Spring, the season of renewal, is here, and with it are new resources from UVA Library that can boost your brainpower, help you relax, and make you happier. A new Photography and Animation Studio in Clemons Library offers training in visual effects. Over in Shannon Library, patrons can find a wide selection of in-demand books in the new Popular Reading Collection on the fourth floor, as well as a new home for the Library’s Graphic Novels Collection on the floor below.
Photography and Animation Studio
Librarians in the Robertson Media Center (RMC) recently launched a new Photography and Animation Studio in the Digital Media Lab on the third floor of Clemons. Meridith Wolnick, Director of the Library’s Teaching and Learning programs, said that the studio is ideal for students and instructors who assign or create visual projects, as well for people looking to boost their creativity.
For Women’s History Month this year, librarians at UVA recommend a variety of books written by women, ranging from science fiction to memoir to Greek myths.
The University of Virginia Library has six locations, an array of cozy study spaces, millions of items available for checkout or browsing, and new resources arriving each day. And did you know we also offer events throughout the year ranging from exhibitions to concerts for UVA and the Charlottesville community ?
Join us at the Library this spring for craft workshops, writing and editing support, zine tutorials, and live music. All Library events are free.
On Presidents Day 2026, the University of Virginia hosted a special event, “Declaration Under the Dome” in the Rotunda as part of the University’s ongoing UVA250 celebration.For one day only, UVA Library staff members moved an original 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence from its secure vault in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library to the Rotunda Dome Room for public viewing.
When Lucy Bassett was a child, her mother had a makeshift darkroom in their family’s basement. “We’d be folding laundry and also hanging pictures on the clothesline,” she said. Bassett stayed interested in photography and recently wove it into her work as a professor of practice in public policy at UVA’s Batten School.
At UVA, Bassett serves as an expert in children and caregivers in humanitarian contexts, working to improve early child development outcomes. In the aftermath of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that shook southeastern Türkiye and northern Syria in February 2023, Bassett became concerned about the 2.5 million people, many of them children, who were displaced by the disaster and were now living in crowded container camps.
In late January, Dean of Libraries Leo Lo kicked off UVA Library’s new “Ethical Dimension of AI Literacy” series, which, this spring, will feature numerous presentations by AI scholars from across the University. Lo’s talk, titled “Memory Without Origin: Provenance, Consent, and Trust in the Age of Generative AI,” was originally scheduled to be held in the Shannon Library Seminar Room but because so many people registered for the event, it had to be moved to a larger location — the auditorium in Harrison/Small, just outside the Special Collections Library.
This turned out to be a perfect setting, as Lo’s talk focused on archives and the importance of protecting them from AI services that could “ingest” them. “Think of all the sensitive materials donated to archives — letters, personal items,” Lo said, gesturing to the Special Collections vault nearby. “Academics care about citation and evidence. Archivists care about context. If we do not set enforceable boundaries for AI use in cultural heritage archives now, we will lose provenance and then lose trust.”
It’s Love Data Week! This week we’re featuring guest contributors from the Library’s Research Data Services team. Today’s post comes from Joe Edgerton, Research Data Management Librarian.
It’s Love Data Week! This week we’ll be featuring guest contributors from the Library’s Research Data Services team. Today’s post comes from Laura Hjerpe, Senior Research Data Management Librarian.
As a librarian who has worked with data in government and academia for almost six years, I find myself experiencing mental whiplash. The federal government was making big strides in making data open, at least through policy and legislation, but since the beginning of 2025, we have witnessed removals and redactions of federal government data and information, in a manner notable for its abruptness and impact.
This February marks 100 years since the first national commemoration of Black history in the United States. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History launched Negro History Week (spearheaded by Carter G. Woodson) in 1926. Sixty years later, U.S. Congress designated February as Black History Month.
Below, several UVA librarians recommend books, databases, and videos that investigate the significance of the Black experience throughout American history and beyond.
As the spring semester continues, libraries across Grounds fill with students reviewing notes, finishing projects and writing papers late into the evening.
“We are facing a technology that is so disruptive … that I have never seen something like this disrupting education in my lifetime, calculators, internet and computers — I don't think any of them can compare to what is happening right now,” Library Dean Leo Lo said.
An estimated 2,000 people, from fourth graders to senior citizens, formed a line outside the Rotunda for a chance to view the “McGregor Dunlap broadside” copy of the declaration, one of two in the University Library’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The copies are among just 26 originals known to still exist.
Hundreds of visitors lined up at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda on Monday, February 16 to view one of the nation’s earliest printed copies of the Declaration of Independence. The broadside on display is one of two copies UVA Library preserves.
