News, announcements, updates, and happenings in the UVA Library

From scrapbooks to zines, new exhibition shows the power of ‘women making books’

By mwm7b |

 

“Women Making Books,” a new exhibition in the First Floor Gallery of the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, opens with Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” (1773), the first published book of poetry by an African American. The book’s frontispiece engraving of Wheatley (who was enslaved by a Boston family) sitting at a desk with a quill in hand is likely well known to most English majors; it is believed to be the first portrait in American history of a woman writing.

Exhibits, Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, Library stories, Women's history month

In the news: The Julian Bond Papers

By mwm7b |

 

American civil rights leader Julian Bond was known for many things. In 1960 he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and spent the next decade organizing student protests and voter registration drives across the South. He served in the Georgia legislature, co-founded the Southern Poverty Law Center, and eventually led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He also taught history at the University of Virginia from 1990 to 2012, leaving his papers to UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

The Julian Bond Papers contain approximately 47,000 items, including speeches and articles written by Bond, correspondence, campaign materials, academic evaluations, and family papers. Bond donated his papers to the UVA Library in 2005 (he died in 2015). This past month, the collection made the news for different reasons.

Inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, Library stories

“Images of ‘Black life, Black joy,’ are immortalized in historic Charlottesville portraits” – from PBS NewsHour

By akl3b |


A recent story from PBS NewsHour featuring the Library’s “Visions of Progress” exhibition, as well as the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers and other recent work at UVA, begins: 

Black history month, Exhibits

Celebrating Fair Use Week 2023!

By akl3b |
fair use week | fair dealing week


Every year around this time, libraries, archives, and allied institutions and groups celebrate Fair Use Week, a time to recognize the power and importance of the fair use doctrine in our daily lives. Fair use is the First Amendment safety valve in copyright law, allowing use of in-copyright works without payment or permission when the use serves copyright’s purpose without intruding unfairly on the copyright holder’s commercial prerogatives.

This year we have two features from the University of Virginia Library’s Director of Information Policy, Brandon Butler:

First, a piece cross-posted with Harvard University about copyright (and, specifically, fair use) and its application in cases of artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.

News and announcements

Inaugural “STEM for Everyone” lecture searches for extraterrestrial life

By mwm7b |

 

The Milky Way Galaxy seen over the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array west of Socorro, New Mexico.

The Milky Way Galaxy seen over the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array west of Socorro, New Mexico. (NRAO/AUI/NSF, Jeff Hellerman)

The U.S. military has shot down four aerial objects in recent weeks, most recently an unidentified object over Lake Huron on Sunday. As more attention is being paid to the skies in the wake of these events (as well as after a government report on unidentified aerial phenomena was released in 2021), it might not be considered too “out there” to speculate about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

Events

Staff prepare for book move as renovation nears end

By akl3b |

The reopening of the new main library, Alderman, is just under a year away, but Beth Blanton, Director of Collections, is already deep in the process of mapping the book move into the new space. “I realized I have more than 50 spreadsheets — I stopped counting — keeping track of the collections in the book move,” she said, reflecting on a process that directly involves more than a dozen Library staff members and will touch more than a million printed books.

The process involves a complex “staging” that starts at Ivy Stacks, where most of the books are currently shelved. Since items in Ivy Stacks are sorted by size to allow for maximum efficiency in shelving, they need to be fully reorganized and merged into a browsable order before returning to their shelf locations in Alderman and Clemons.

Library stories, Renovation

Just in time for Valentine’s Day: It’s Love Data Week!

By mwm7b |

 

Love Data Week banner

 

In his “Sonnet 116” William Shakespeare describes what he sees as the truest kind of love — the marriage of two minds.

“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”

Featured resources, News and announcements

Recommended reels & reads this Black History Month 2023

By mwm7b |

Librarian for African American and African Studies Katrina Spencer presents film and book pairings from the UVA catalog and beyond in celebration of Black History Month 2023. Spencer takes a wide, diasporic view, highlighting actors, writers, and creators from the United States, Brazil, South Africa, and Guyana. You are warmly encouraged to explore additional films through our streaming film holdings on Kanopy, Projectr, and our resource guide managed by Media Collections Librarian Leigh Rockey.

Black history month, Reading list

Archives of architecture: Now available on Grounds and beyond

By akl3b |

The Library’s rich collection of visual resources related to the history of the University of Virginia reached a new level of accessibility in September 2021. That month, the digital library JSTOR included five public collections from UVA in a project to add high-quality images to its more than 1,900 journal titles. With the exception of Culbreth Theatre’s image collection of stagecraft props, the UVA images that were added to JSTOR’s Open Community Collections platform are all from the Library. The images are housed on web interfaces constructed by Metadata Librarian Ann Burns.

Two of the Library’s collections — photos of student graffiti captured from study carrels in the main library prior to renovation, and photos of regional and vernacular world architecture taken between 1959 and 2013 by UVA Professor of Architecture Robert Vickery — were featured in the 2020 Library Annual Report. The additional collections are the thousands of items in the Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive and the James Murray Howard University of Virginia Historic Buildings and Grounds Collection.

Featured resources

UVA Library news from around the world

  • After a nearly four-year closure for renovations, Shannon Library has re-established itself as the University of Virginia’s main study spot. This December marks a full academic year since five floors of expanded seating and a grilled cheese café joined historic reading rooms and the checkered entrance hall students first crossed back in 1938.

    C-Ville Weekly
  • If you’re still wondering what to ask your loved ones for this holiday season, the University of Virginia Library staff is here to help.

    UVA Today
  • Book-loving adventures over five decades inspired a California couple to make a $3.1 million donation to Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, the largest donation in its history.

    UVA Today
  • A new exhibition at the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections sheds light on an often-overlooked Harlem Renaissance poet in UVA’s backyard.

    UVA Today
  • This scary season, if you find yourself on a midnight dreary without a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore to ponder, the University of Virginia Library has recommendations for you.

    UVA Today

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