Professional Development

Megan at Rare Book School

Friday, June 24, 2011 5:10 pm

I spent last week reliving my grad school days at the University of Virginia by taking a class at Rare Book School. RBS (not to be confused with RBMS, which is the ALA Rare Books and Manuscripts Section) offers a wide variety of weeklong classes, taught by experts in their fields, on everything from medieval paleography to archiving born-digital materials. My class was “Teaching the History of the Book,” taught by RBS director Michael Suarez.

I’ve taken RBS classes before, so I knew that I was in for a fairly intense learning experience. Like most classes, mine had a preliminary reading list. RBS classes meet daily from 8:30-5:00, with evening lectures and events most days. It’s a serious time commitment, but the payoff is the chance to immerse oneself for a week in a topic of interest with a dozen other similarly-obsessed people.

“Teaching the History of the Book” covered exactly what its title implied– theories and methods of teaching book history, descriptive and analytical bibliography, textual criticism, and print culture to students at the undergraduate and graduate level. My classmates were teaching faculty and special collections librarians from a wide variety of institutions. Everyone had slightly different areas of interest and expertise, and the sharing of ideas was invaluable. Class discussions ranged from the highly theoretical (what exactly is Book History anyway?) to the very practical (how do you give undergraduates a basic vocabulary and understanding of descriptive bibliography without overwhelming them?).

I came away with a lot of great ideas, a 1500 page digital coursepack, and a general affirmation of my belief that instruction and outreach is vital in special collections. Michael Suarez is a passionate advocate of the centrality of book history and bibliography to a liberal arts education, and one of his major emphases in the class was our responsibility as educators to pass along an understanding of the importance of book history to our students, fellow faculty, and administrators. The consensus of all the class members was that the only way to do this is to be proactive in creating courses and class sessions, since many faculty and students are highly receptive to ideas of book history but don’t know how to integrate them into the curriculum.

I’m planning to put all this knowledge to good use by developing a LIB200 History of the Book class for spring 2012. This should prove an exciting opportunity to use our Special Collections resources in the classroom in a new and more in-depth way.

3 Responses to “Megan at Rare Book School”

  1. Your course sounds exciting Megan- great write-up.
    Let me know if i can help you in any way.

  2. That sounds like so much fun Megan!!

  3. I loved reading about your experience at RBS! Can’t wait to hear more as you develop your course.


Pages
About
Categories
2008 NCAECT
2008 NCLA RTSS
2008 North Carolina Serials Conference
2008 ONIX for Serials Webinar
2008 Open Access Day
2008 SPARC Digital Repositories
2008 Tri-IT Meeting
2009 ARLIS/NA
2009 Big Read
2009 code4lib
2009 Educause
2009 Handheld Librarian
2009 LAUNC-CH Conference
2009 LAUNCH-CH Research Forum
2009 NCLA Biennial Conference
2009 NISOForum
2009 OCLC International ILLiad Conference
2009 RBMS Charlottesville
2009 SCLA
2010 ATLA
2010 Code4Lib
2010 EDUCAUSE Southeast
2010 Handheld Librarian
2010 ILLiad Conference
2010 LAUNC-CH Research Forum
2010 Metrolina
2010 North Carolina Serials Conference
2010 RBMS
2010 Sakai Conference
2011 CurateCamp
2011 Illiad Conference
2012 SNCA Annual Conference
ACRL
acrl immersion
ACRL-ANSS
ACRL-STS
ALA Annual
ALA Editions
ALA Midwinter
ALCTS
ALCTS Webinars for Preservation Week
ALFMO
ANCHASL
APALA
ARL Assessment Seminar 2014
ARLIS
ASERL
ASIS&T
ASU
ATLA
Audio streaming
authority control
Berkman Webinar
bibliographic control
Book Repair Workshops
Career Development for Women Leaders Program
Carolina Consortium
CASE Conference
cataloging
Celebration: Entrepreneurial Conference
Charleston Conference
CIT Showcase
CITsymposium2008
Coalition for Networked Information
code4lib
commons
Conference Planning
Conferences
Copyright Conference
costs
COSWL
CurateGear 2013
CurateGear 2014
Designing Libraries II Conference
DHSI
DigCCurr 2007
Digital Forsyth
Digital Humanities Symposium
Disaster Recovery
Discovery tools
E-books
EDUCAUSE
Educause SE
EDUCAUSE_SERC07
Electronic Resources and Libraries
Elon Teaching and Learning Conference
Embedded Librarians
Entrepreneurial Conference
ERM Systems
evidence based librarianship
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP)
Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA)
FDLP
First-Year Experience Conference
FRBR
Future of Libraries
Gaming in Libraries
General
Google Scholar
govdocs
Handheld Librarian Online Conference
ILLiad Conference
ILS
information design
information ethics
Information Literacy
innovation
Innovation in Instruction
Innovative Library Classroom Conference
Inspiration
Institute for Research Design in Librarianship
instruction
IRB101
Journal reading group
Keynote
LAMS Customer Service Workshop
LAUNC-CH
Leadership
Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians
Learning spaces
LibQUAL
Library 2.0
Library Assessment Conference
Library of Congress
licensing
Lilly Conference
LITA
LITA National Forum
LLAMA
LOEX
LOEX2008
LRTS
Lyrasis
Management
Marketing
Meetings
Mentoring Committee
MERLOT
metadata
Miscellaneous
MOUG 09
MOUG 2010
Music Library Assoc. 07
Music Library Assoc. 09
Music Library Assoc. 2010
Music Library Association
NASIG
National Library of Medicine
NC-LITe
NCCU Conference on Digital Libraries
NCICU
NCLA
NCLA Biennial Conference 2013
NCLA Biennial Conference 2015
NCPC
NCSLA
NHPRC-Electronic Records Research Fellowships Symposium
NISO
North Carolina Serial Conference 2014
North Carolina Serials Conference
Offsite Storage Project
OLE Project
online catalogs
online course
Online Learning Summit
OPAC
open access
Open Repositories
Peabody Academic Library Leadership Institute
plagiarism
Podcasting
Preservation
Preservation Activities
Preserving Forsyth LSTA Grant
Professional Development Center
rare books
RDA/FRBR
Reserves
RITS
RTSS 08
RUSA-CODES
SAA
SACS-COC
Scholarly Communication
ScienceOnline2010
Social Stratification in the Deep South
Social Stratification in the Deep South 2009
Society of American Archivists
Society of North Carolina Archivists
SOLINET
Southeast Music Library Association
Southeast Music Library Association 08
Southeast Music Library Association 09
SPARC webinar
subject headings
Sun Webinar Series
symposium
tagging
TALA Conference
Technical Services
technology
ThinkTank Conference
Training
UIPO Symposium
ULG
UNC Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference
Uncategorized
user studies
Vendors
video-assisted learning
visual literacy
WakeSpace
Web 2.0
Webinar
WebWise
WFU China Initiative
Wikis
Women's History Symposium 2007
workshops
WSS
ZSR Library Leadership Retreat
Tags
Archives
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007

Powered by WordPress.org, protected by Akismet. Blog with WordPress.com.
http://cloud.lib.wfu.edu/blog/pd/2011/06/24/megan-at-rare-book-school/
cloud.lib.wfu.edu
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-26
57804
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:DPKIFBGV5YRB3OFOXHW6MMJJBA63SRBX
<urn:uuid:19579a1e-c92b-40a1-a3c2-3a1563e08732>
2016-06-30T19:34:10Z
54.86.207.49
sha1:6PJDY3AFYSO6MOWJSQY5WIOJWU45OAH5
<urn:uuid:87d23668-62e7-4392-be07-72d0e8ceb124>
http://cloud.lib.wfu.edu/blog/pd/2011/06/24/megan-at-rare-book-school/
length
response
<urn:uuid:26b14f20-87d9-4bcd-8a28-f5d5508b80ca>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-26
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf