News, announcements, updates, and happenings in the UVA Library

Guest post by Erin Pappas, Librarian for the Humanities; Leigh Rockey, Video Collections Librarian; and Amanda Wyatt Visconti, co-director of the Scholars’ Lab.

Observed each October, National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM) celebrates the contributions of America’s workers with disabilities past and present and showcases supportive, inclusive employment policies and practices that benefit employers and employees. The U.S. government’s Office of Disability Employment Policy has chosen “Advancing Access and Equity” as the theme for NDEAM 2023. (NDEAM en español.)

National Coming Out Day began in 1988 and is celebrated on the anniversary of the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. It was created as a proactively positive holiday to embrace the LGBTQ+ community and boost its visibility in our day-to-day life. National Coming Out Day is also celebrated in the United Kingdom and a number of other countries.

At the University of Virginia Library, we’re so proud to have members of the LGBTQ+ community as patrons, staff, visitors, researchers, faculty, students, and more. Working to create welcoming spaces for all people is a deeply ingrained value at the UVA Library, and we appreciate all of those who help us move toward that vision.

Below are some LGBTQ+ resources you can find in the Library’s collections to deepen your knowledge, your understanding, and your research.

Sure, you can visit the University of Virginia Library to borrow books (we have more than 5 million of them!), to find a cozy study space, or even to use a 3-D printer, but did you know we offer events ranging from workshops to gallery talks for UVA and the Charlottesville community throughout the year?

Below, check out five upcoming events for those who love art, crafting, cosplay, and Halloween. All Library events are free.

In June 1844, landscape painter Russell Smith traveled from Philadelphia to Virginia on a hot, dusty train to meet up with geologist William Barton Rogers, a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Virginia. Smith joined Rogers to work as an illustrator for the next phase of the Geological Survey of Virginia, which studied and mapped the commonwealth’s mineral resources. What emerged from that friendship is the subject of a new exhibition now open in the First Floor Gallery of UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.

The University of Virginia Library is pleased to announce that its main library renovation project that began in early 2020 is set to be completed by the end of the fall 2023 semester. The renovation will bring the building up to current standards of safety, accessibility, and service and result in beautiful, naturally lit study and research spaces.

Read on for four facts about the reopening.

Guest post by Amy Hunsaker, Music & Performing Arts Librarian

It’s time to celebrate Latinx authors during Hispanic Heritage Month, which overlaps September and the first few weeks of October. Don’t know where to start? This year, we’ve gathered a list of five Latinx authors whose works we recommend reading. Take a look below.

A new exhibition now open in the First Floor Gallery of UVA’s Harrison Institute and Small Special Collections Library makes a bold and compelling claim: a portrait long held in the Library’s collections has for nearly a century been misidentified and is now believed to be the most accurate image of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in existence. Arranged to appear almost like an evidence board on a detective show, the exhibition calls on the viewer to look with their own eyes, asking, “What do you see?”

“The Harlem Renaissance has come to the University of Virginia’s Grounds,” begins a UVA Today article featuring the Library’s newest exhibition, “Their World As Big As They Made It: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance.”

The article continues,

[The exhibition] examines the works in the period of Black artistic and intellectual activity centered in a New York neighborhood. The Harlem Renaissance began in the early 1900s as racist violence and diminishing economic opportunity pushed Black Southerners to head north in a movement known as the Great Migration.

“These young people, like Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Gwendolyn Bennett … their approach was, ‘We’re not going to try to aspire to white person standards. We’re not going to try to aspire to the Black middle-class standard. We’re fine being Black,’” George Riser, chief exhibition curator, said.

Guest post by Holly Robertson, Curator of University Library Exhibitions

One hundred years ago, the artistic and political revolutions of the Harlem Renaissance were in full swing. The unmistakable sounds, images, words, and conventions of the era indelibly shaped American culture.

Students are back on Grounds, classes are in session, and the Library is here to help. As a UVA student, you can use the Library to access books, journals, databases, makerspaces, and media equipment. You can contact a librarian any time of day through the Ask a Librarian portal or explore Library spaces to find a favorite study spot for years to come. And you can meet new friends by joining the Library Student Council, which is holding its first interest meeting of the year this evening, Aug. 28.