Rare Book School

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.