Ideas don't just fall from the sky.
Cultural movements don't just happen because somebody
has a good idea one day.
Human culture is invariably materially, transmitted
or it doesn't exist at all.
Rare Book School at the University of Virginia
is the world's leading academy for people
to come from all over the globe to study everything
from medieval manuscripts all the way
through to Born digital materials
and digital forensics.
We offer about 50 different courses
that are taught by the world's experts
and the knowledge and generosity of that faculty
is the heart of the classroom experience.
One of the great glories of Rare Book School
is its teaching collection, 80,000 items acquired
and interpreted expressly for the hands-on teaching
of the history of the book in all its many forms.
There's no real substitute for that haptic knowledge
for the holding of the artifact in your hand
and subjecting it to the proper interrogation,
the proper investigation.
To study the history of print is to study
the record of human aspiration and achievement,
to study the record of human loss and love.
When you have 536 students come from 20 countries,
you are making an intervention into the future
of humanistic inquiry.
They leave here with a sense that they're not
meant to arrogate these things merely to themselves,
but to go transform the bookish community worldwide by what
they've been given here.