RBS News

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, at the RBS table and around the show floor. We look forward to seeing many RBS friends in Boston!

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); Modern Art of the Book (H-35); Reading Publishers’ Archives for the Study of the American Book (H-95); The Eighteenth-Century Book (H-100); Preservation Imaging: Science, Scholarship, and the Artifact (L-105); and The Art & Science of Cartography, 200–1550 (H-110).

See the full schedule.

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, as well as support for research-related travel to special collections. The deadline for application to the program is 1 December 2014. Interested scholars are encouraged to apply as soon as possible. See the RBS-Mellon Fellowship page for more details. Press release.

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. Buice III Scholarships (for returning RBS students); and for the IMLS-RBS Fellowships for Early-Career Librarians. See the individual scholarship pages for more information about each type of scholarship/fellowship. For general queries about scholarships or fellowships, see the Frequently Asked Questions page.

NB: The application deadline for RBS Scholarship Committee awards, Buice Scholarships for returning students, and the IMLS-RBS Fellowships is Wednesday, 15 October 2014 at 5 p.m. EDT. The application deadline for Fath Scholarships is Friday, 7 November 2014 at 5 p.m. EST.

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 & Museum in New York City.
  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 for fall courses, submit your application(s) by 1 July.

See the Application & Admissions page for more details.

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, and will submit a final fellowship project by 13 April 2015.

See the RBS-UVA Fellowship page for more information about the fellowship program.