ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Grants and Acquisitions

Hugh Thompson

Arkansas Tech Univer- sity, Russellville, Arkansas has received a grant of $12.4 million from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for the construction of the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center. The gift will fund construction, fur- nishings, and equipment for a three-story facility of ap- proximately 77,000 square feet. Services to be provided will include those of the tra- ditional collection-based library as well as leading-edge, technology-based informational and instructional services with worldwide linkages and accessibility.

Duke University's Perkins Library has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation of Richmond, Virginia, to improve the student computer and reading rooms, to provide new work areas, and to expand stack space. The grant launches a long-term plan to enhance the library and its collections.

East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, has received a grant of $500,000 from the Ford Family Foundation in Oregon, a gift made possible by 1930 graduate Hallie Brown Ford. The funds will be used to furnish and equip the new 60,000-square-foot Linscheid Library now under construction. A stipulation of the grant requires the university to raise $250,000 in matching funds for computer enhancement projects on campus.

Louisiana State University Libraries’ Special Collections Division has received a grant of $5,075 to support conservation and exhibition of its copy of Edward Lear’s Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (London, 1830–1832). The funding, which was awarded by the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, will support de-acidification and preservation of the 42 hand-colored lithographs in Lear’s portfolio, which is part of the E. A. Mcllhenny Natural History Collection.

Oklahoma State University Libraries have received a grant of almost $217,000 from an Oklahoma foundation to fund Phase III of the Oklahoma Research and Community Library (ORACL) Network. The ORACL network uses state-of-the-art software, PACLink, to give libraries access to each other’s online catalogs and databases and makes them appear as one catalog to the user. With Phase III, a total of 11 Oklahoma libraries and systems will be connected.

The University of Maryland at College Park (UMCP) Libraries have been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Summerlee Foundation of Dallas to preserve and make more accessible the papers of the well-known author Katherine Anne Porter, who characterized herself as “the first and only serious writer that Texas has produced.” During the 1960s Porter donated her entire personal library and much of her vast collection of papers to UMCP Libraries. The Porter Papers are a rich source for the study of Texas history and the literary, intellectual, social, and political history of this century. Funds from the Summerlee grant will enable the libraries to reprocess the papers so that a portion of them can be microfilmed.

The University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, Library has received a sixth consecutive grant from the International Council for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Consulate General in Minneapolis to purchase materials relevant to Canadian studies. The grants, which include a matching component, have allowed the libraries to acquire Canadian publications valued at more than $30,000.

Acquisitions

A photographic collection on the history of Washington, D.C., “Washington, D.C., Then and Now: The Photographic Legacy of Charles Suddarth Kelly,” has been acquired by George Washington University’s Gelman Library. The collection includes a series of phoOctober 1996/605 tographs taken by J. Harry Shannon, a journalist who began working at Washington’s Sunday Star in 1890 and used the photos as illustrations for his Rambler column, which he wrote between 1912 and 1927. More than 230 of Shannon’s original glass negatives are in the collection. Also included are more than 500 postcards, some rare, with street scenes and buildings and a large concentration of photos from the period 1898 through 1918. Kelly’s original photographs, taken in the late 1970s and early 1980s, show the Old Post Office Building, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian Castle, and the U.S. Capitol.

Historical records documenting the creation of New England’s oldest and largest provider of AIDS services have been acquired by the Northeastern University Library’s Special Collections Department. The records, donated by the AIDS Action Committee, date to the committee’s founding in 1983 and document the social, economic, and political barriers that served to impede society’s response to the AIDS epidemic.

The library and archives of Southern California fine printer Ward Ritchie have been acquired by the University of California, Los Angeles’ William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. Included are books by François-Louis Schmied (1873–1941), the French art deco book designer and woodcut artist. Ritchie apprenticed for a year in Schmied’s atelier during the latter’s most productive period. The collection gives insights into Ritchie’s working methods as well as his associations with Merle Armitage, Lawrence Clark Powell, and other figures in the Southwest book scene at mid-century.

A rare first edition copy of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel has been donated to the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wolfe’s alma mater. The university’s Thomas Wolfe Collection includes more than 15,000 manuscripts, books, and other items, and a replica of a bedroom from Wolfe’s childhood home in Asheville. The inscribed copy, which Wolfe presented to his mother, is dated October 15, 1929, three days before the official publication date. Included with the gift are five other volumes—three copies of Of Time and the River and two copies of From Death to Morning, which were inscribed for the author’s mother and sisters.

Photo credit: Dan Sears, UNC-CH News Services

Thomas Wolfe’s inscription to his mother in a first edition of his Look Homeward, Angel at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

A major collection of books printed in the 20th century, including materials published in history, politics, and foreign affairs, has been donated to the University of North Dakota’s Chester Fritz Library. The gift, which was made by Donald Augustin, an alumnus of the university, numbers more than 10,000 volumes.

The Schαntz/Russell Family Papers, five linear feet of archival materials documenting the lives of two families from 1840 to 1960 in Waterloo County, Ontario, have been acquired by the University of Waterloo Library. More than 1,000 letters provide insight into the lives of local pioneer families, and diaries, daybooks, business ledgers, and correspondence of Tobias Shantz highlight his career as a nursery-stock salesman and itinerant book agent. Included in the more than 800 monographs are examples of 19th-century Canadiana, many ornamental Victorian publisher’s bindings, books on horticulture, early school texts, scarce local imprints, and a large selection of Victorian literature. ■

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