The 2025 University of Virginia Library User Survey results are in, helping us understand what matters most to our community. User surveys guide decisions about how our spaces are used, how our collections grow, and how we can support the research and learning needs of our students and faculty.
A new landscape
When the first user survey launched more than 30 years ago, the library landscape looked entirely different. Some libraries that once defined our system no longer exist, and electronic journals and books were not as prevalent as they are now.
The last library user survey was conducted in 2019, and the world — and the Library — have changed dramatically since then. From the impact of the pandemic to the renovation and reopening of Shannon library, the last few years have reshaped how our community studies, works and engages with library spaces.
As the end of the year approaches, we asked UVA Library staff to recommend their favorite books they read in 2025. The books could be any genre, published in any year, so long as they were available in UVA Library’s or the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s collections.
Take a look at our extensive list below, which includes everything from Jane Austen to Andy Weir, and check some books out for the holidays. Members of the UVA community can even request books ahead of time for easy access. Please note: the publication years listed correspond with the editions in our collections, not necessarily the original publication dates.
Happy reading, and come visit us at any of our six locations before we close for winter break (beginning Dec. 20 for some libraries) … or after we reopen January 2!
UVA Library is now offering free access to online editions of the New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine, giving UVA community members a gateway to two of the most esteemed publications in the United States. Both magazines are known for their long-form journalism, literary fiction, criticism, and cartoons. Harper’s Magazine has won 22 National Magazine Awards and the New Yorker has won 59, as well as 11 Pulitzer Prizes.
Jacquelyn Kim first joined the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library in 2022 as a student worker, where she helped build an exhibition that examined the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The exhibition was curated by UVA alumni and community members and gave Kim a crash course in what she calls “the importance of co-creation.”
Kim’s time as a student worker was so successful that she joined UVA Library as an Exhibitions Coordinator after graduating from UVA in 2023. Her duties include helping to build exhibitions — from developing themes and writing display text, to painting walls and mounting objects — as well as public engagement, through social media management and class tours. In addition to her full-time job, she is pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science degree from Indiana University, for which she was awarded a scholarship by the American Library Association.
2025 is the year of the zine at the University of Virginia, according to Erin Dickey, Librarian for the Arts at UVA Library. From the Library’s Makerspace to classrooms across Grounds, Dickey has observed an uptick in students and faculty experimenting with creating the self-published, do-it-yourself magazines thanks in part to a new Library initiative, Zines Now!
November is Native American Heritage Month, an opportunity to celebrate the heritage and cultures of Indigenous groups in the United States. In honor of the occasion, UVA Library staff members have gathered some reading and viewing recommendations by and about Native Americans.
In 2024, Julia Mathas, then an Editorial Assistant at the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR), was conducting research on the literary magazine’s history in anticipation of its centennial anniversary the following year. While looking for a file on Ezra Pound in the correspondence archives of VQR’s longest-serving editor, Charlotte Kohler, Mathas stumbled upon a folder labelled “Sylvia Plath.” Within it she found a signed 1958 letter from Plath asking the editors to consider three of her poems for publication.
“I was shocked,” Mathas said about finding the Plath note among Kohler’s alphabetized correspondence files, as none of the current editors had any idea Plath had once submitted to the magazine. “As it turned out, Kohler rejected Plath’s poems, which is why no one knew she ever wrote to us. Unless the author appeared in VQR, there’s no official record of them engaging with VQR.”
International Open Access Week begins on October 20th, with events happening across universities to educate and spread the word about the potential benefits of open access.
The theme of 2025 Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, addressing questions about information control and how we as authors and creatives can make our works available to the public without compromising values or integrity.
Shannon and Brown Libraries will be hosting hybrid brown bag lunch sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss OA topics. Register and bring a lunch (or watch online) and enjoy some lively presentations and discussions about open access!
The University of Virginia Library was pleased to welcome Leo Lo as University Librarian and Dean of Libraries in September of this year. The Cavalier Daily, UVA’s student-run news outlet, talked to Dr. Lo in early October about his hopes for the future and experience so far at UVA.
Leo Lo, photographed in Shannon Library. Photo by Ken Fabia for The Cavalier Daily.
The concept is simple: gather together on Wednesday afternoons and read in peaceful silence in Shannon Library’s light-filled Memorial Hall. Silent Reading Study Break, a new weekly event created by librarians Haley Gillilan and Mandy Rizki, along with the Library Student Council, is the University of Virginia Library’s way of carving out time for reading.
Most libraries have several study rooms which students can reserve, and Clemons Library extended its hours to be open for 24 hours Wednesday. The Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library and Music Library also extended its hours Wednesday, from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. to 9 a.m. to midnight.
The theme of 2025 Open Access Week is “Who Owns Our Knowledge?”, addressing questions about information control and how we as authors and creatives can make our works available to the public without compromising values or integrity.
