Telling a book by its cover

For University Professor Terry Belanger, the contents of a book aren’t nearly as important as how it’s put together. And thanks to Belanger, the University has become a center for deconstructing the construction of books.

Offering 40 courses on such topics as bindings, illustrations and typography, the Rare Book School Belanger directs promotes the study of the book itself, as a unique object reflecting the economic and aesthetic priorities of its times.

He has created an environment that lures the most knowledgeable scholars in the field to Charlottesville. They present intensive, five-day courses for rare book librarians and curators, antiquarian booksellers and book collectors, bookbinders, conservators, and those researching the history of the book. Virtually all the leading figures in the field today have taken at least one course from the Rare Book School, Belanger says.

The attraction for faculty is the quality of their students, which they hand pick from the field of applicants. They also like being able to draw on objects in the University’s special collections, on the scores of classroom demonstrations that Belanger and his staff have prepared over the years and the extensive teaching archive of materials that support virtually every topic in every course offered. For instance, for a class on book illustration, Belanger can choose from 450 specially prepared packets of illustrations covering hundreds of years of history and scores of processes.

The school’s shelving scheme arranges books chronologically, rather than topically. Seen in this light, a shelf of books reveals a great deal about the culture that created them. For instance, Belanger has assembled editions spanning 50 years of the six-volume Gunboat Series, a collection of novels for young adults written during the Civil War by Harry Castlemon. His goal: to highlight the changing vision of young manhood depicted on their covers.

“We use materials in our classes that range in price from a few dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Belanger said. “There is no other place where students and faculty can make use of this extensive range of sources.”