Rebecca Schneider – The UncommonWealth

Newspapers

Random Reference: Esperanto in Progressive Era Virginia

In February 1909, an unusual death notice appeared in a monthly magazine. Thirty-six-year-old Elizabeth Neely Warrington of Norfolk, Virginia, had died a few months earlier,…

Rebecca SchneiderAugust 19, 2024

Virginia Authors

“Incomplete, Unwritten, Unknown and Unrecorded”

Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby’s joint memoir Cousins is told in the voices of two women—one Black, the other white—with a shared Virginia history.…

Rebecca SchneiderAugust 21, 2023

The Stacks

The Case of the Phantom Article: Libraries and ChatGPT

Last month, my colleague Dave Grabarek approached me with a puzzling reference question. A researcher had gotten in touch to request an academic journal article…

Rebecca SchneiderJuly 5, 2023

Thomas/in Hall: Subverting the Gender Binary in Colonial Virginia

Among Virginia’s earliest records is a court case describing the first known intersex person in British North America. In 1629, a servant known as Thomas…

Rebecca SchneiderApril 17, 2023

Archives Newspapers

Dr. Ware’s War on Kissing

December 26, 1902 was, by all appearances, a slow news day for the Staunton Spectator and Vindicator. The Virginia newspaper featured such prosaic headlines as…

Rebecca SchneiderFebruary 6, 2023

Newspapers

Random Reference: “Advice to the Lovelorn”

We are living in an age of peak advice, a crowded media landscape in which bloggers, columnists, podcasters, and online strangers field inquiries about everything…

Rebecca SchneiderMarch 7, 2022

Public Libraries

Random Reference: Advertising the Public Library

In honor of National Library Week, I took a whirl through the Library of Virginia’s published holdings related to librarianship and library services. As the…

Rebecca SchneiderApril 5, 2021

Virginia Authors

Marion Cabell Tyree and Mrs. T’s Sweet Potato Pie

I have a sweet potato problem. When autumn comes and locally grown sweet potatoes appear in markets, I buy them reflexively, the way people stock…

Rebecca SchneiderDecember 4, 2020

Newspapers

“Big Rock Candy Mountains Discovered Near Clintwood”

While searching for an unrelated newspaper article for a library patron, I stumbled upon a unique piece of local news reporting in the 28 October…

Rebecca SchneiderAugust 3, 2020

Education & Programming

A Book List on Racism and Resistance in Virginia History

Evidence of the past appears in many forms. We find history in manuscript records, old newspapers, artifacts in a plowed field. But history is also…

Rebecca SchneiderJune 29, 2020

Virginia Authors

“A Prosperous Season”: The 1920 W. Grossmann and Son’s Seed Catalog

If you have a home garden, you may have engaged in a time-honored annual ritual—flipping through the pages of a favorite seed catalog and selecting…

Rebecca SchneiderMay 6, 2020

Virginia Authors

Publishing Anne Spencer: The Crisis, February 1920

One hundred years ago, the first published work of Virginia poet, librarian, and activist Anne Spencer appeared in the February 1920 issue of The Crisis.…

Rebecca SchneiderFebruary 19, 2020

Virginia Authors

Uncovering Homegrown Histories During Picture Book Month

From The Wreck of the Old 97 by Clara G. Fountain (Womack Press, Danville, Va., 1976) Libraries and schools across the world celebrate Picture Book…

Rebecca SchneiderNovember 20, 2019