[Cross-posted. Please excuse any duplication.]

RARE BOOK SCHOOL (RBS) is pleased to announce its Winter and Early Spring
Sessions 2004, a collection of five-day, non-credit courses on topics
concerning rare books, manuscripts, the history of books and printing, and
special collections to be held at the University of Virginia.

FOR AN APPLICATION FORM and electronic copies of the complete brochure and
the RBS Expanded Course Descriptions, providing additional details about
the courses offered and other information about RBS, visit our Web site at:

                http://www.rarebookschool.org

Subscribers to the list may find the following Rare Book School courses to
be of particular interest:

23 (L-30). RARE BOOK CATALOGING (MONDAY-FRIDAY, 8-12 MARCH). Aimed at
catalog librarians who find that their present duties include (or shortly
will include) the cataloging of rare books or special collections
materials. Attention will be given primarily to cataloging books from the
hand-press period, with some discussion given to c19 and c20 books in a
special collections context. Topics include: comparison of rare book and
general cataloging; application of codes and standards (especially DCRB);
uses of special files; problems in transcription, collation and physical
description; and setting cataloging policy within an institutional context.
Instructor: Deborah J. Leslie.

DEBORAH J. LESLIE is Head of Cataloging at the Folger Shakespeare Library,
before which she held positions as rare book cataloger at Yale University
and at the Library Company of Philadelphia. She is the chair of the RBMS
Bibliographic Standards Committee. Various instructors taught this Rare
Book School course 14 times between 1983 and 1997; DJL has taught it at
least once annually since 1998.

24 (L-80). IMPLEMENTING ENCODED ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION  (MONDAY-FRIDAY, 8-12
MARCH). Encoded Archival Description (EAD) provides standardized
machine-readable descriptive access to primary resource materials. This
course is aimed at archivists, librarians, and museum personnel who would
like an introduction to EAD that includes an extensive supervised hands-on
component. Students will learn XML encoding techniques in part using
examples selected from among their own institutions' finding aids. Other
topics covered include: the context out of which EAD emerged; introduction
to the use of XML authoring tools; the conversion of existing finding aids;
publishing finding aids; funding sources for EAD projects; and integration
of EAD into existing archival processing.

DANIEL PITTI became Project Director at the University of Virginia's
Institute for Advanced Technology in 1997, before which he was Librarian
for Advanced Technologies at the University of California, Berkeley. He was
the Coordinator of the Encoded Archival Description initiative. He has
taught this course since 1997, usually twice annually.