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

In August, the Virginia Film Festival welcomed director Bill Banowsky in conversation following a showing of his film, “A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant.” The film features archival footage and hundreds of Oliphant works, and the showing was a homecoming of sorts, since the University of Virginia Library houses Oliphant’s archive, which was critical in the making of the film. 

Marking the public opening of the film this month, Banowsky said: 

Whether you’re a new student or a returning faculty member, we at UVA Library are ready to help you make the most of your Fall 2025 semester. The Library has everything to help you succeed — books, comfortable study spaces, locations all over Grounds, and staff who are ready to help with research, teaching, publishing, and more. 

Check out this overview of the UVA Library system and its offerings. We hope you’ll visit one of our six locations soon — see more about that below!

Library spaces

The UVA Library has six locations, each with different subject specialties:

“Artificial intelligence systems are thirsty,” writes Leo S. Lo in a recent column for The Conversation, an independent news organization. 

Lo, the incoming University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Virginia, established the Task Force on AI Competencies for Library Workers for the Association of College and Research Libraries, where he serves as president. In addition to his role as Dean of Libraries, Lo will also serve as Advisor to the Provost for AI Literacy and as a Professor of Education at UVA.

The University of Virginia has appointed Lisa Blackmore as Faculty Director of UVA Library’s Digital Humanities Center and Professor of Spanish in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Blackmore, formerly a Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex in England, begins her role at UVA on August 21. 

Since 2018, Blackmore has been the founder/director of entre—ríos [Between Rivers] an international digital platform focusing on bodies of water in Latin America. Her research is in the field of environmental humanities, with a focus on cultural histories of human-river relations, ecocritical analysis of art and literature, and creative collaborations between art, science, and communities.

Guest post from Dave Ghamandi, Open Publishing Librarian and Managing Editor of Aperio

Aperio, the UVA Library-led open access press, is pleased to announce the launch of Quill & Quire, an open-access journal.

For Disability Pride Month 2025 — marking the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — Carla Arton, Keith Weimer, Erin Dickey, Christine Ruotolo, and Bethany Mickel from the UVA Library are proud to spotlight a selection of works that have made the journey from page to screen, offering powerful representations of disability in both written and visual forms. This year’s theme — “adaptation” — invites us to reflect on how stories of disability are told, retold, and transformed when moving from text to film.

Writing about disability is, in itself, a layered act of translation. Whether through memoir, biography, or fiction, the written word attempts to capture the lived experience of disabled individuals — sensory realities, internal landscapes, and social dynamics that often resist simplification. When these stories are then adapted into film, another layer of interpretation is added. What is chosen to be visualized, dramatized, or omitted can deeply shape how audiences come to understand disability — sometimes reinforcing familiar tropes, other times challenging them.

Many in the University of Virginia community have taken the short journey to the top of Observatory Hill to visit the Leander McCormick Observatory, which was dedicated in 1885 and is still in operation. But how many are aware that two smaller observatories were constructed at the University and demolished by the mid-19^th century? A new exhibition in the First Floor Gallery of the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library explores the history of these little-known buildings.

When the Rotunda burned down in October of 1895 — faulty wiring was to blame — University of Virginia officials immediately pushed to rebuild, and in 1896, after a false start with McDonald Brothers of Louisville, Kentucky, the Board of Visitors hired prominent New York architects McKim, Mead & White. Stanford White, the artistic force of the firm, was the lead architect on the Rotunda redesign. The University also hired the firm to design three new buildings to enclose the South Lawn. These buildings, also designed by White, came to be Rouss, Cocke, and Cabell Halls, and White also went on to design Garrett Hall as well as Carr’s Hill, the UVA president’s home.

Late last month, UVA Today published a story on “must-read books for the summer” recommended by UVA Library staff. The suggestions ranged from a book about how Taylor Swift reinvented pop music (by a UVA alumnus) to Jane Austen’s arguably least-known work. That piece stayed on UVA Today’s list of “most popular” stories for two weeks and was even shared by UVA President Jim Ryan on Instagram. 

To read more about these books, click the image below to access the UVA Today story.