Temp page for Amber

As he begins two new positions at the University, Lo emphasized that he does not want students to see the library as a purely transactional space.

The University of Virginia Library’s collection contains everything from the earliest printed materials to the Tibetan Book of the Dead to student-made advertisements for something called the “experimental university.”

These items, along with roughly 200 others, are now on display for a yearlong exhibition, “The ABCs of the UVA Library,” hosted in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

Haphazard highlights, scrap paper bookmarks and schoolboy scribbles are often passed off as mere library book litter, but they can offer peeks into the past. 

John Unsworth retired this month as university librarian and dean of libraries at the University of Virginia after more than nine years in the role. We chatted with him about his career and the profession.

Heather Riser and Gayle Cooper, two librarians at Special Collections, helped confirm that eight books archivist Amanda Greenwood found had been in the Rotunda at the time of the fire.