ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The Crosby Library, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, has recently added to its Crosbyana Collection five new gold records, additional volumes of the original scripts of the Jack Benny radio show, and an oil painting of Bing Crosby by the California artist Anton Jovick.

The library’s Rare Book Collection has acquired Otto Van Veen’s Life of St. Thomas Aquinas‚ published in Antwerp in 1610. The volume is composed of engraved plates illustrating scenes from the saint’s life, each accompanied by a short paragraph of text.

• A nineteenth-century hand printing press, in working condition, has been donated to Stanford University in memory of the late Bruce Bliven, Stanford alumnus, author, and a former editor of the New Republic magazine.

The press, given by the Associates of the Stanford University Libraries, is an improved Albion Press, manufactured about 1860 by Walker Brothers of London. It has already made its debut as a working press at Stanford by producing a keepsake at the time of its presentation to the university.

• The University of Louisville Library has recently acquired a substantial addition to its collection of first editions in mathematics and astronomy from the estate of the late William Marshall Bullitt, former solicitor general of the United States, himself an amateur mathematician.

Combining his usual meticulous approach with characteristic élan, Bullitt challenged Harlow Shapley, G. H. Hardy, and Eric Temple Bell to draft a list of the twenty-five greatest mathematicians of all time—which they did. With the help of his good friend A. S. W. Rosenbach, Bullitt set out to acquire the first editions of the printed works of the twenty-five “greats,” starting with the top three contenders: Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss. Successful in this, he expanded his search to include Apollonius of Perga, Copernicus, Descartes, Diophantus, Einstein, Euclid, Euler, Galilei, Kepler, Pascal, Riemann, and the other names on his list.

After Bullitt’s death, the University Library received (between 1958 and 1960) an initial gift of 100 of the most valuable rarities from the collection. The arrival of the rest of the collection in 1978 showed that Bullitt had collected the principal works of no fewer than sixty “greats” in 370 separate title entries. Notable among the titles are the “Halifax” Principia of Newton (with the author’s holograph corrections on the errata leaf); the first and second editions of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus (1543 and 1566); the Narratio Prima of Rheticus (Danzig, 1540); a near mint copy of the first printed edition of Euclid’s Elements in original Venetian binding (Ratdolt, 1482); first editions of the Bernoulli family; the extant works of the tragic young French genius Evariste Galois; presentation copies to Bullitt of Einstein’s Zur Electrodynamik bewegter Körper (1905) and his Relativitätstheorie (1916); and the 1832-33 Janos & Farkas Bolyai treatises on non- Euclidean geometry, the appendix to which Hal- sted refers to as “the most extraordinary two dozen pages in the history of human thought.”

HARPER’S BOOK DEAL REMEMBERED AT CHICAGO

While on vacation in Germany in 1891, before taking up his duties as first president of the University of Chicago, William Rainey Harper arranged to purchase the complete stock—about 450,000 items—of Calvary and Company, a Berlin antiquarian book dealer.

Harper, who wished to create a great university in the shortest possible time, hoped that his bold move would focus national attention on the new university and bring money, faculty, and students, as well as books, to the south Chicago campus.

Attention it did bring. The New York Times printed a front-page article that described the acquisition as “one of the largest book deals ever consummated in America.”

Although Chicago’s trustees were at first worried that raising money for the purchase would hurt efforts to obtain money for buildings, Harper was able to persuade nine businessmen on the board to contribute $43,000 to buy the books, and the deal was consummated.

A scholar who was being lured to the new faculty wrote to Harper: “You have accomplished the incredible. And the manner of the doing of it is a most hopeful omen; for you have touched the heart and opened the purse of Chicago. …”

The Berlin purchase formed the base of a collection that by 1896 was the second largest held by a university in the United States. “In one stroke, as it were,” says Robert Rosenthal, curator of special collections at the university, “the library had books on many subjects, some of which were not to become academically favored for decades to come.”

In mid-April, the University of Chicago Library opened an exhibition of books and manuscripts from the Berlin Collection to commemorate Harper’s purchase. ■■

All 25 Volumes Are Available For Immediate Delivery

HERE IS SUBJECT-AND-AUTHOR ACCESS TO MORE THAN 400,000 ARTICLES IN THE BACKFILES OF 531 JOURNALS IN HISTORY, POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY.

CRIS —HISTORY, 1838-1974,in eleven hardcover volumes.

More than 180,000 articles from the backfiles ot 234 History journals in the English language have been indexed together and published in 9 casebound cumulative subject index volumes and 2 cumulative author index volumes. Articles were assigned to one or more of 336 hierarchical subject categories, and then computer sorted by keyword under each category to give in-depth specificity.

CRIS —POLITICAL SCIENCE, 1886-1974,in eight hardcover volumes.

This set contains 6 cumulative subject volumes and 2 cumulative author volumes. Coverage includes more than 115,000 articles on such topics as Politics, Public Administration and International Relations, from the backfiles of 179 English Language journals. Articles were assigned to one or more of 95 hierarchical subject categories.

CRIS —SOCIOLOGY, 1895-1974,in six hardcover volumes.

From the retrospective collections of 118 English Language Sociology journals, some 110,000 articles have been indexed and their entries interfiled in five casebound folio-size cumulative subject volumes, and one cumulative author volume. Articles were assigned to one or more of 87 hierarchical subject categories.

Each Volume Contains an “Introduction & User’s Guide” By Evan Farber

AND NOW…

more than 1 million BOOK REVIEWS which appeared in 472 of these same journals have been indexed by author and title in a separate fifteen-volume CRIS Index Set,

COMBINED RETROSPECTIVE INDEX TO BOOK REVIEWS IN SCHOLARLY JOURNALS, 1886-1974

Evan Farber, Librarian of Earlham College and author of the standard reference work, Classified List of Periodicals tor the College Library, is the chief compiler of this new set. As he points out, "Our set will complement existing indexes of book reviews because the majority of its entries have never been indexed anywhere but in their own journals. “Book Review Digest, for instance, is retrospective to 1905 but quite weak in its coverage of scholarly journals. “Meanwhile, the new indexes which recently began to cover large numbers of scholarly journals are not retrospective.

"Therefore, this substantial gap in coverage can only be filled by an index which is both retrospective and more thorough in its coverage of scholarly journals — namely, our Combined Retrospective Index.”

USE THE COUPON ON THE RIGHT TO ORDER THIS SET AND THE OTHER CRIS INDEXES

SEND FOR FREE BROCHURES LISTING THE JOURNAL

COMBINED RETROSPECTIVE INDEX SETS

CRIS,

THE REFERENCE PREFERENCE OF THE RESEARCH MAJORITY,

… is now complete and at work in hundreds of undergraduate libraries in the United States and overseas.

By sheer weight of numbers, undergraduates constitute the “research majority" in academic libraries. By eliminating hundreds of unproductive searches in short-term or single-title indexes, CRIS sets have become the favorite reference tools of those students who want to build bibliographies fast.

“extremely popular with both students and faculty members”

Typical of comments from library users is this quote from Roy S. Barnard, Serials Librarian, Kearney State College Library, Kearney, Nebraska. In a letter dated January 30, 1979, he wrote “While at JUL. (Joint University Libraries, Nashville, Tennessee) I became familiar with your CRIS-History and found it very helpful in my work with their History Department. Because it was so convenient and easy-to-use, it was extremely popular with both students and faculty members.”

THE GREAT LEAP BACKWARD IN RETROSPECTIVE INDEXING

TITLES COVERED IN ALL FOUR CRIS INDEX SETS

AWARDS

• Ralph E. McCoy, now completing a year as interim director of libraries, University of Georgia, Athens, was awarded the Distinguished Service Award by Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, at their commencement on May 12.

McCoy had served for more than twenty years as director of the libraries and later as dean of library affairs at Southern Illinois University. When he began his work at Carbondale in 1955, the university library held approximately 160,000 volumes; at the time of his retirement in 1976, the library had grown to nearly 1.5 million volumes, making it the forty-second largest university library in the nation.

GRANTS

• The Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, Illinois, has received two grants from the Ford Foundation. The center will use the first grant of $19,500 to draw up plans for new acquisition programs covering East Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe and to make plans for expanding the existing African and Latin American programs to include current materials. The center will use the second grant of $21,166 to study the feasibility of constructing a national union catalog of East Asian monographic materials.

• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $35,000 grant to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The grant will provide start-up and operating funds for the museum s library to join the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN). Under a plan designed by Jack Perry Brown, head librarian of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the art libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will join with Cleveland in participating in the RLIN system.

• The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has received a new $1-million grant to support the development of a national cooperative network of research libraries. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York has awarded $1 million to RLG, bringing foundation support for RLG’s development program to $2 million since the first of the year. RLG has already received grants totaling $1 million from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

• The School of Library Science, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, has received two grants from the U.S. Office of Education. The first, a research and demonstration grant for $99,806, will support a project entitled “A Regional Investigation of the Citizen’s Information Needs in New England.”

The second grant is for two library training doctoral fellowships. The fellowships will be used to encourage qualified minorities and women to pursue the doctor of arts program in library administration. The fellowship period can begin either with the fall semester, September 1979, or with the spring semester, January 1980. More information can be obtained from Fellowship Project Director, Dr. Ching-chih Chen, School of Library Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115; (617) 738-2224.

• The Japan Foundation has awarded a $5,000 grant to the Asian Collection of the University of Texas General Libraries, Austin. The grant will be used to purchase English- and Japaneselanguage monographs on Japanese culture, history, and literature. The Asian Collection’s holdings include approximately 135,000 volumes on South Asia and East Asia.

MEETINGS

August 27-September 1: The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions will hold its forty-fifth Congress and Council Meeting in Copenhagen. The theme of the conference will be “Library Legislation.” The program will consist of two theme sessions (the first focusing on library legislation and the second on copyright) and approximately 170 planned meetings of the eight divisions and twenty-eight sections and other specialized groups.

For registration information, contact: 45th IFLA Congress, c/o DIS Congress Service, 3, Knabrostraede, DK-1210, Copenhagen K, Denmark.

September 27-28: Wisconsin Association of Academic Librarians will hold its fall conference at the Quality Inn, Madison, Wisconsin. Conference theme is “Evaluation of Library Services,” featuring: Thomas Galvin, University of Pittsburgh; Michael Gorman, AACR 2; Arthur Tannenbaum, New York University; Carolyn Snyder, Indiana University; Jeff Gardiner, ARL office; and others. Contact: Linda Olson or John J. Jax, Pierce Library, University of Wisconsin- Stout, Menomonie, WI 54751; (715) 232-2128.

October 12-14: The North East Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies will hold its Third Annual Meeting at the University of Toronto. For information, write Patricia Bruckmann, Trinity College, Toronto, ON M5S 1H8, or Brian Cor- man, Erindale College, Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6.

October 31: The Archives-Libraries Committee of the African Studies Association will hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the twenty-second annual conference of the African Studies Association at the Los Angeles Hilton Hotel. Topics on the agenda include discussions of bibliographical needs and cataloging problems and a panel on the subject “African Government Archives and the Expatriate Researcher.” Contact Elizabeth A. Widenmann, Herbert Lehman Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.

MISCELLANY

• On Charter Day, April 5, the General Library at the University of California, Berkeley, celebrated the acquisition of its five millionth volume, A Companion to California, written by James D. Hart, professor of English and director of the Bancroft Library. In ceremonies commemorating the founding of the university, Erich S. Gruen, professor of history and chair of the Academic Senate Library Committee, on behalf of the faculty, presented the five millionth volume to Joseph A. Rosenthal, acting university librarian. Among the speakers at these activities were Peter Jay, British ambassador to the United States, and Kingman Brewster, Jr., United States ambassador to the United Kingdom.

• The Consortium of Rhode Island Academic and Research Libraries, an organization of thirteen libraries based in Providence, is now incorporated under the laws of Rhode Island. The consortium has already begun cooperative programs in interlibrary loan services and acquisitions. It is planning a union list of serials and other library holdings, a statewide directory of the special collections and services of the member libraries, and computerized bibliographic search services.

Members of the consortium are Barrington College, Brown University, Bryant College, Providence College, Providence Public Library, Rhode Island College, Rhode Island Historical Society, Rhode Island Junior College, Rhode Island School of Design, Roger Williams College, Salve Regina (the Newport College), United States Naval War College, and the University of Rhode Island.

The president of the consortium is Earl R. Schwass, U.S. Naval War College Library. ■■

DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Nominations and applications are invited for the position of DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES at State University of New York at Albany, one of four university centers within the state-wide SUNY system. The University Libraries, a member of ARL, serve a campus community of 14,500 students and 2200 faculty and staff. The collections include 940,000 catalogued volumes and support a wide range of doctoral and research programs. The University Libraries have a staff of 151 FTE, an acquisitions budget of $1,116,000, an automated circulation system, and an on-line computer based reference service. Memberships include SUNY/OCLC network, Center for Research Libraries, and the Capital District Library Council.

Responsibilities:The Director reports to the Vice President for Academic Affairs and is responsible for the administration of the library, its staff, and its services; represents the University Libraries' interests at a variety of campus and external levels; serves as a member of the Senate University Library Council and the University Council of Deans.

Desired Qualifications:Proven record of leadership; MLS from an ALA accredited program; additional graduate training (doctorate preferred); substantial administrative experience; familiarity with the operation in large academic or research libraries; familiarity with modern library technology; ability to relate and communicate effectively with library staff, faculty, students, and administration; evidence of significant professional and scholarly attainment.

Position Open:August 1, 1979

Salary:Competitive Nominations and applications should be received by September 29, 1979.

Address replies to:

Dr. Ricardo Nirenberg Chairman, Search Committee c/o Director of Personnel, AD 319 The State University of New York at Albany 1400 Washington Avenue Albany, NY 12222

SUNYA is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Applications from minorities, women and handicapped are especially welcome.

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY