Program areas at RBS
Rare Book School annually offers approximately 40 week-long courses in The study, care, and uses of manuscripts, printed, and born-digital materials. Rbs offered for The first time in 2022 a full roster of courses both online and in-person. In fiscal year 2023, more than 570 students took 44 courses offered online or in person in charlottesville or at a partner institution, engaging in course discussions, lectures, and receptions across a digital platform. In a typical year, librarians, scholars, conservators, Book dealers, students, collectors, and educators studied topics that ranged from medieval manuscripts to bookbinding to born-digital materials and textual encoding. Rare Book School also provides an ongoing series of widely advertised, free public lectures (both during School sessions and at other times during The year) on a wide variety of bibliographical and book-historical topics. To date, The School has presented more than 650 lectures, many of which are available for audit streaming on itunes or other podcast apps (by searching for "Rare Book School").
Rare Book School offers a number of scholarship and fellowship opportunities for students attending its programs. Rbs makes awards available for new and returning students, including librarians, booksellers, conservators, and academics. Professionals from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds received funding to attend Rare Book School through The School's global Book histories initiative, funded in part by The neh, and from The andrew w. mellon fellowship for diversity, inclusion, & cultural heritage. Advanced graduate students and junior academics also had The opportunity to participate in The andrew w. mellon society of fellows in critical bibliography program. In order to sustain its commitment to providing opportunities to education for prospective students from varied backgrounds, The School's board of directors re-invests any appropriate surplus funds into its own scholarship funds each year.
Rare Book School (rbs) owns a teaching collection of more than 100,000 items acquired for The purpose of bibliographical instruction. The collection is designed as a teaching laboratory, not as a library. A substantial number of The School's holdings were purchased for less than $75 per item, or were received as gifts (e.g., as duplicate or discarded books from libraries; as donations from antiquarian booksellers; as contributions from former students; &c.).what sets Rare Book School apart from other programs of its kind is The School's strong focus on books as physical objects. Rbs courses convey methods for understanding The histories of material texts in their production, manufacture, distribution, and reception through intensive, hands-on instruction with original artifacts individually interpreted for pedagogical use.