News Archives

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. […]

RBS Scholarship & Fellowship Applications Now Available

We are now accepting applications for the 2018 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 RBS-RBMS Diversity Fellowship Program, and for the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography. 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, please log into your myRBS account (or create a new myRBS account). […]

Now Accepting Applications for Fall 2018 & Winter 2019 Courses

Applications are now being accepted via myRBS for six Rare Book School courses offered this fall and winter at the Morgan Library & Museum, the Library of Congress, and the University of Virginia. […]

Announcing “Archives, Memory & Identity: A Public Symposium”

During a time when “alternative facts” are regularly discussed and disputed in the mainstream media, archive-based evidence has become increasingly valued for its ability to document the histories and perspectives of diverse peoples, cultures, and movements. We invite you to join Rare Book School and UVA Libraries for “Archives, Memory & Identity,” a public, one-day symposium that will bring together archivists, librarians, curators, digital humanists, academics, artists, and activists working on a range of cross-disciplinary, culturally sensitive projects that challenge traditional models for creating and stewarding visual and textual artifacts.

Featuring panel discussions on access, […]

Register Now for RBS Seminar at Winterthur & University of Delaware (9–11 September)

Rare Book School is sponsoring a two-day seminar, Exploring Ephemera, at the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the University of Delaware on Monday and Tuesday 10–11 September 2018, preceded by a group dinner on Sunday, 9 September.

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,  […]

RBS Mourns the Loss of William S. Reese

We were very saddened to learn of the death this morning of William S. Reese, longtime proprietor of the William Reese Company and a great friend to Rare Book School.

Bill co-taught two Rare Book School courses, both with George A. Miles: “Western Americana” in 1986 and 1987, and “American Historical Bibliography” in 1989, 1990, and 1993. He also delivered four Rare Book School evening lectures, including the 2000 Sol M. Malkin Lecture and the 600th RBS lecture, in 2016: […]

RBS Announces 2018 Summer Lecture Schedule

We are thrilled 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). […]

Instructor Change for Course B-10

Please note that course B-10, Introduction to the History of Bookbinding, offered 8–13 July at UVA, will be taught by Karen Limper-Herz, a new member of the RBS faculty. Karen is Lead Curator for Incunabula and Sixteenth Century Printed Books at the British Library. A student of Mirjam Foot and Jan Storm van Leeuwen, she has worked with and studied bookbindings from different countries and periods for nearly twenty years, and regularly publishes and speaks about bookbindings in the U.K. and abroad. She is the Honorary Secretary of the Bibliographical Society (U.K.) and regularly attends and speaks at the annual conferences organized by the Arbeitskreis für die Erfassung, […]

RBS Announces 2018–20 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows & 2018–19 RBS-UVA Fellows

We are pleased to announce the 2018–20 Junior Fellows in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography, as well as the 2018–19 cohort of RBS-UVA Fellows. Many congratulations to all the Fellows; we much look forward to seeing you at RBS soon!

The 2018–20 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows are: […]

RBS Receives Jefferson Trust Grant for “Presswork” Project

Rare Book School, in partnership with UVA Special Collections, has received a grant from The Jefferson Trust, an initiative of the UVA Alumni Association, to fund “Presswork: A Program for Hands-on Historical Printing & Research.” This two-year, public-facing project draws on a spectrum of technologies and experiential learning techniques to foster student- and faculty-led printing and research at the University of Virginia. The program will publicize and augment UVA’s prominence as a leading research center for the history of printing, while training undergraduate and graduate students in the art of historical letterpress and intaglio printing techniques that they will then demonstrate to a variety of audiences, […]