Earlier this month in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, a happy group of alumni, students, and staff posed in front of a portrait of Fernando Bolívar, who was likely the first Latin American student at the University of Virginia. The nephew and adopted son of the Venezuelan leader Simón Bolívar, Fernando enrolled at the University in 1827. He is the namesake for important hubs in UVA’s Latinx community today, including the student residence Casa Bolívar and the Bolívar Network, an alumni steering committee.
The University of Virginia Library is delighted to announce the donation of a major gift, the Iselin Collection of Humor. Built over many years by noted collector and retired attorney Josephine Lea Iselin, the Iselin Collection will be a tremendous asset for research and learning at the University across a wide range of disciplines.
Sue Donovan was raised in Middle Tennessee, where her mother was a storyteller and worked at the county library. “We basically grew up in the library. I brought books to school to read behind the books that we were supposed to read in class,” she said. Now as Conservator for Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library, Donovan still spends her days surrounded by books, mending torn pages and repairing broken bindings. Later this month, she is offering her services to the local community, in partnership with the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library (which was named the Virginia Library Association’s 2022 Library of the Year).
The UVA Library welcomes members of the Charlottesville community to celebrate eighty years of Music Department history!
Join us at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 26, for celebration and performances reflecting on musical recordings dating as far back as the 1940s. The celebration marks completion of a digitization project, making these recordings available for years to come. The event will take place in the auditorium of Harrison/Small; doors open at 1:30.
The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.It is presented by the University of Virginia Library and sponsored by the UVA Arts Council.
The Library is now offering access to the Wall Street Journal, including daily news reporting and coverage from around the world.
To access, visit https://wsj.com/uva. You will be prompted to create an account, which you can then use on wsj.com, the Wall Street Journal app, and the Wall Street Journal archives.
With the highest print circulation in the United States, the Wall Street Journal is available in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and users can view the online and print versions through wsj.com. The print edition of the Journal has been available continuously since its launch in 1889, and the paper has won 38 Pulitzer Prizes.
In addition to the Wall Street Journal, Library users can…
Did you know that Virginia recognized April as Arab American Heritage Month long before it became a national designation in 2022? You can help celebrate the many cultures represented by Arab Americans by exploring the wealth of literature and poetry held by the University of Virginia Library. We’ve enlisted the efforts of UVA graduate students Gretchen Masse and Katelyn Eschmann and librarians Leigh Rockey and Amy Hunsaker. All are avid readers who are excited to share their reviews of old favorites and new discoveries.
Six years ago, University of Virginia English professor John O’Brien and his colleague Tonya Howe, a professor of literature at Marymount University, were both wrestling with a problem in their classrooms. Students, up against rising textbook costs, were coming to class with free, but unvetted versions of assigned reading. “These digital versions of literary texts were poorly edited and annotated — if they were edited at all,” Howe said.
Data matters to the UVA Library. It helps identify what resources are heavily used and what groups of people use them. The Library uses data to assess trends and inform collection building, to make decisions about service desk staffing and service improvements, and to improve teaching and learning services. Data is critical to making smart financial decisions and justifying budget spending and requests.
Guest post coauthored by Cecelia Parks (Undergraduate Student Success Librarian), and Alison Booth, (Professor of English and Academic Director, Scholars’ Lab).
Library resources have the capacity to enlighten and empower, but only for those who have the time, know-how, and ability to use them — making equitable access a complex concept. Financial challenges are another pressing issue for college students and can interfere with their education in myriad ways, such as through food insecurity or concerns over the cost of textbook materials.
In recent years the Library has implemented staff-wide practices to improve access, including the adoption of design principles that place accessibility at the center of user decision-making; taking care to emphasize that Library resources are available fully free of change — something not all incoming students are aware of; and providing broad accessibility training for staff. Other focus areas include:
Rare Book School at the University of Virginia's 2025 schedule includes more than 40 classes, featuring online courses and in-person possibilities. In-person courses in Charlottesville will be offered in the University of Virginia's newly renovated Edgar Shannon Library. For the best chance of being admitted on the courses, applications should be submitted by February 17.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading a story by Alice Berry, let me introduce you to her work.
The University of Virginia’s massive library system, which houses copies of the Declaration of Independence, is just part of her “beat,” one of the many areas she is responsible for covering.
Her storytelling task ballooned as the school undertook the gigantic overhaul of Shannon Library. In her story on one of UVA's last card catalogs, Alice revealed tantalizing details about issues of UVA’s student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, dating back to the 19th century. Her piece even inspired UVA Today’s latest installment of Obscura, which documents lesser-known objects and places across Grounds.
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.
