ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the field

ACQUISITIONS

•The Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts, has acquired the largest and most comprehensive collection ever assembled of books and manuscripts by and about novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). This collection of over 8,000 books, pamphlets, periodicals, prints, photographs, and manuscripts was gathered over a period of 30 years by C.E. Frazer Clark of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, editor of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal. Included are rare first editions, limited editions, popular modern editions, books inscribed by the author or owned by him, and Hawthorne’s very rare first book, Fanshawe, published anonymously in 1828. Another treasure is a large glass-plate photographic negative of the novelist taken by Civil War photographer Matthew Brady.

• Ohio State University,Columbus, has acquired the Jack London Collection assembled by George H. Tweney, of Seattle. Among its 900 items are 237 book printings of London’s writings and 111 issues of various magazines containing first appearances of his stories. Of the 73 first editions and variants, 14 are signed, presentation or association copies, and many are complete with very rare dust jackets. The collection also has 83 bibliographies, biographies and critical works; over 230 pamphlets, broadsides, or other ephemeral pieces; many photographs; and additional materials, including a typescript of Jack London: A Bibliography, compiled by Hensley C. Woodbridge, John London, and Tweney. It was the Tweney Collection, gathered over a period of 50 years, that served as the basis for many of the entries in that bibliography.

•The University of Illinois has been given a private collection of books on Chinese library administration once owned by Alfred Kaimang Chiu, the first librarian of the Harvard-Yenching Library at Harvard University, 1931-1965. The books, 240 volumes in Chinese, 170 volumes in English, as well as manuscripts, pamphlets, and copies of essays on Chinese economics, were donated by Chiu’s widow.

GRANTS

•Cornell University’sMartin P. Catherwood Library of Industrial and Labor Relations has received an HEA Title II-C grant of $240,000 to convert all its catalog records to machine-readable form and add them to the RLIN and OCLC databases.

•Lehigh University,Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has been awarded a $500,000 challenge grant by the Kresge Foundation toward the $10.8 million expansion of the university’s Mart Science and Engineering Library. Prior to receiving the challenge grant $7.3 million had been committed to the library project. The new library building, for which ground was broken in May, represents a major expansion of existing facilities.

•The Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, has been granted a federal appropriation of $20.4 million to create a national prototype for the biomedical library of the 21st century. The university will recieve $14.5 million to expand its existing library by 50,000 square feet, to upgrade the current collection, to assure its compatability with existing computer systems, and to create a Biomedical Information Communications Center that will utilize new technology in information transfer. An additional $5.9 million will be used for research and development. The new facility will provide for computer teleconferencing among health professionals in the Pacific Northwest and will encourage exploration into new teaching methods and new communications techniques.

• Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, New Jersey, have been awarded $6,590 by the Guggenheim Foundation to support the arrangement and description of the Bobert Ardrey papers and the editorial and publication costs associated with the production of a collection guide with indexes. The papers include correspondence from those active in anthropology and sociology, from readers of his books African Genesis, The Territorial Imperative, and The Social Contract, and copies of Ardrey’s own letters.

• The University of Texas, Austin, has been awarded an HEA Title II-C grant of $180,998 to catalog approximately 10,000 Latin American monographs. The bibliographic information will be added to the OCLC database.

•Washington UniversityLibraries, St. Louis, have been awarded an HEA Title II-C grant of $205,168 in support of their Modern Literature Collection. The funds will be used to acquire contemporary literary manuscripts of selected American authors, to complete cataloging of the papers, and to prepare a published guide to the collection.

NEWS NOTES

•The American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, has established a research and education program on the history of the book in American culture. Boston University history professor David D. Hall has been appointed chairman of the program, which will employ the resources of the AAS library. Scheduled activities include an annual lecture series, workshops and seminars or postdoctoral scholars and advanced graduate students, conferences, research projects, publications, and residential fellowships. The AAS program will link traditional bibliographic research on the book as artifact with the French approach to the book in the context of economic, social, and cultural history. For more information about the program, contact the Society, 185 Salisbury Street, Worcester, MA 01609-1634; (617) 755-5221. ■ ■