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:
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. :)
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:
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.)
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.
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...
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[ 7.3 ms ] story [ 32.6 ms ] threadhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/16/a-very-rare-boo...
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/
My word of mouth marketing attempt: 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.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/28...
(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.)