The New York Times profiles a program in Charlottesville, Virginia.
From the piece...
For five weeks each summer Rare Book School brings some 300 librarians,
conservators, scholars, dealers, collectors and random book-mad
civilians together for weeklong intensive courses in an atmosphere that
combines the intensity of the seminar room, the nerdiness of a “Star
Trek” convention and the camaraderie of a summer camp where people come
back year after year.
Vic Zoschak, a retired Coast Guard pilot turned antiquarian bookseller
from Alameda, Calif., took his first class in 1998 and has returned for
14 more. “Flying search-and-rescue missions was satisfying work,“ he
said. “But here, I found my people.”
For many Rare Book School is an important networking opportunity, not to
mention a chance to bunk in the Thomas Jefferson-designed lodgings that
ring the university’s famous central Lawn, with their appropriately
antiquarian lack of indoor toilets. But it also fills an important
intellectual niche, teaching skills and knowledge that have been
orphaned by increasingly technology-minded library schools and
theory-oriented literature departments.
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