Lecture Schedule

We are very pleased to announce the lineup for this summer’s lecture series at the University of Virginia. The lectures are free and open to the public. All talks will take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library (unless otherwise noted). Lectures will last 30–40 minutes with 10 minutes for Q&A, and will be followed by a reception in the RBS suite on the first floor of Alderman Library (Alderman 118). […]

Video from “Archives, Memory & Identity” Symposium Now Available

Video from the Archives, Memory & Identity symposium, held at UVA on 7 September 2018, is now available on the RBS YouTube channel. […]

Announcing Presswork Symposium “Making & Teaching: Printing Technologies at Work”

Rare Book School is pleased to announce a free, public symposium jointly sponsored with the UVA Library, the McIntire Department of Art, and Virginia Humanities as part of Presswork, a project funded by The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of UVA’s Alumni Association. “Making & Teaching: Printing Technologies at Work” will be held at UVA on Monday, 25 March 2019.

The first half of the symposium will feature a series of overlapping, hands-on demonstrations with specialized printing equipment, including a recently commissioned facsimile eighteenth-century French rolling press, as well as a hand-made facsimile type mold from the same period, […]

Rare Book School Board of Directors Elects New Members

The Rare Book School Board of Directors met on Saturday, 26 January in New York City, where the following new directors were elected: […]

RBS Scholarship Awards for 2019 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the recipients of its Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students, the second cohort of NEH-GBHI Scholarships, and the RBS-RBMS Diversity Fellowship. Congratulations! […]

Apply Now for Summer 2019 Courses

Applications for summer 2019 courses are now being accepted via our online application system, myRBS. Along with 24 courses in Charlottesville, RBS will also offer courses at the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington; the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Grolier Club; Yale University; the University of Pennsylvania; the Free Library of Philadelphia; and the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University.

Please log in to your myRBS account or create a new account to begin the application process.

Applications for Rare Book School courses are considered on a rolling basis until a course has reached enrollment capacity. […]

Three RBS Films Now on YouTube

We are very pleased to announce that three Rare Book School films are now available via the RBS YouTube channel:

• The Making of a Renaissance Book (1969)
• How to Operate a Book (1986)
• The Anatomy of a Book: Format in the Hand-Press Period (1991)

Facsimile format sheets and the workbook to accompany The Anatomy of a Book are still available through the RBS online store; copies of the DVDs will remain available until our current stock is depleted. […]

RBS Announces Summer 2019 Course Schedule

The spring and summer 2019 Rare Book School course schedule is available! Along with 24 courses in Charlottesville, RBS will also offer courses at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington; the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University; the Grolier Club; the Thomas J. Watson Library at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; and the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University. […]

Register Now for RBS Seminar at MIT (12–14 December)

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-and-a-half-day seminar, “Digital Sustainability for Cultural Collections” at the MIT Libraries in Cambridge, MA on Wednesday–Friday, 12–14 December 2018. Nancy Y. McGovern (Director for Digital Preservation at MIT Libraries) and Kari R. Smith (Institute Archivist and Program Head for Digital Archives at the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections) will lead the seminar sessions.

This seminar has been designed to be of interest to curators and librarians of all kinds who are or may become responsible for the long-term management of digital content, but signup is open to anyone with an interest in the topics covered. […]