ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The University of Arizona has acquired two manuscripts that strengthen its holdings on the history of the Spanish Southwest. The documents are Garces, Francisco, Diario, de las Ultimas Peregrinaciones del Padre Fr. Francisco Garces, hasta la Provincia del Moqui, y Noticias de Varias Nuevas Naciones Exparcidas hasta el Rio Colorado en California, and Dominguez, Francisco Atanacio, Derrotero de los Padres Fray Francisco Atanacio Dominguez, & Fr. Silvestre Velez, de Escalante, en sus Exploraciones, desde las Missiones de Zuny del Nuevo México, hasta las Ymmediaciones de Monte Rey de California. Together they provide an account of the area between Santa Fe and the Colorado River, and the southern portion of Alta California. Garces pioneered the Mojave Trail to San Gabriel in 1775 and 1776, and Dominguez and Escalante opened what came to be known as the Old Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to California in 1776.

• The Duke University library has received two gifts for its departments of rare books and manuscripts. The Kenneth Willis Clark Manuscript Fund, which will be used to purchase Greek manuscripts, was established by a gift from Adelaide D. Clark. Clark also presented seven Greek manuscripts to the library, thereby increasing the size of the collection to eighty-one, the second largest collection in the United States.

Area journalist, author, and civic leader Herbert Clarence Bradshaw’s papers, which number over 39,000 items, were presented to the Duke University library by his widow.

• The McGill University Library has acquired the substantial Kierkegaard-Malantschuk Library Collection. This is the first large Kierkegaard collection in Canada. The collection of approximately 1,000 volumes includes first editions of all of Kierkegaard’s works; a reconstruction of Kierkegaard’s private study library, with six of his own copies; and other publications that influenced Kierkegaard’s thought.

• The University of North Carolina at Charlotte Library has acquired the books and papers of John A. Tennant (1868-1957), the publisher and editor of The Photo-Miniature, a monthly journal of photography published from 1899 to 1935. The collection went to the university as a result of a gift by Dr. and Mrs. Horace P. Reeves.

• Union College Library, Schenectady, New York, has recently instituted the Adirondack Research Center, with the support of Paul Schaefer, noted New York State conservationist and architect of the Adirondack Park boundary. The center’s collections will include books, periodicals, maps, and historical and political records of the Adirondack Park area. Among the early acquisitions are the papers of the Adirondack Highway Council and those of the Forest Preserves Advisory Committee, Joint Legislative Committee on Natural Resources, State of New York. ■■

ESTHER J. PIERCY JURY AWARD NOMINATIONS INVITED

The Esther J. Piercy Jury Awards Committee of ALA/RTSD is now accepting nominations for the 1980 award.

Candidates can be nominated by anyone who is well acquainted with the candidate’s contribution to technical services librarianship. The award recognizes a librarian with not more than ten years of professional experience who has shown outstanding promise for continued contribution and leadership in technical services by professional activity, association activity, publication, or research.

The jury selection of the award winner will be based on the documentation submitted by the nominator. Nomination forms should be submitted to the committee chair not later than December 15, 1980.

Nomination forms are available from Peter Spyers-Duran, Chair, Esther J. Piercy Jury Award, Director of the Library, California State University, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard, Long Beach, CA 90840. ■■

ALTERNATIVE FORMATS FOR LIBRARY CATALOGS

Online, COM, or a card catalog alternative? How should your library cope with the closing of the card catalogs at the Library of Congress and implement AACR 2? Sixty-eight university libraries now have comparative data that will help them decide. Participants in the Library Catalog Cost Model Project, sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, submitted detailed data and computer runs that contributed to the development of Alternatives for Future Library Catalogs: A Cost Model (King Research Inc., 1980), a model that other libraries may use to gather data to use in their institutional planning process.

Developed as a tool for use by individual libraries, the model considers card, COM, online, and the nine combined catalog formats.

It was hoped that the study would result in general conclusions about which alternative card catalog forms would be least costly. Instead, the study found that local factors so greatly influenced an individual library’s costs that even size and geographic location did not distinguish groups of libraries conclusively. Cost analyses determined by this model for individual libraries indicated a high degree of variability.

Data gathered to develop this model confirmed several trends in catalog preparation and maintenance. As expected, preparing catalog records was found to be the dominant cost of developing and maintaining a catalog. The results indicate that, in most cases, AACR 2 implementation will account for less than 10 percent of those costs.

In addition to the findings of the project, the King report includes a description of the model, definitions of parameters, the model’s equations, analysis of the data submitted by participants, analysis of costs for various alternatives, a background paper used in preparing default values (prepared by Richard W. Boss, Information Systems Consultants), and recommendations for future model development.

Alternatives for Future Library Catalogs: A Cost Model,by Robert R.V. Wiederkehr, is available from King Research, Inc., 6000 Executive Blvd., Rockville, MD 20852, for $12, plus $3 postage and handling. ■■

ACQUISITIONS ALERT

Frank Gille, and his son Michael Gille, are represented by forty-five imprints on a list compiled by the ALA Bookdealer-Library Relations Committee, which receives complaints about publishing practices. Frank Gille was indicted in June 1980 on several counts of mail fraud and one count of interstate transportation of stolen property; his mail order publishing business continues while litigation is under way.

The federal indictment cites mail order sales of various reference books, among them: Encyclopedia of Indians of the Americas; Encyclopedia of Computers and Data Processing; Encyclopedia of Indians of Canada; World Encyclopedia of Black People; Encyclopedia of the United States; International Dictionary of Prominent Physicians; International Dictionary of Artists.

Frank and Michael Gille are U.S. publishers known to solicit advance payment for purchase orders. The Committee urges that libraries exercise care when paying in advance for materials, especially when large amounts of money are involved or substantial discounts are offered for prepayment. For a fuller discussion of the Committee’s recommendations, see “The Pre-payment Dilemma: A Consumer’s Guide,’’ American Libraries, November, 1977, pp. 571-572.

Lists of Gille imprints and addresses are available from the Resources and Technical Services Division, ALA, 50 E. Huron, Chicago, IL 60611; (312) 944-6780.

For additional information, please contact Marion T. Reid, Library, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803; (504) 388-8620. ■■

BIBLIOGRAPHIC INSTRUCTION “THINK TANK:” CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Up to seven people will brainstorm on the future of bibliographic instruction and present their findings and recommendations to participants at the end of the 1981 ACRL Bibliographic Instruction Section Preconference on Library Instruction in San Francisco, June 25-26, 1981. The seven will be selected from nominations received by the preconference planning committee by November 1. They will be exempt from preconference registration fees.

Individuals nominated should have demonstrated achievement in research, planning and implementation, or publication and scholarship germane to the development of bibliographic instruction.

Nominations should include the nominee’s achievements and the nominator’s name and address, and should be sent by November 1 to Anne N. Seeley, Chair, ACRL/BIS 1981 Preconference Planning Committee, J. Henry Meyer Memorial Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. ■■