

Audio of over 100 Rare Book School lectures now available online - benbreen
http://rarebookschool.org/news/rbs-lectures/

======
benbreen
A bit of background on this - Rare Book School is a rather fascinating
organization devoted to "critical bibliography" (basically, the study of books
as both objects and texts, although people involved also study digital media
and even formats like magnetic tapes). It's an interesting corner of the
academic world that attracts a lot of eccentrics as well as some very smart
people, most notably the historian who recently exposed a Galileo forgery
ring, written up here:

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-
boo...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-book)

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eitally
I went to UVA and took a couple of "rare books" courses (titles like "History
of the Book", etc) under Terry Belanger, who was awarded a MacArthur
fellowship in 2006 (I think) for his work. Rare Book School is a summer
program that brings together specialists and students from around the globe to
further and spread knowledge of bibliographic history -- printing,
papermaking, binding, distributing, font creation, etc. It meets in the
workspace of the Book Arts Press in one of the UVA libraries. They have their
own "stacks" with a really eclectic collection. Everything from a bazillion
different versions of John Updike's novels to one of a kind 16th century
manuscripts and illuminated books. They also have a fully functional
letterpress.

I'm only mentioning all this to get to the point that matters to me
personally: Mr Belanger was my advisor and helped me with my senior project,
which was to research and then stage an exhibit in UVA's Rotunda. I had a ton
of fun... and realized I never wanted to be a museum curator. And that, my
friends, is how I started my career in tech -- via a temp job through Manpower
where I was hired as a web developer. :)

Proof: [http://rarebookschool.org/all-
programs/exhibitions/nickel/](http://rarebookschool.org/all-
programs/exhibitions/nickel/)

My word of mouth marketing attempt:
[https://rarebookschool.org/2005/exhibitions/two_nickel.html](https://rarebookschool.org/2005/exhibitions/two_nickel.html)

And if anyone is _really_ interested, here's where you can buy a copy of the
exhibit catalog: [http://www.abebooks.com/Two-Nickel-Ephemera-Concerning-
Thoma...](http://www.abebooks.com/Two-Nickel-Ephemera-Concerning-Thomas-
Jefferson/12845001305/bd)

~~~
benbreen
That's a great story! I took my first Rare Book School class last year and
Belanger is still teaching there, although he stepped down as director a few
years ago. The Washington Post was actually filming a video about RBS when I
was there. Talking to the journalist about Bezos and his plans while being
surrounded by people operating an 18th-century style letterpress was kind of
fascinating. This is the video if anyone is interested:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-
blog/wp/2014/08/28...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-
blog/wp/2014/08/28/u-va-s-rare-book-school-a-summer-camp-for-book-nerds/)

~~~
eitally
RBS is a hidden gem. I like to think every research domain has something
similar. Thanks for sharing the video -- that's cool. :)

(one of the things we did in one of his classes was learn about the history of
printing and then prep & print our own folios using that press. pretty
awesome, and a new perspective on the rapid pace of technology.)

------
malchow
Love to learn what biblio scholars think of the digital age. It strikes me
that though we have mastered highly persistent and physically robust methods
of data storage, the machine languages we actually consume and transact in
shift so rapidly. . . digital data strikes me as actually far, far more
delicate and ephemeral than ink on paper.

~~~
jmenn
You may be interested in Matthew Kirschenbaum's work on the literary history
of word processing and, well, archiving software. He gave a talk, "Software,
It's a Thing," at a conference at the Library of Congress in 2014:
[https://medium.com/@mkirschenbaum/software-its-a-
thing-a5504...](https://medium.com/@mkirschenbaum/software-its-a-
thing-a550448d0ed3)

