James Davis Scholarship

This scholarship was established in memory of the late James Davis, who was UCLA’s Rare Books Librarian and a long-time RBS staff member. The James Davis Scholarship is awarded to students who show an especially strong record of good citizenship and stewardship in the bibliographical community.

Application Process

Applications will be accepted directly by RBS. To apply, please submit an RBS scholarship application by the 1 November deadline.

To begin the application process, please log into your myRBS account (or create a new myRBS account). On the home screen, scroll to “Scholarships and Fellowship Applications” and select the “click here” link.

Participation in the scholarship program implies acceptance of the scholarship/fellowship Terms and Conditions. If you have questions about the scholarship application process, please email rbs_scholarships@virginia.edu.

Scholarship recipients will be announced in January or February. Scholarship recipients must claim their award within two years (e.g., scholarships awarded in January 2026 must be claimed by 31 December 2027).

Previous Winners

James Davis and the Scholarship Fund

James Davis attended his first Rare Book School in 1985. He joined the RBS program staff in 1986, and he returned annually thereafter, both throughout RBS’s Columbia years and then on to Virginia in the 1990s. He used to say that he already had as much management as he wanted to do at home (he was Rare Books Librarian at UCLA); at RBS, he developed a collection of non-administrative duties he made entirely his own, stretching from one end of each RBS week to the other: from mugshot photographer on Sunday night to course evaluation editor over the succeeding weekend. In between, he did the bulk of the RBS supplies-and-equipment shopping, edited Museum labels, acted as the Director’s conscience (“It’s just me: Jiminy Cricket!”), and made himself generally available to do whatever had to be done next. He was unfailingly interested in RBS students, and he spent a great deal of time talking to them both at breaks and after class in the evening. Following what should have been a fairly routine bypass operation in January 2000, James never regained consciousness, and he died in the hospital on 3 February.

The RBS staff operates on the principle of interchangeable parts: there are few jobs that can’t, if necessary, be done by whoever’s handy. But nobody on our staff was like James Davis, who combined a vast knowledge of RBS’s collections and customs with an unflaggingly sunny disposition, and RBS was not the same without him

RBS began offering scholarships in 2001 with resources provided by the School’s James Davis Scholarship Fund. Since its inception, the Fund has provided financial support for many RBS students, growing to become a force of considerable benefit to the field of rare books.

Present and future contributions to the James Davis Scholarship Fund endowment are welcome. Checks should be made payable to the James Davis Scholarship Fund and sent to Rare Book School.