News Archives

New RBS Website

Welcome to the new Rare Book School website!

Twenty years after the very first RBS website, and nine years after the last large-scale redesign of the site in early 2006, we have made the leap to a WordPress platform, which will make the site much easier to update and to maintain. It also allows us to share many more photos, provides a more stable platform for video and audio files, and enables us to provide an online store for easy purchases of RBS publications and gifts. […]

RBS Director to Deliver Lyell Lectures

Rare Book School Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. will deliver a series of six Lyell Lectures at the University of Oxford’s Weston Library beginning on 28 April. All lectures are free and open to the public, but space is limited and advance registration is required. […]

Manuscript Transcribathon at UVA

Join Rare Book School and the Folger Shakespeare Library for a Manuscript Transcribathon on Wednesday, 18 March in Alderman Library 421 (the large classroom in the Scholars’ Lab). The event will begin at noon with a brown-bag lunch talk by Heather Wolfe, RBS faculty member and Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger: “Why Manuscripts Matter: An Introduction to Early Modern Manuscripts Online.” […]

Now Accepting Applications for October Courses

Applications are now being accepted via myRBS for two Rare Book School courses being offered in New York City, 18–23 October 2015:

• The Printed Book in the West since 1800, taught by Eric Holzenberg at the Grolier Club.
• Special Collections Librarianship, taught by Michael Inman at the New York Public Library.

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

IMLS-RBS Fellowships Awarded

RBS is pleased to announce that the selection process for the IMLS-RBS Fellowships for Early-Career Librarians is now complete: a first cohort of twenty IMLS-RBS Fellows has been chosen. This fellowship will allow young professionals to attend an RBS course and to increase their professional involvement at the national level through participation in the conference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), a division of the ALA. The aim of the program is to help fellows acquire skills relevant to professional work in special collections and build important professional networks. […]

Barbara Heritage Appointed Associate Director of Rare Book School

We are very pleased to announce that Barbara Heritage has been appointed Rare Book School’s Associate Director & Curator of Collections.

Barbara has worked at RBS since 2002 in increasingly responsible capacities. “Over many years, Barbara Heritage’s service to Rare Book School has been exemplary,” said Director Michael F. Suarez, S.J. In December 2014, Barbara was graduated from the University of Virginia with her Ph.D. in English literature after completing her dissertation, “Brontë and the Bookmakers: Jane Eyre in the Nineteenth-Century Literary Marketplace.”

“Michael Suarez told me three years ago or so that he would promote me once I had earned my doctoral degree,” […]

RBS-UVA Fellowship Applications Open

Applications for the 2015–16 RBS-UVA Fellowships are now being accepted. Rare Book School invites students at the University of Virginia to apply for a fellowship designed to enhance research employing special collections, including written, printed, and born-digital materials.

Significant dates for the fellowship application process:

4 February 2015: Information Reception (4–6 p.m.; 118 Alderman Library)
5 February 2015: Information Reception (4–6 p.m.; 118 Alderman Library)
17 March 2015: Project Proposal Workshop (4:30–6 p.m.; 118 Alderman Library)
2 April 2015: Application Deadline (5 p.m.)

Accepted applicants will attend a week-long course at RBS in 2015, […]

Apply Now for Spring & Summer 2015 Courses

Applications for spring and summer 2015 courses are now being accepted via our online application system, myRBS.

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. To be considered for the first round of admissions decisions, submit your application(s) for spring and summer courses by 20 February.

See the Applications page for more details. […]

2014 Fath Scholarship Awards Announced

We are happy to announce the recipients of the 2014 Fath Scholarships for Artists and Artisans of the Book. Congratulations! […]

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:
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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 &

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