ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Cen- ter at the University of Texas at Austinhas re- ceived a $105,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to provide funding for nine short-term fellowships to be offered each year for the next three years. The one- to-three-month fellowships will be offered to scholars engaged in post-doctoral or equivalent research based on the center’s collections, who will then present a lecture on their work.

The Lilly Endowment has awardedcompetitive grants of up to $150,000 each to nine independent Midwestern colleges and universities to improve campus climates in a concerted effort to attract and graduate more minority students. Receiving awards in this second round of the grant competition were: College of St. Francis (Illinois); Wabash College (Indiana); Grinnell College and Luther College (Iowa); Park College (Missouri); Cleveland Institute of Art (Ohio); and Cardinal Stritch College, Marquette University, and Northland College (Wisconsin). Increased support of the curriculum through the purchase of additional library materials is a component of many of the recipients’ projects.

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library of Johns Hopkins Universityhas been awarded a $138,400 grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the project “Colonial Encounters in the Chesapeake: The Natural World of Europeans, Africans, and American Indians.” Focusing on the Chesapeake watershed region, the program explores the interaction between inhabitants and the ecology of North America from the late 17th to the early 19th century. The program will consist of public lectures, an exhibit, a book, a package of educational materials, and a noncredit course offered through the Odyssey program.

NEH also awarded Auburn University $235,000 to support reading and discussion programs about the American experience in World War II. The program is entitled “World War II: A Time Remembered, Warfronts/Homefront.”

Two grants totallingnearly one million dollars have been received by pub- licly supported universities in Louisiana to support li- brary automation. The Loui- siana Board of Regents awarded a Louisiana Educa- tion Quality Support Fund grant of $824,812 to be used over a two-year period by six publicly supported insti- tutions to create a statewide online catalog built on the NOTIS software licensed to Louisiana State University and A&M College. Participating universities are: Louisiana Tech University, Louisiana State University and A&M College, Nicholls State University, Northeast Louisiana University, University of New Orleans, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

The second grant, a U.S. Department of Education Title II-D technology grant for $162,469, will enable Delgado Community College, LSU at Alexandria, LSU at Shreveport, McNeese State University, and Northwestern State University to link with LSU’s NOTIS system and access the statewide network as it develops. These grants are the first steps in joining the universities in the state into a statewide online catalog.

The University of Manitoba Librariesreceived $100,000 from professor Emeritus J. B. Rudnyckyj, founder and former head of the Slavic Studies Department, to establish a research fund that will assist in the acquisition of materials for Slavic Studies.

Also, former professor Jack Allen donated $10,000 to establish a research fund to support the acquisition of materials in the fields of physics, architecture, home economics, art and design, and Winnipeg history.

The University of Minnesota wasawarded a $133,058 U.S. Department of Education, Title II-D grant to establish a model Automated Cartographic Information Center (ACIC) within the John R. Borchert Map Library. The ACIC will be dedicated to developing innovative approaches to providing library users with direct access to locally owned and remotely accessed digital cartographic and spatial information. Six workstations will be equipped with the latest in computer hardware and a range of mapping software and geographic information systems to provide access to, and manipulation of, digital information.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hillwill film 1,400 deteriorated pamphlets on African-Americans, transportation history, social conditions, and travel as part of a $2.4 million program to film brittle books in 15 libraries in the southeast. The program is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and administered by the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET).

The Merrill Library at Utah State Universityreceived a $10,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to fund a project to preserve and make accessible fieldwork discs and reel-to-reel tapes made by Alta Fife and her late husband Austin Fife, both noted Utah folklorists. The project will preserve 199 fieldwoik acetate discs and 98 reel-to-reel tapes.

Virginia Commonwealth University(VCU) received 200 shares of Apple Computer stock valued at $10,400 from VCU retired faculty member Carroll Hormachea. Hormachea, who chaired the Library Advisory Committee for many years and is a member of the VCU Friends of the Library Board, gave the stock to the libraries’ Endowment for the 21st Century in memory of his wife Marion.

The papers of Horton Foote, AcademyAward-winning Texas playwright, author, and filmmaker, have been acquired by the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University. Foote is best known for his screenplays for To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Mercies, and The Trip to Bountiful. The collection fills 110 boxes and ranges from family memorabilia, photos, diaries, and personal correspondence to handwritten drafts of screenplays, typed manuscripts, and awards.

American playwright Adrienne Kennedy'sarchives have been acquired by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Among the archives contents are Kennedy’s earliest dramatic effort Pale Blue Flowers, her mystery novel Deadly Triplets, and her 1987 autobiography People Who Lead to My Plays.

The archives of Morgan MemorialGoodwill Industries, Inc., including publications and records from the Church of All Nations in Boston’s South End, have been given to the Boston University School of Theology Library. The materials cover the period from Goodwill’s beginnings in 1895 through 1990.

Ancient scholarly texts on computerincluding several English translations of the Bible, plus the original in Greek and Hebrew; the works of Goethe in German; several editions of the complete works of Shakespeare; and the Oxford English Dictionary have been acquired by the Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington. The package, known as LETRS, the Library Electronic Text Resource Service, includes special word processing software capable of dealing with foreign languages.

Users must currently come to this site to access files, but campuswide network access is planned. Mark Day, LETRS coordinator, points out some of the new information that is available because of the computerized format. “For example, the Oxford English Dictionary can be searched by language of origin. If you wanted to find all the English words that originated from Albanian or any one of over 500 languages, you could do so. This is something that would be nearly impossible with the printed edition.”

Text files include the complete body of classical Greek literature from Homer up to 500 A.D., and well-known American writers such as Jefferson, Emerson, Twain, and Cather. ■