ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Acquisitions

The library of noted feminist scholarBettina Aptheker has been acquired by the University of California, Santa Cruz. Aptheker, a professor of women’s studies at UCSC and a leading scholar in the field, served as chair of the Board of Studies in Women’s Studies, was a prominent student activist in the 1960s, and was an organizer of the Free Speech Movement. She is the author of several books, including Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989). Appraised at more than $30,000, the Aptheker collection includes more than 2,000 books, periodicals, and pamphlets. The gift establishes the Women’s Studies Library, a noncirculating special collection of books and journals that is available to scholars, faculty, staff, students, and the public, at UCSC’s Kresge College.

The papers of Harold E. Edgerton havebeen acquired by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Best known for his work photographing extremely rapid events—his photos were published in, among other places, Life Magazine—Edgerton came to MIT as a graduate student, and subsequently served as professor of electrical engineering, head of the Strobe Lab, Institute Professor, and Institute Professor Emeritus until his death in 1990. The 45-cubic-foot manuscript collection includes unpublished autobiographical fragments, correspondence, blueprints, writings, and speeches, as well as Edgerton’s laboratory notebooks from 1930 to 1990, which document in detail innovations in stroboscopic photography.

The papers of British poet and novelistLawrence Durrell have been acquired by McMaster University library. Best known as the author of the Alexandria Quartet, consisting of four novels, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea, Durrell spent most of his writing life in the Mediterranean and Indian outposts of the already fading British Empire. Included in the acquisition are 15 letters and postcards dated from 1944 to 1976, manuscripts of some 50 poems, the carbon of a letter from Durrell to Henry Miller (1942), and inscribed copies of two of Durrell’s books, Cities; Plants and People and On Seeming to Presume.

The collections of two legendary bandmasters, Merle Evans and Lynn L. Sams, have been acquired by the University of Maryland at College Park’s Music Library.

Merle Evans was bandmaster for “The Greatest Show on Earth,” the Ringling Bros, and Barnum and Bailey circus for 50 years, from 1919 to his retirement in 1969. In this capacity, Evans cued the entire circus performance, deciding what music would accompany each act. The Merle Evans Collection, which is a gift from Merle’s sister, Juanita Evans, contains letters, awards, programs, photographs, band music, posters, and memorabilia relating to Evans’ career with the circus.

Lynn L. Sams was a bandmaster of a very different kind. The inspiration for Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, Sams began his career selling horns and drums to high schools and later devoted full-time to organizing high school bands. The Lynn Sams Collection consists of 30 boxes of manuscripts, publications, recordings, and memorabilia.

Over 900 rare books and periodicalsdating from the 17th century were acquired by the National Library of Canada from Montreal scholar-bibliographer, Lawrence M. Lande. Included are 635 French official publications dating from 1607 to 1809, focusing on commerce and finance, the fur trade, cod and whale fisheries, and the colonization of the French Empire in North America. Also in the collection are 193 rare books dealing mainly with economic policy and the practices of the major European colonial powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly those of France. ■