Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, UVA

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, UVA Part of the University of Virginia Library, we house more than 16 million objects including manuscri

09/14/2026

“Reading Intimately: What is an Artist’s Book?” is the first event in our Activating Artists Book Series. Drop by the Harrison/Small Auditorium anytime this Friday September 18 from 2-4 to explore and read contemporary art works!

Activating Artists’ Books is part of the 2026-2027 AFK: Away from Keyboard series generously supported by the UVA Arts Council. Check out the link in bio for more information!

Item ID: “How Books Work,” Julie Chen and Clifton Meador, N7433.4.C436 H68 2010

This Fall semester, and community educators will schedule nearly 100 classes at the Small Special Collections Library—b...
09/09/2026

This Fall semester, and community educators will schedule nearly 100 classes at the Small Special Collections Library—bringing upwards of 2,000 students, some experiencing the opportunity to research with primary source materials for the very first time. All this with just one dedicated instruction librarian!?!

In October 1824, Thomas Jefferson designed the University’s course schedule so that each of the schools “shall be held two hours of every other day of the week: and that every student may be enabled to attend those of his choice, let their sessions be so arranged, as to days and hours that no two of them shall be holden at the same time.” (Minute Book of the Board of Visitors (1817-1828)—RG-1/1/1.381)

Students! How is your course schedule this Fall? Is Special Collections on your syllabus?

Do you have classes that start at 7:30 a.m. ... or take place on Saturday!?

“When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.” —Gloria SteinemA leader within the Women’s Liberat...
09/03/2026

“When unique voices are united in a common cause, they make history.” —Gloria Steinem

A leader within the Women’s Liberation Movement, activist and journalist Gloria Steinem (1934-2026) was well known for her extensive work in media, especially her co-founding of Ms. magazine, considered America’s first national feminist magazine, in 1971. Today, Ms. magazine carries on the legacy of Steinem’s work and continues to publish a wide variety of material relating to women and feminism. 

Item ID: Ms, HQ1011 .M55 1972, Spring Preview

Today, we’re celebrating the life of author, poet, and environmental activist Wendell Berry with this poetry broadside c...
09/01/2026

Today, we’re celebrating the life of author, poet, and environmental activist Wendell Berry with this poetry broadside created in honor of his visit to University of Virginia in 2009. Featuring the tenth poem in Berry’s poetry collection Leavings, the broadside was a printing collaboration with University students and Josef Beery, who created the woodcut as well.

Item ID: I Go by a Field Where Once, Broadside 2009.B47

07/30/2026

If you’re interested in the Civil War, then you’re in luck: the Small Special Collections Library has an extensive collection of correspondence, photographs, objects, and additional materials curated by John L. Nau III. We are working now to curate a major exhibition featuring the John L. Nau III Civil War History Collection, slated to open in Fall 2027. In this video, Nau Civil War History Center intern Drew Dillman shares his work this summer researching exhibition themes within the collection. But don’t wait for the exhibition—the Nau Civil War History Collection is open for research and accessible every day in our reading room!�https://archives.lib.virginia.edu/repositories/3/resources/941

Video description: Drew pulls archival boxes and examines the collection to find items that illustrate the forthcoming exhibition themes. The video highlights the extensive online finding aid and teases a small example of the tidy organization of the more than 255 boxes in the collection. Objects in the video include an interior depiction Libby Prison and a photo print of Gettysburg.

Monuments dot the American landscape as tributes to history and memory. Fifty years ago, Lee Friedlander’s first-edition...
07/17/2026

Monuments dot the American landscape as tributes to history and memory. Fifty years ago, Lee Friedlander’s first-edition photobook The American Monument was published by Eakins Press.

Featuring more than 200 black-and-white photographs, the volume documents Friedlander’s 12-year journey across the United States. By placing monuments within the everyday American landscape, he reveals how these commemorative figures coexist with daily life.

Each photograph is titled simply by the monument’s name and location: The Boy Scout Statue of Liberty, Madison, Indiana; Volunteer Fireman, Walden, New York; Doughboy, Clearwater, Florida.

Item ID: The American Monument, Lee Friedlander, E159.F74 1976

AmericanLandscape UVARare SpecialCollections UVALibrary

07/15/2026

By Jeff Hill | July 14, 2026 Oliphant in 2018 at the exhibition of his work in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. Patrick Oliphant, a giant of 20th-century political cartooning, has died in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was 90 years old.Oliphant, who died on July 13, built his repu...

“My goal is not necessarily to get it looking like it once did. We want these to be as intact and true to their history ...
07/10/2026

“My goal is not necessarily to get it looking like it once did. We want these to be as intact and true to their history as possible.”
—Sue Donovan, Special Collections Conservator

A 35 pound medieval Italian choir book, believed to date to the 14th or 15th centuries and held in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, illustrates 500 years of alterations and use. During the 1700s, someone added a page of paper to the choir book, while every previous page had been made of animal skin. Someone also may have added brass coverings to the iron bosses on the book’s leather-bound wooden covers. And at some point, the Latin words in the book were covered because, while the music stayed the same, the liturgy would change.

Donovan estimates she spent about 100 hours analyzing the book’s construction—even taking it to UVA Health for an X-ray—and conserving its spine, making a special housing, and building a specialized cradle so researchers and conservators can handle the book with minimal wear.

Today followed each step of the process, and a group of students was among the first to see the newly conserved book and examine its components.

“I want people to still be able to use this 100 or 150 years from now.” And they will, thanks to Donovan and our colleagues in the Library.

View the story online:
https://news.virginia.edu/content/how-uva-conservators-bring-books-back-life

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