UVA Library celebrates Women’s History Month with book and film suggestions, discussed below. These selections from Library staff are intended to inspire learning about the accomplishments of women.
The Library welcomes applications to four programs with application deadlines in March — two for UVA-affiliated instructors and researchers, two for non-UVA researchers who are seeking to pursue study in Special Collections.
For UVA instructors, staff, and faculty
Research Sprints offer an intensive work environment for a specific project or a component of a broader project. During the sprints, faculty or staff work intensively with librarians for three full working days. The goal is to work without distractions during that period to produce a tangible product or outcome.
On the second floor of Shannon Library, two massive mixed-media collages hanging side by side are catching the attention of passers-by. The art installation, titled “Free to Be, a Collective Virginia Landscape,” is the work of Maria Villanueva, an Assistant Professor of Art who arrived at UVA in August. Using layered transfers of photographs, gouache and watercolor paints, and colored pencils, Villanueva mixes Charlottesville’s urban spaces with the lush landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains, interspersing local birds, people, and texts into the visual narrative, all presented on giant scrolls.
University Librarian John Unsworth, who oversaw a four-year renovation to the main UVA library and a two-year pandemic that shut down the libraries and all of Grounds, has announced he will retire at the end of the academic year.
In nature, bright colors are often indicative of danger — poisonous spiders and insects (and their imitators) often adorn themselves with electric coloring as a warning to potential predators. Turns out, some books inadvertently do the same.
In the mid-1800s, arsenic became popular as a compound used in book making. Its allure comes from the fact that arsenic, when combined with copper, has the ability to create brilliant emerald greens, which were then used in ornate covers and illustrations. The problem? We now know that long-term or large-scale exposure can lead to skin and lung irritation, and even cancer.
It's Love Data Week! At UVA Library’s Research Data Serviceswe help researchers understand how to keep their data organized and well-managed. For Love Data Week 2025, we talked to Kristen Schwendinger, Director of Research Integrity and Ethicsat UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research, to help us understand the intersection of data management and research integrity.
In this blog post and the podcast linked below, she provides research ethics advice that benefits all data stakeholders. Kristen writes:
By day, Associate Librarian Josh Thorud teaches audio/video and digital art instructional sessions to students and helps faculty design courses that involve media literacy, AI, and digital storytelling.
When he’s not at work in UVA Library’s Robertson Media Center, Thorud focuses his attention on his own media projects, namely screenwriting and film editing. These projects have taken him around the world to various film and art festivals. Late last year, a film he edited (directed by UVA studio art professor Federico Cuatlacuatl) won the Arte Laguna Special Prize, in Venice, Italy.
In the first installment of our new “Staff Spotlight” series, we spoke with Thorud about how he brings his creative skills into his work at UVA Library.
This Black History Month, librarians on the Arts & Humanities team invite you to explore stories of the African American experience from the past two centuries.
Featured in this post are two collections of primary sources for historical research, a biography of a Union Army soldier, and a history of the Freedman’s Bank by UVA history professor Justene Hill Edwards.
Dec. 10, 1938 - Herbert Friedman, a day shy of 14 years old, boarded a train in Austria bound for England. It was the eve of World War II, and he was one of nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, who were rescued from Nazi-controlled territory across Europe.
A UVA Today story tells the tale in more detail, as Friedman eventually made his way from London to the United States, where he studied to be a pharmacist, fought for the U.S. in World War II and the Korean War, and started a family.
Eighty-seven years after Friedman’s departure from Austria, his personal effects — including the number assigned to him on that fateful train — were gifted to UVA Library by his sons.
This week,the UVA Library received the 2025 Library Excellence in Access and Diversity (LEAD) Award from Insight Into Diversity magazine, the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. The LEAD Award honors academic libraries’ programs and initiatives that encourage and support inclusive excellence and belonging across their campus. These include, but are not limited to research, technology, accessibility, exhibitions, and community outreach. The Library will be featured, along with 33 other recipients, in the March 2025 issue of Insight Into Diversity magazine.
Leo S. Lo, who currently serves as dean of the College of University Libraries and Learning Sciences at the University of New Mexico, has been appointed the University of Virginia’s next University librarian and dean of libraries, effective Sept. 15.
That was one of the first details Mary Catherine Dunnigan noticed as she entered the University of Virginia’s Shannon Library for the first time in decades earlier this month. Dunnigan, who recently turned 103, chose to celebrate her birthday by returning to the University, where she spent years working as a librarian and director of the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library. She began working there more than 50 years ago, in 1973.
For UVA instructors, staff, and faculty
University Librarian John Unsworth, who oversaw a four-year renovation to the main UVA library and a two-year pandemic that shut down the libraries and all of Grounds, has announced he will retire at the end of the academic year.
In the mid-1800s, arsenic became popular as a compound used in book making. Its allure comes from the fact that arsenic, when combined with copper, has the ability to create brilliant emerald greens, which were then used in ornate covers and illustrations. The problem? We now know that long-term or large-scale exposure can lead to skin and lung irritation, and even cancer.
This week,