RBS News

RBS Receives Largest Donation in School’s History

$3.1 Million Gift Endows Permanent Curator Position

Glen (left) and Cathy Miranker (right) view the teaching collections with RBS Miranker Family Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives Barbara Heritage (center). Photo by Stephanie Gross, 2024.

Rare Book School has received a groundbreaking $3.1 million donation to endow a full-time curatorial chair for the School’s teaching collection and exhibitions program. It is the largest single gift in Rare Book School’s 41-year history.

The contribution secures the continued educational use, growth, conservation, and exhibition of the RBS teaching collection of more than 100,000 items and represents a powerful vote of confidence in the School’s unique approach to instruction, […]

RBS Scholarship and Fellowship Applications Now Available

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is now accepting applications for its 2024 scholarship and fellowship cycle. […]

RBS Announces Matching-Gift Challenge and Raffle Prizes

Having concluded its summer courses earlier this month, Rare Book School is excited to reveal this year’s record-breaking matching-gift challenge. Thanks to the RBS Board of Directors, all gifts made to the Annual Fund before September 30 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to $150,000. Individuals who make a gift to the Annual Fund help provide year-round programs for all students of the book. […]

Videos of All RBS Summer 2024 Lectures Now Available

Rare Book School proudly presents the video recordings of all eight talks from our Summer 2024 Lecture Series. The complete list, with links, is below.

Audio recordings of the lectures will be posted soon. In the meantime, please enjoy these and other videos on the RBS YouTube channel!

Archive of the People: The Johnson Publishing Company
Watch on YouTube
LeRonn Brooks
Curator of the African American Art History Initiative, Getty Research Institute

Scholarly Editing and the Challenges of Attribution
Watch on YouTube
Stephen Karian
Professor and Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair of English, […]

You’re Invited to RBS’s Final Summer Lecture on July 31

Please join Rare Book School for our final lecture of the summer, happening this Wednesday (July 31) at 5:30 p.m. in the University of Virginia’s Special Collections Library Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public, and is followed by a reception in UVA’s Edgar Shannon Library, Room 230. Videos from our previous summer lectures are now available on the RBS YouTube page.

Wednesday, July 31
Auditorium, UVA Special Collections
Collecting Daily Life in Early American Manuscripts
Ashley Cataldo, […]

UVA Special Collections’ Krystal Appiah Joins RBS Board of Directors

Rare Book School (RBS) welcomes to its Board of Directors Krystal Appiah, who is Head of Collection Development at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, where she also serves as Curator for Virginia and African American collections. Appiah’s previous positions include Curator of African American History at The Library Company of Philadelphia and Research Archivist for the Maryland State Archives’ Legacy of Slavery in Maryland program. In 2019, she was co-investigator, with Brenda Gunn, of the Ithaka S+R study Supporting Teaching with Primary Sources, […]

RBS Unveils Summer 2024 Lecture Series

Rare Book School is thrilled to announce the lineup for this summer’s lecture series at the University of Virginia.

All lectures are free and open to the public. Unless noted, these talks will take place at 5:30 p.m. ET. Lectures are 30–40 minutes in length with approximately 10 minutes for Q&A, and will be followed by a reception. RSVPs are not required. Lecture recordings will be made available by fall 2024.

For questions, please call 434-924-8851 or email contactRBS@virginia.edu. For information on past lectures, visit www.rarebookschool.org/lectures. Past lectures are also available via SoundCloud and YouTube. […]

Summer COVID Policy

Rare Book School Guidelines and Recommendations Regarding COVID-19

Rare Book School is very excited to welcome back to Charlottesville—and to our partner institutions in Chicago, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, Princeton, and Upperville, VA—the faculty, students, and lecturers who form the RBS community. In order to protect the health and well-being of this wonderful community of like-minded learners, we ask all those attending in-person courses and programs this summer to adhere to some basic public health precautions recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local health experts at each course location.

Please keep reading for full details, […]

Will Noel: A Tribute

With an abiding sense of gratitude, Rare Book School remembers our much beloved colleague and faculty member Will Noel, who died on April 29 of injuries, after being struck by a van in Edinburgh on April 10. Profoundly saddened by this tragic loss, we nonetheless remember with great admiration Will’s consummate wit, his spirited intelligence, and his pioneering work—all generously shared with so many. Again and again, Will’s largesse enlarged the bookish community and made it better.

Honored by the White House in 2013 as a “Champion of Change” because of his advocacy for and creation of accessible information and open data, […]

Announcing the 2024–26 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) at Rare Book School is pleased to welcome its 2024–26 cohort of Junior Fellows. Many congratulations to all the new Junior Fellows; we look forward to seeing you at RBS! […]

RBS at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair

Rare Book School will be at the 64th annual New York International Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs from Thursday, April 4 to Sunday, April 7.

Barbara Heritage (RBS Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives) and Adam Miller (RBS Director of Development) will be “on the ground” at the Park Avenue Armory, so if you see them, be sure to say hello! […]

RBS General and Buice Scholarship Awards for 2024 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the recipients of its General Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students. Congratulations to these recipients! […]

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

With pleasure, Rare Book School announces the fifth 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! […]

Rare Book School Summer Course Applications Now Open

Rare Book School (RBS) is now accepting applications for its summer 2024 courses. This year’s schedule features 42 classes, including online and in-person offerings at RBS’s new home in the University of Virginia’s recently renovated main library in Charlottesville. The second-floor suite boasts state-of-the-art classrooms, ample exhibition and event spaces, and spacious storage areas for our collections and printing equipment. Other in-person courses will run at our partner institutions in Chicago; New Haven, Connecticut; New York City; Philadelphia; Princeton, New Jersey; and Upperville, Virginia. […]

RBS Announces Summer 2024 Course Schedule

Rare Book School is pleased to announce its summer 2024 course schedule! Our list of more than 30 in-person and online courses can be found at rarebookschool.org/schedule. New and updated courses for 2024 include: 

• • Medieval Manuscript Fragments: Cataloging & Discoverability (L-145), taught by Lisa Fagin Davis 
  • A History of the Indigenous Book in the Americas (H-150), taught by Will Hansen & Robert Warrior 
  • Modern Special Collections Cataloging (L-150), taught by Brenna Bychowski 

RBS will be adding a few more courses, […]

Newly Posted RBS Summer Lecture Videos Available

This summer, Rare Book School welcomed a variety of esteemed experts who discussed a wealth of topics, such as reading habits during the COVID-19 lockdown, Indigenous communities and printing history, the joys of collecting rare materials, and the importance of public history.

We are delighted to share video recordings of our Summer 2023 Lecture Series below. Audio files of lectures are also available. All lectures took place in Charlottesville unless otherwise noted. […]

RBS at the Boston Book Fair

If you’ll be at the 45th annual Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair this coming weekend (27–29 October), please be sure to stop by the Rare Book School table on Cultural Row. We’ll be at Booth 233, with information about our courses, fellowships, job opportunities, and more.

Michael F. Suarez, S.J. (RBS Executive Director); Barbara Heritage (RBS Director of Collections, Exhibitions & Scholarly Initiatives); Kay Min (RBS Assistant Curator); and other colleagues and friends will be at our table as well as on the show floor. We look forward to seeing you at the Hynes Convention Center in Downtown Boston this weekend! […]

RBS Scholarship and Fellowship Applications Now Available

Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is now accepting applications for its 2023 scholarship and fellowship cycle. […]

RBS Invites You to Apply to Its Fall 2023 Online Courses

Rare Book School is thrilled to share the details about its fall 2023 virtual courses. By offering online-only courses such as these, RBS hopes that students can together learn what bibliographical materials reveal about human history and human nature, how to care for these remarkable objects, and how to share what we know with the wider world. […]

Sneak Peek of Rare Book School’s Fall 2023 Courses

Rare Book School is pleased to announce three online courses that will be offered this September, October, and November. Check back next week for more details, including how to apply. […]

Rare Book School Shares Summer 2023 Lecture Series

Rare Book School is thrilled to announce the lineup for this summer’s lecture series at the University of Virginia, as well as special lectures at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and the Grolier Club in New York City.

All lectures are free and open to the public. Unless noted, these talks will take place at 5:30 p.m. ET. Lectures are 30–40 minutes in length with approximately 10 minutes for Q&A, and will be followed by a reception. RSVPs are not required. Lecture recordings will be made available by fall 2023. […]

Announcing the 2023–25 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows

The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) at Rare Book School is pleased to welcome its 2023–25 cohort of Junior Fellows. Many congratulations to all the new Junior Fellows; we look forward to seeing you at RBS!

The names and institutional affiliations of 2022–24 RBS-Mellon SoFCB Junior Fellows are:

Jiayi Chen – Ph.D. Candidate, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Du Fei – Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Cornell University

Heng Du – Andrew W. […]

RBS Fellowship Program Kicks Off New Podcast Series about Archival Materials and Counter Narratives

On Wednesday, 29 March 2023, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School launched Counter Narratives in Practice, a podcast series about multicultural heritage collections, storytelling, and representation in galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and beyond. This podcast is part of a larger project that highlights the work of the RBS Cultural Heritage Fellows.

The Fellows, led by book historian Allie Alvis, worked together from across the U.S. to tell stories about the archival materials in their collections and how those stories can prompt thinking about counter narratives in professional practice. […]

RBS in the News: “For Rare Book Librarians, It’s Gloves Off. Seriously.” – a New York Times Article by Jennifer Schuessler

The following article by Jennifer Schuessler, which features Barbara Heritage (RBS Associate Director & Curator of Collections) appeared in The New York Times on 9 March 2023. Click here to view the article via nytimes.com.  

Last month, The New York Times reported on an ultrarare medieval Hebrew Bible that was headed to auction with a record-smashing estimate of up to $50 million.

The reaction was swift.

“Why are they handling this without cotton gloves? Shame on them,” one reader wrote in the comments section, referring to photographs showing someone touching the worn pages. […]

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

With pleasure, Rare Book School announces the fourth 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! […]

RBS General and Buice Scholarship Awards for 2023 Announced

Rare Book School is pleased to announce the recipients of its General Scholarship Committee awards, as well as the winners of the Buice Scholarships for returning RBS students. Congratulations to these recipients! […]

RBS Announces Summer 2023 Course Applications

We are pleased to announce that applications are now open for Rare Book School’s summer 2023 courses! Our roster of more than 40 in-person and online courses can be found at rarebookschool.org/schedule/. Click on the course titles to view detailed descriptions and faculty biographies, along with the schedule, format, location, and fee for each offering. For courses that have run before, be sure to consult the evaluations written by past students in order to gain further insights into what to expect.

For the best chance of being admitted, please submit your application(s) by the first-round deadline: Monday, […]

RBS in the News: “The 2,000-Year Story of Building the Book” – a New York Times Article by Jennifer Schuessler

The following article by Jennifer Schuessler about “Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day,” RBS’s Grolier Club exhibition, appeared in The New York Times on 2 December 2022. Click here to view the article via nytimes.com.  

For a certain kind of book nerd, Rare Book School at the University of Virginia is the closest a person can come to Valhalla.Each summer, bibliophiles from all over the world gather for weeklong courses in nearly every aspect of the history of the book, in an atmosphere that combines deep immersion in the most arcane aspects of printing, […]

RBS Scholarship & Fellowship Applications Now Available

We are now accepting applications for the 2022 Rare Book School scholarship and fellowship cycle.

Applications are open for all RBS-awarded scholarships (for both first-time and returning RBS students), and for the M. C. Lang Fellowship in Book History, Bibliography, and Humanities Teaching with Historical Sources and the SoFCB Junior Fellows Program. 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, […]

Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press

This fall, the Grolier Club in New York City—America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles—presents a special exhibition that details how books have been produced throughout history and across various regions of the globe. Organized by Rare Book School and drawn from its unique collections, Building the Book from the Ancient World to the Present Day: Five Decades of Rare Book School & the Book Arts Press will be on view in the Grolier Club’s ground floor gallery from 28 September through 23 December 2022. The exhibition celebrates the international institute—founded by MacArthur Fellow Terry Belanger and currently directed by Michael F. […]