ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Young

The University of Dubuque has receiveda gift from university trustee Charles C. Myers and his wife Romona to expand the Charles C. Myers Library—just months after the new structure was dedicated. Ground was broken on the new facility in September 1999, at which time the Myers made a $5 million commitment. Now they have committed an additional gift to the expansion to provide a classroom flanked by seminar rooms, eight individual study rooms, two additional group study rooms, a fireplace, and additional shelving to accommodate the library’s expanding collection. Myers is the president of the Omaha- based Myers Group, with interests in aviation, real estate, golf, and fast foods.

Dominican University has received a$10,000 grant from Ameritech to make 150- year-old documents available online. The Rebecca Crown Library is in the process of scanning the music and researching other information like composers, important headlines of the times, and personal stories. These materials will be placed on a Web site that not only makes the music available, but also puts it in a political, social, and cultural context. The project will take about 12 months to complete.

New York University (NYU) has receivedtwo major gifts—$10 million from Mamdouha “Dodo” Bobst, widow of Elmer Holmes Bobst, whose gift in the late 1960s created the NYU Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, and $3.5 million from NYU alumni Kevin and Madeline Brine— to assist the university in the modernization and physical renewal of its central library. Bobst’s gift will enable the initial phase of the renewal project, including updating the Mamdouha S. Bobst Gallery. The gift from the Brines will create the Madeline and Kevin Brine Reading Room, a contemporary and technologically advanced reading room on the lower level of the library. The refurbishment plan also will focus on the renovation of reader spaces; transition of the Aveiy Fisher Center for Music and Media into a state-of-the- art facility; redesign of the space for special collections; and improved reader seating and access to electronic information on all floors.

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions,C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e-mail: ayoung@ala.org.

Columbia University has received $143,990from the New York State Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials for a two-year cooperative project to microfilm approximately 1,560 brittle business serial volumes published in New York City since 1870. Columbia is managing the project and the New York Public Library is contributing volumes to fill out incomplete runs. Among the titles to be microfilmed are Chain Store Age, Daily Metal Trade, Financial Review, and Daily Financial News. Columbia also received $67,900 for a one-year cooperative project to photocopy brittle reference materials. Columbia is managing the project and contributing approximately 40 volumes amounting to more than 36,000 pages. The New York Public Library and the University of Rochester are contributing another 100 volumes.

The University of North CarolinaatChapelHill’s School of Information and Library Science, in partnership with the University of Illinois, has received $250,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ “National Leadership Grants for Libraries” program for research on Web-based plant identification. The 18-month grant will support the “Illinois-North Carolina Collaborative Environment for Botanical Resources,” a project that seeks to make research data available online.

Indiana University's Digital LibraryProgram, in conjunction with the Film and Television Documentation Center at the State University of New York at Albany (SUNY), has received a $239,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize a film literature index and publish it on the Web. The project will make available in digital format of the Film Literature Index, which has been published by SUNY since 1973.

The University of Arkansas UniversityLibraries has received a $28-million gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation of Bentonville, Arkansas. The gift will enable the libraries to support the increased demands presented by a new honors college and a strengthened and enlarged graduate school. Of the $28 million, $23 million will be dedicated to an endowment for acquisitions and the remaining $5 million will be used for an acquisition fund.

Acquisitions

A historical collection of books and journals from Germany, primarily medical texts in the field of otorhinolaryngology (the study of the ear, nose, and throat), has been acquired by the UCLA Libraiy. The materials were originally in the private libraiy of Dr. Caesar Hirsch, a specialist in the field, who was forced to leave all his belongings behind when he and his family fled Germany in 1933. The collection comprises 191 book titles and 37 journal titles (filling 733 bound volumes) in a number of languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Most were published in tire first three decades of the 20th century, although there are rare texts from the 1800s and earlier.

The Cecily Brownstone Collection ofAmerican Cookery has been acquired by New York University (NYU) and will become the cornerstone of the NYU Libraries Food Studies collection. The Brownstone collection contains more than 8,000 cookbooks (many of them historical and rare), 5,000 pamphlets, and her personal correspondence with food writers and cookbook authors. In a career that spanned more than 40 years until her retirement in 1986, Brownstone, now92, was food editor of the Associated Press and of Parents Magazine.

A comprehensive collection of booksand other publications by the poet and novelist James Dickey (1923—97) has been acquired by the University of South Carolina (USC). Dickey taught at USC for three decades as poet-in-residence and First Carolina professor of English. The collection comprises 436 first editions, limited editions, proofs, other books, and periodical issues containing Dickey items, many with personal inscriptions, covering the range of his career.

The Barbara Harbach Collection hasbeen acquired by Wilmington College. Harbach is a noted composer, performer, recording artist, and professor of music. She is also the founder, publisher, and editor-in- chief of Vivace Press, which promotes underrepresented composers (mainly women) by publishing music scores, producing CDs on the Hester Park label, and issuing the Women of Note Quarterly journal. The Harbach Collection consists of Harbach’s complete published compositions and recorded works and performances, as well as a substantial portion of the catalog of Vivace Press and a complete run of Women of Note Quarterly.

A major collection of the works of authorW. Somerset Maugham has been acquired by Boston University. The Loren and Frances Rothschild-W. Somerset Maugham Collection contains hundreds of letters chronicling Maugham’s personal and intellectual life, every significant first edition of the author’s novels, short stories, and the original manuscripts of The Gentleman in the Paulour and The Painted Veil. Also included are personal documents and ephemera; audiovisual material; photographs and art of the author; thousands of additional manuscripts and typescripts, page proofs, and galleys dating from 1906 to 1953; and more than 200 periodicals containing the first publication of many of Maugham’s works.

The papers of the late Dr. William

Kaufman, a leader in the field of vitamin therapy research, and the papers of his wife, Charlotte Schnee Kaufman, have been acquired by the University of Michigan (UM). Kaufman, who earned both his Ph.D. and M.D. at UM in the 1930s, is best known for his research in the 1940s and 1950s on the use of Niacinamide (a form of vitamin B3) to treat osteoarthritis. Kaufman published more than 60 papers in scientific and medical journals mainly dealing with arthritis, nutrition, food allergy, and psychosomatic medicine. He also published 25 articles for a general audience in such magazines as Coro- netanà. McCall’s. Charlotte Kaufman, a 1938 graduate of UM, acted as his research assistant for many years and later served as founder and executive director of the Family Life Film Center of Connecticut, where she pioneered techniques for using films followed by discussion. The archive consists of 30 feet of material. ■