Application forms for RBS 2008 are now available online.
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The course schedule for RBS 2008 has been updated.
(Go there)
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RBS full-tuition scholarship award winners for 2007. Click here to see the winners.
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Nancy King previews RBS exhibition: "The Monster Among Us:
Frankenstein…from Mary Shelley to Mel Brooks."
This clip was produced by the Virginia Foundation for Humanities for
public radio stations around the state.
Rare Book School (RBS) is an independent non-profit educational institute supporting the study of the history of books and printing and related subjects. Founded in 1983, it moved to its present home at the University of Virginia in 1992.
Freshest Advices
Danielle Culpepper joins the RBS Staff
[ 10 May 2008 ] Danielle Culpepper started work as RBS's new administrator at the end of April, succeeding Carolyn Cades Engel (who has accepted a position on the program staff of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities). As RBS Administrator, Culpepper will be responsible for ... Full Story
Book Arts Press Address Book, 25th Year Edition
[ 9 April 2008 ] Approximately every two years since 1989, Rare Book School and its publishing arm, the Book Arts Press, have published a directory of RBS attendees, ABAA members, and others with a connection to the school ... Full Story
Directory of ARL special collections librarians
[ 2 April 2008 ] The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 large research libraries in the US and Canada. In recent years, the ARL has become interested in rare books and special collections, and its website contains useful material about the ARL Special Collections Task Force, the Hidden Collections initiative, and related matters. Two years ago, the RBS staff compiled a directory of the principal librarians, curators, directors, and the like working in member institutions of the ARL ... Full Story
Board changes
[ 29 February 2008 ] In January 2008, RBS Board of Directors chairman Hans Tausig completed his second and final term on the board, as did the board’s vice-chair, Peter Herdrich. RBS is grateful to them both for their many years of service to RBS ... Full Story
James M. Reilly to teach Photographic Print Process ID at UVa
[ 30 January 2008 ] James M. Reilly, the Director of the Image Permanence Institute (IPI) at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) will teach a new course in June on The Identification of Photographic Print Processes, assisted by Ryan Boatright (also of IPI). The new course will offer instruction in ... Full Story
Rare Book School now has a Facebook group
[ 31 October 2007 ] Rare Book School has recently formed a group on Facebook, the online social networking site that allows members to share news and announcements, photographs, contact information and more. ... Full Story
Albert Derolez to teach Latin paleography at UVa in October
[ 6 September 2007 ] In October, Albert Derolez will teach a five-day seminar on Latin paleography, 1100-1500 at Rare Book School in Charlottesville; a special course limited to six students ... Full Story
New Storm van Leeuwen Seminar in the History of Bookbinding
[ 2 August 2007 ] In October, Jan Storm van Leeuwen will inaugurate a new RBS seminar in the history of bookbinding, to be taught at the Walters Art Museum and at various rare book libraries at The Johns Hopkins University. Topics in this five-day seminar will vary from year to year ... Full Story
Anybody seen my hammer?
[ 19 March 2007 ] In 1997, RBS acquired a stack of printed but unbound folio sheets intended to make several volumes of early c19 British House of Commons committee reports. The sheets were roughly folded for storage ... Full Story
Shaggy dog
[ 26 September 2006 ] Rare Book School has recently acquired a large (15 x 18") intaglio plate, showing a head-and-shoulders portrait of a cheerful long-haired dog, engraved on steel by John C. McRae after a painting by Sir Edwin Landseer. The plate [shown below, reversed] is titled “Fritz.” The image ... Full Story
Sheepish cloth
[ 3 June 2006 ] A couple of months ago, eagle-eyed Vincent Golden noticed an eBay auction featuring an interesting book in a remarkable binding. The book is the fourth edition of Hymns for the Millennium, composed from the prophetic writings of Joanna Southcott and published by her order by Philip Pullen (London: Manbey, Spencer, Haggar, Essom, 1835), The small book (it is about 6" tall) is bound in cloth printed (as we suppose) to resemble mottled sheep or calf, and the effect is pretty convincing ... Full Story
Digital target shooting
[ 10 April 2006 ] We recently added a copy of Henry Blackburn’s The art of illustration (London 1894) to the RBS reference library. Blackburn informs us (pp. 21-22) that the first systematic attempt at illustration in a daily newspaper was the insertion of a weather chart in the Times in 1875, but that “in June, 1875, the Times and all other newspapers for England were far distanced by the New York Tribune in reporting the result of a shooting match in Dublin between an American Rifle Corps ... Full Story