[1] From: The Book Arts Press <fac-fbap@virginia.edu> (111)
Subject: Books at Virginia: Rare Book School
BOOKS AT VIRGINIA: RARE BOOK SCHOOL is pleased to announce its schedule of
courses for the summer of 1997, 24 five-day non-credit courses of bookish
interest held in Charlottesville, VA. The brochure and related documents
are available at our Web site:
http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~oldbooks/rbs97/
Subscribers to this list may be particularly interested in three of the
courses being offered:
WEEK ONE
Monday 14 July - Friday 18 July
16. TEACHING THE HISTORY OF BOOKS AND PRINTING. Aimed at
academics and librarians who are *currently* teaching
undergraduate or graduate courses dealing with the history of
books and printing, this course will emphasize not history but
pedagogy. It will compare a number of different approaches,
including (but not only) printing history as the history of
technology, history of art, intellectual history, business
history, descriptive and historical bibliography, the
dissemination of texts and their reception. The course will
consider the varieties of currently available print and
(especially) non-print resources available to instructors and
students in the field. Instructors: Michael T. Ryan and Daniel
Traister.
MICHAEL T. RYAN is Director of Special Collections at the Van
Pelt- Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, and he
has also worked in special collections at Stanford and the
University of Chicago. This spring, he is co-teaching a course at
Penn with Daniel Traister on the reception of popular literature
in the early modern and modern periods.
DANIEL TRAISTER is Curator of Research Services in the Department
of Special Collections at the University of Pennsylvania. A past
chair of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Section of ACRL, he has
published important articles on rare book librarianship. He has
taught annually in RBS since 1983.
WEEK THREE
Monday 28 July - Friday 1 August
31. INTRODUCTION TO MEDIEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE BOOKBINDING
STRUCTURES. An explanation of the diversities of European
bookbinding structures, up to and including the early period of
more generalized practice and divisions of labor. Topics include:
identification (where possible) of the main types of binding
structures; their dating and provenance; the recognition and
recording of materials and techniques. Instructor: Christopher
Clarkson.
CHRISTOPHER CLARKSON directs the Book and Manuscript Conservation
Workshops and their related internship program at West Dean
College, Sussex. Formerly Conservation Officer at the Bodleian
Library, Oxford University, he also helped develop rare book
conservation programs at the Library of Congress. An
internationally renowned consultant on the care of medieval
manuscripts and bindings, he has taught courses in RBS since
1983.
33. TYPE, LETTERING, AND CALLIGRAPHY, 1450-1830. The development
of the major formal and informal book hands, the dominant
printing types of each period, and their interrelationship.
Topics include: the Gothic hands; humanistic script; the
Renaissance inscriptional capital; Garamond and the spread of the
Aldine Roman; calligraphy from the chancery italic to the English
round hand; the neo-classical book and its typography; and early
commercial typography. The course presupposes a general knowledge
of Western history and some awareness of the continuity of the
Latin script but no special knowledge of typographical history.
Instructor: James Mosley.
JAMES MOSLEY is Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in
London, the largest library of its kind in the English-speaking
world. He is a welcome lecturer in the United States on
typographical subjects. He was the founding editor of the
_Journal of the Printing Historical Society_.
****
BOOKS AT VIRGINIA: RARE BOOK SCHOOL (RBS) offers a collection of
five-day, non-credit courses on topics concerning rare books,
manuscripts, and special collections. Students make a full-time
commitment to any course they attend, from 8:30 am to 5 pm, Monday-
Friday; most students also attend an informal dinner on the Sunday
evening before their first class on Monday. In addition to the formal
classes, there are early-evening public lectures and other events
throughout the four weeks of RBS.
The educational and professional pre-requisites for RBS courses
vary. Some courses are primarily directed toward research librarians
and archivists. Others are intended for academics, persons working in
the antiquarian book trade, bookbinders and conservators, students of
the history of books and printing, and others with an interest in the
subjects being treated.
The tuition for each five-day course is $595. Low-cost, air-
conditioned dormitory housing will be offered on the historic central
grounds of the University, and nearby hotel accommodation is readily
available. Students are encouraged to take advantage of RBS's housing
to arrive a few days before their course, or stay a few days later,
in order to give themselves (and their families) a better chance to
explore the Charlottesville area, which includes many sites of
historic interest as well as various vacation attractions.
For further information about any aspect of RBS
write: Rare Book School, 114 Alderman Library, University
of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903-2498
fax: 804/924-8824
email: biblio@virginia.edu
phone: 804/924-8851
URL: http://poe.acc.virginia.edu/~oldbooks/
Prospective students for RBS courses are invited to consult the
widely-distributed annual RBS Yearbooks, in which students'
exhaustive evaluations of all RBS courses offered since 1989 have
been published in their entirety. RBS was not held in 1992. Copies
of the 1990 and 1993-1995 RBS Yearbooks are in print and available
postpaid for $10 (1990 and 1993) or $15 (1994 and 1995). The 1996 RBS
Yearbook is in the press, and will be available in late April for $15.
Copies of the 1989 and 1991 Yearbooks are out of print.
Book Arts Press/Rare Book School biblio@virginia.edu
114 Alderman Library fac-fbap@poe.acc.virginia.edu
The University of Virginia (804) 924-8851