ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The University of Arizona Lihrary has acquired the Pierre Lecomte du Nouy Collection. The gift by Madame Lecomte du Nouy of the great French biophysicist’s library includes scarce, original editions of the works of contemporary scientists and thinkers, editions of his own works, his manuscripts, and many volumes inscribed to him. Included in the collection, and especially appropriate for Arizona, are his personal memorabilia including many artifacts of the Navajo and Hopi Indians such as baskets, plaques, and rugs.

The collection of rare books includes first and important editions of books by such names in the history of science as Bacon, Darwin, Descartes, Lavoisier, Pascal, Renan, Voltaire, and others, totaling some eighty titles. This acquisition supplements the Special Collections’ rapidly growing history of science collection.

In addition to the classical works, there are 100 additional volumes all presented and inscribed to Lecomte du Nouy by his scientific colleagues. Included are works by Remy Colin, Robert Millikan, Jean Rostand, and Albert Einstein. Completing the book collection are copies of Lecomte du Nouy’s own voluminous works, which range from early plays through his scientific writing to the famous culminating work of his career, Human Destiny.

His manuscripts are a significant part of the collection. There are manuscripts of his youthful plays and short stories, extensive holdings of his writing in manuscript, his experimental notebooks, and the manuscripts of his scientific and philosophical books. Also, there are personal and professional correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, reprints of his articles, and ephemera.

Special Collections plans an exhibit and catalog commemorating the addition of this important collection.

• The Georgia Southern College Library, Statesboro, announces the gift to the library of over 200 letters describing military and civilian activities of two members of New York’s Cone family. The letters were given to the library by Kathleen Knopp Hawver of Edgewater, Florida, in memory of her mother, Kathleen Cone Knopp. Kathleen Hawver’s son, Greg Hawver, attended Georgia Southern College.

The first group of letters are from Spencer Houghton Cone, a prominent Baptist minister in the early nineteenth century who did much to reconcile the northern and southern factions of the denomination. Prior to his ministerial activities, S. H. Cone was a noted actor and a playwright who also saw action during the War of 1812. The library has over sixty-three of S. H. Cone’s letters—most written during the period 1810-14. These letters are mainly love letters written to Cone’s future wife, but they also include information on everyday life of the period and are valuable as social history.

The second group of letters, 102 in all, are from a son of S. H. Cone, Spencer Wallace Cone, to his wife. S. W. Cone served with McClellan’s army at the beginning of the Civil War and raised his own regiment, the Clinton Guard, 61st New York Volunteers. He was commissioned a colonel and rose to the rank of general. The letters discuss military engagements, troop strengths, and day-to-day company affairs.

• The Scarsdale Friends Meeting of Scarsdale, New York, presented to the Library of UNION Theological Seminary in New York City a gift of some fifty items, mostly seventeenth- century, relating to the history and piety of the Friends, or Quakers. This gift, originally presented in 1973, has been fully cataloged and is now available to researchers. The Scarsdale Friends Meeting Collection is housed together with the McAlpin Collection, a library of about 18,000 titles, chiefly of the seventeenth century and related to British history and theology. A supplementary volume to the printed catalog of the McAlpin Collection is in advanced stages of planning. The original five-volume McAlpin Catalogue ended publication in 1930.

• A gift of $10,000 has been received by the Harvard College Library from the family and friends of the late John Bonk, former Toronto representative of the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Fund. The gift will support the establishment of two John Bonk Memorial Funds for Ukrainian Emigre Books: the Bonk Fund for European Emigre Ucrainica, to be applied toward the purchase of Ukrainian-language books published in Galicia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany, and other European centers of Ukrainian emigration between 1918 and 1950; and the Bonk Fund for American Ucrainica, for the purchase of Ukrainian books published in the U.S. and Canada since the end of the nineteenth century.

In addition to the gift of money, Halyna Bonk has donated to Harvard some 800 volumes in Ukrainian emigre literature from her late husband’s personal library.

The Bonk Funds are the first to be established in the College Library under the Harvard Ukrainian Studies Program as part of a larger campaign to raise a $100,000 endowment for the purchase and processing of Ukrainian books.—HUL Notes.

• The private library of Stuart A. Gallacher, alumnus of the University of Utah and professor emeritus at Michigan State University, was recently given to the Marriott Library, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, by his widow, Florence Gallacher, a Friend of the Libraries.

Consisting of over 600 hardbound books, the collection includes a comprehensive folklore library as well as a number of valuable and rare editions, such as La Fleur des Proverbes Français by M. D. Duplesis (Paris, 1851), Matinees Senoises ou Proverbes Français (Paris, 1789), A Compleat Collection of English Proverbs by Rev. J. Ray (London, 1768), and Dictionnaire des Proverbes Français by Pierre de la Mesangére (Paris, 1823).

• Merle U. Fox, senior assistant librarian at DuBois campus, Pennsylvania State University, is pleased to announce two invaluable gifts of materials in fisheries and wildlife. These library gifts will strongly support resident instruction and the two-year course in wildlife technology. The collection’s value is increased because many items were originally not for sale and others are now out of print and not available.

The Paul A. Handwerk Collection is a gift from Paul A. Handwerk, a former staff member of the U.S. Dept, of Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service. The David D. Wanless Collection is the gift from the estate of a former wildlife instructor at Du Bois campus.

The chief purpose of the compilation of the Paul A. Handwerk Collection is to provide students and faculty with a convenient and authoritative guide to literature for fisheries and wildlife. The list is rather selective, but many kinds of public documents are represented. Not all series, reports, etc., are complete, but the missing numbers will be added as the material becomes available.

The extensive, David D. Wanless Collection is especially valuable because it will help the campus support its unique two-year associate degree in wildlife technology in the university. The 749 cataloged items include notes and proceedings of meetings, symposia, and annual conferences; books on many species of wildlife and fisheries; manuals; handbooks; agricultural and conservation yearbooks; materials on outdoor recreation, birds, trees, plants, animals, hunting, forestry, and forest fires; as well as state and federal documents. Since Mr. Wanless had studied the ecology of the eastern wild turkey and did research in the field, there is a thorough coverage of this subject. His second area of interest was fisheries; and again there are irreplaceable items on this topic. There are numerous subject bibliographies and other suggested lists for reading and building the collection.

• The Kent State University Library has acquired the papers of the noted editor and publisher, Charles Wesley Slack. The collection of over 750 letters and documents was presented to the libraries by Slack’s great grandson, Paul C. Kitchin, emeritus professor of political science at Kent State.

Charles W. Slack was born in 1825 and died in 1885. He began his career as a journalist with the Boston Journal and worked in various printing and publishing enterprises before acquiring the weekly Boston Commonwealth. He remained editor and publisher of the Commonwealth until his death. Slack was active in a variety of literary, political, religious, and charitable organizations and movements on the city, state, and national level. He was prominent in the free soil and antislavery movements, a leader in the Unitarian Church, a member of the Mechanic Apprentices’ Library Association, the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, the Boston Art Club, the Massachusetts Press Association, and many other organizations. He was elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1855 and again in 1861. President Grant appointed him collector of internal revenue for the third district of Massachusetts in 1869, and he also held other political positions.

Many of Charles W. Slack’s activities are documented in the collection now at Kent State. Among his correspondents represented in the collection are Charles Francis Adams, Henry Ward Beecher, Salmon P. Chase, George W. Curtis, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James T. Fields, William Lloyd Garrison, Joshua R. Giddings, Horace Greeley, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Bayard Taylor, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Tilton, and B. F. Wade.

• A comprehensive collection of material dealing with African art is now available for study at the University of Alberta s Faculty of Library Science.

More than 1,200 books and pamphlets published in North America, Europe, and Africa are in the collection, which is located in Rutherford (South) Library.

Approximately 5,000 photographs and slides, many of which pertain to various social and religious ceremonies, are also in the special collection.

According to the faculty, the collection serves as a tool for teaching acquisition, cataloging, and classification of special materials. It also provides research material for scholars and others interested in African studies.

• The library of the UNIVERSITY OF California, Santa Barbara, has been given a bibliography and index to the chemistry of amidines and imidates, which was prepared by the late Robert DeWolfe of the chemistry department. The extensive bibliography, covering articles from before 1900 up through 1977, is accompanied by a very detailed punched card index. A search may be performed by author, molecular structural features, method of synthesis, or chemical reactions involved, and by appropriate intersections of these facets. The amidines and imidates constitute a large class of compounds that are of theoretical and practical interest in organic chemistry. In addition, many amidines have been found to be of pharmaceutical significance.

DeWolfe abstracted research papers on amidines and their derivatives, imidic esters, imine-anhydrides, and non-aromatic heterocyclic compounds that incorporate amidine or imidate functional groupings into the ring systems. His untimely death prevented the completion of the books, which were to be based upon his detailed library research.

The collection and card indexes will be made available to researchers by the department of special collections of the university library. Arthur Antony, chemistry librarian in the Sciences-Engineering Library, will be happy to answer inquiries and to help users with this unique bibliographic tool.

• Two engineers with the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) have presented significant collections of water resources information about Texas and California to the University of Texas at El Paso.

Archival collections are being established in the names of the donors, John J. Vandertulip, chief planning engineer, and Delbert D. McNealy, principal engineer, supervising, for the U.S. Section of the IBWC.

The Vandertulip Collection is unique, both for its completeness and for its coverage of a period when Texas began formally to face and study its short- and long-range water problems, according to Ray Daguerre, former IBWC official now with the UT El Paso Library.

The 406 documents on Texas water resources include all 211 Texas Water Development Board reports of the 1965-76, all Texas Water Plan basic reports, all River Basin Plans, initial reports on Current River Systems Simulations, publications relating to Texas water resources, general water resources and water policy publications, hydrology publications, and Texas Water Commission publications.

• The library of the MISSOURI BOTANICAL Garden, St. Louis, has recently acquired the bryological library of William Campbell Steere, president emeritus of the New York Botanical Garden. The library, which contains over 1,000 volumes and more than 5,000 papers, pamphlets, and reprints, is particularly strong in nineteenthand twentieth-century literature on the systematics of mosses and liverworts. Once this collection is integrated with the bryological literature already present in the M.B.G. collections, the library will have available for researchers an estimated 90 percent of the significant bryological literature from 1750 to the present.

• Edward Gordon Craig was called everything from the “spoilt child of artistic Europe” to an important influence on Stanislavsky, developer of the highly influential “method theory” of acting. Twelve years after his death, a large collection of Craig s books, wood engravings, memorabilia, correspondence, and photographs has been donated to the Northwestern University Library by Mrs. Virgil Hokanson of Indiana, sister of John Wesley Swanson, a personal friend of Craig.

Swanson, a 1927 NU graduate and former University of Illinois faculty member, began his collection in 1950, sixteen years before Craig’s death at age ninety-four. Since then, it has grown to include first editions of Craig’s book The Art of the Theatre in six of its ten languages; complete sets of the limited copies of the three magazines he published: Scene, The Mask, A Journal of the Art of the Theatre, and The Marionette‚ other books by Craig, including biographical works on his mother, actress Ellen Terry, and British actor Henry Irving, with whom Craig worked; photographs, bookplates, prints, engravings, and book illustrations.

The collection is one of the largest of Craig’s works in the world, according to R. Russell Maylone, curator of special collections. Maylone currently is cataloging the hundreds of items in the Craig collection.

Craig’s major contributions to theater were his ideas of stage design and how people visually perceived the theater, Maylone said. Craig wrote that he wanted to create a new world on the stage, rather than follow the standard practice of scene designers at the time to make “an imperfect, but historically accurate copy of the world. ”

While his ideas were not widely accepted in England, they had significant impact in the theater world on the Continent. In Italy, he established a theater school and the “Arena Goldoni” theater, as well as the “Wood Engravers of San Leonardo” group. He also published another magazine, The Mask, which was a collection of his own writings on the theater, woodcuts, and fold-out plates of historical theater plans.

He eventually settled in Vence, an artistic community in Southern France, and devoted his time to illustrating and writing.

Also included in Swanson’s collection are memorabilia and letters of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

AWARDS

• The Council on Library Resources, Inc. (CLR), has selected three outstanding librarians to participate in the Academic Library Management Intern Program for 1978-79. They are Joan L. Chambers, head, Government Publications Department, University of Nevada, Reno, Library; Sandra S. Coleman, head, Reference Department, University of New Mexico General Library; and Sara C. Heitshu, assistant head, Book Purchasing and Business Operations, University of Michigan Library.

As in past years, each intern will spend the 1978-79 academic year working closely with the director and top administrative staff of one of the country’s great academic libraries selected for its recognized administrative excellence. This year’s host institutions are Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of Connecticut.

Under the program, interns will receive an amount equal to the normal basic salary and benefits (up to $20,000) that were paid by their employers during academic year 1977-78.

Interns were chosen in a two-step process. Fol- lowing a review of the applications by a screening committee, a selection committee invited seven candidates to the CLR office in Washington for personal interviews. Louis B. Wright, director emeritus of the Folger Shakespeare Library, chaired both committees. Members of the screen- ing committee were Charles D. Churchwell, uni- versity librarian, Brown University; John Y. Cole, executive director, Center for the Book, Library of Congress; Beverly P. Lynch, university librar- ian, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle; Stephen A. McCarthy, former executive director, Association of Research Libraries; and Virginia P. Whitney, former library director, Rutgers Uni- versity.

Making the final selections were William S. Dix, university librarian emeritus, Princeton University; Frederick Wagman, director of librar- ies, University of Michigan; Robert Vosper, pro- fessor of library science, University of California, Los Angeles; Duane Webster and Suzanne O. Frankie, Association of Research Libraries; and Foster E. Morhhardt, former CLR senior pro- gram officer.

The Council on Library Resources, Inc., is a private, operating foundation. Through directly administered projects as well as grants to and contracts with other organizations, it attempts to assist in finding solutions for the problems facing libraries, particularly those of academic and re- search libraries. CLR was established in 1956 by the Ford Foundation and continues to receive support from it as well as from other foundations.

Assignments and biographical information for the 1978-79 class of academic library manage- ment interns are as follows:

Joan L. Chambers,head, Government Publica- tions Department, University of Nevada, Reno, Library, will intern with Connie Dunlap, Duke University library director. Chambers received a B.A. from the Univer- sity of Northern Color- ado (1958). After be- coming acquainted with libraries as a teacher- librarian in various California school dis- tricts, she received an M.L.S. from the Uni- versity of California at Berkeley (1970). Cham- bers was the interli- brary loan and refer- ence librarian at the University of Nevada, Reno, Library prior to as- suming her present position. She was the first li- brary faculty member to be elected to the faculty senate (1976) and was subsequently elected chairperson.

Joan L. Chambers

SandraS. Coleman, head, Reference Depart- ment, University of New Mexico General Li- brary, will spend her year working with David Weber, director of the Stanford University Li- braries. Coleman was a 1966 graduated of Ec- kerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and received an M.L.S. in 1970 from Indiana University. Her work experience has been primarily in the Univer- sity of New Mexico School of Law Library where she served as a cataloger, technical services librarian, public services librarian, acting law librarian, and as- sistant librarian for public services. In August 1976 she moved to the general library to her current position.

Sandra S. Coleman

Sara C. Heitshu,assistant head, Book Purchasing and Business Operations, University of Michigan Library, will move to the University of Connecticut to intern with li- brary director John McDonald. Heitshu, a 1965 graduate of St. Lawrence University, received an A.M.L.S. from the University of Michigan in 1969. She remained at Michigan, serving as a biblio- graphic searcher and as- sistant head of the Bib- liographic Searching Section before reaching her present position in 1973.

Sara C. Heitshu

GRANTS

• The National Home Library Foundation has awarded a grant of $30,000 to the LIBRARY OF Congress and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for their jointly sponsored performing arts library at the center. The grant will enable the sponsors to acquire books and audiovisual materials on music, opera, drama, dance, and other aspects of the performing arts for the library, now under construction according to plans by architect Philip Johnson on the top floor of the Kennedy Center.

The library, announced in February 1977 by Daniel J. Boorstin, librarian of Congress, and Roger L. Stevens, chairman of the center, will have research, reference, information, and archival functions. In addition to the reference collectiυn of books and periodicals in the reading room, there will be viewing facilities for film and television, soundproof rooms for recordings and tapes, and rotating exhibits.

Through a computer link with the Library of Congress, scholars and artists working at the center will have access to books in the field of performing arts already cataloged by the Library and ultimately to manuscripts, films, prints, posters, musical recordings, and other material in the buildings on Capitol Hill.

The center library will be ready for use early in 1979.

The National Home Library Foundation, based in Washington, is administered by a boad of trustees, of which Leonard H. Marks is president, and executive director Anne Allen. In pursuit of its objectives—all related to the wider dissemination of information through libraries, printed materials, and audiovisual aids, radio and television, and other technological improvements—it has aided a number of libraries and cultural organizations in Washington and throughout the country.

• California State University at LONG Beach (CSULB) has become the recipient of a major federal grant, according to Library Director Peter Spyers-Duran. The library grant, part of the Antirecession Public Works Employment Act of 1976, Title II, Round II, amounts to over $206,000 and is one of the largest of this kind in the California State University and College System.

The receipt of this grant and accompanying funds will give the CSULB Library the opportunity to complete important projects. These projects are:

1. KWIC: To develop and implement a computerized key word in context (KWIC) index to 22,000 title collection of California State publications. The duration of the project will be six months, during which time documents will be machine-readable coded and computer KWIC indexes produced. The regular library staff will be able to maintain the index after the initial development period.

2. Catalog backlogs: This project will overcome a backlog in cataloging of books and microfilm by putting the editing of the card catalog on a current basis.

3. Shelf reading and improvement of the editorial quality of the catalog: This project is intended to catch up on a backlog of main card catalog maintenance problems and to allow the library to keep pace with the daily workload.

4. Complete the coverage of materials for the theft detection system: This project will install electronic theft detection targets in 400,000 library items in order to prevent unauthorized removal of library books. This project is exepcted to last six months.

These projects will provide substantial increase in the service level of the CSULB Library to its users.

• A grant of $25,000 has been awarded to the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., by the Henry Luce Foundation of New York City. The grant was made in partial support of the purchase of the Reformation Collection, which the Folger acquired in early 1977.

In announcing the grant, Folger director O. B. Hardison, Jr., expressed appreciation to foundation president Henry Luce III and to the other Luce trustees.

Other major funds for the purchase of the collection have been contributed by the Crystal Trust by an anonymous Friend of the Library and by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the library’s annual acquisitions benefit.

• Drew University has received an $18,845 grant "from the Council on Library Resources to participate in the Academic Library Development Program (ALDP). Drew is only the third U.S. institution of higher learning to secure such an award.

The ALDP involves a two-staged self-study survey designed to focus on a library’s problems and assets. The program was begun in 1975 to help mid-sized academic libraries analyze how they were meeting campus and community needs.

At Drew, Library Director Arthur E. Jones and his staff hope to pinpoint specific needs and increase library use while planning for an addition to the Rose Memorial Library. The program, which began last September, is expected to be completed by this July.

Jaia Heyman of Millington, who serves as reference/government documents librarian, is chairing the study; Duane Webster, director of the Office of Management Studies of the Association of Research Libraries, is project coordinator. Guidance is being provided by an advisory committee composed of librarians from other institutions; representatives from Drew’s trustees, faculty, administration, and student body; and representatives from accrediting and other professional associations.

• The Council on Library Resources, Inc. (CLR) awarded grants totaling $1,306,854 during fiscal year 1977 (July 1, 1976-June .30, 1977) according to the council’s recently published 21st Annual Report.

This fiscal year was the last year of total support of the council by the Ford Foundation, which established CLR as a private operating foundation in 1956. During the year, it was announced that, in addition to continuing support from the Ford Foundation, CLR would also receive funding totaling $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. These grants will further the council’s program of work directed toward finding solutions to problems facing libraries in general and academic and research libraries in particular.

Continuing recent trends, the largest portion of CLR funds (39 percent) awarded in fiscal year 1977 supported activities concerned with the development of a nationwide library system. These include network development, library applications of computer technology, formulation of standards, and other cooperative endeavors.

Notable among these awards were a $122,000 grant to the Ohio College Library Center for a study of its future governance and organization and a $326,925 matching grant from CLR and the National Endowment for the Humanities toward continued development of the University of Chicago’s Library Data Management System. Support also continued during the year for such cooperative programs as CONSER, COMARC, and meetings of the Library of Congress Network Advisory Committee and Network Technical Architecture Group.

Programs that focus on improving academic library services to undergraduates consumed 16 percent of CLR funds for fiscal year 1977. Four institutions received grants from the joint CLR/ NEH College Library Program fund and another thirteen were chosen to explore ways of better integrating the library into the educational process through CLR’s Library Service Enhancement Program.

As in past years, a major portion of CLR grants was devoted to programs of professional development for individual librarians through the council’s Academic Library Management Internships, Fellowships, and Advanced Study grants. A new award in this area supports the New England Academic Librarians’ Writing Seminar; the work of its members has begun to appear in the Journal of Academic Librarianship.

Other major grants during fiscal year 1977 were to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions’ (IFLA) Office for Universal Bibliographic Control and to two universities whose libraries are conducting an internal assessment of objectives, procedures, and services as part of the council’s Academic Library Development Program.

The council’s 21st Annual Report is available at no charge to interested individuals. Send a self- addressed mailing label to Annual Report, Council on Library Resources, One Dupont Circle, Suite 620, Washington, DC 20036.

• Washington State University has been awarded a $19,500 grant from the National Agricultural Library, U.S. Department of Agriculture, to provide delivery of documents— photocopies and books—to agricultural researchers and program personnel in Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.

The service will cover the Northwest and the Intermountain region. There are four similar regions throughout the country.

Allene F. Schnaitter, director of libraries at WSU, and science and engineering librarian Elizabeth P. Roberts are in charge of the program. Janet K. Chisman of the libraries staff will supervise the project.

“When a US DA researcher in the field is in need of a journal article, that person contacts the library of the land grant university of the state. If that library does not have the article, the request is referred to the regional center at the WSU Science and Engineering Library,” Schnaitter explained.

If the item is not available at WSU, the request is forwarded to the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland, largest agricultural library in the world.

“This network provides agricultural researchers in remote areas with rapid access to the world s literature in agriculture and the related sciences,” Schnaitter noted.

MEETINGS & WORKSHOPS

JULY 11-13: The Palmer Graduate Library School will offer a three-day institute for school media specialists and administrators on SERVICES of a School Library Media Program, at the C. W. Post campus in Greenvale, New York.

The coordinator of the institute is David Ray Bender, administrator, School Media Service Office, Division of Library Development and Services, Maryland State Department of Education. The institute s presenters will also include D. Philip Baker, coordinator of school library media programs, Stanford Connecticut Public Schools, and Jane Hannigan, professor of library service, Columbia University.

Hotel rooms near campus, as well as campus accommodations, are available for the three nights. Registration fee for the institute is $60, including lunch for three days.

For further information write or call: Dean, Graduate Library School, C. W. Post Center, Greenvale, NY 11548; (516) 299-2855, ext.6.

AUGUST 6-12: Miami University has announced its 1978 Executive Development Program for Library Administrators. The program is an intensive, week-long course in the general management of library service. This year’s program will be held on the Miami University campus at Oxford, Ohio.

The principal subjects covered in this course include: “The Roles of the Administrator,” “M.B.O.," “Planning, Leadership, Motivation, Communication, Change and Creativity, Employee Development, and Managerial Challenges Ahead.” The methods of instruction are carefully chosen for their impact and participant involvement. These include discussion, case study, role playing, simulations, and lecture.

The cost of the program is $295 per person, which includes tuition, all course materials, private room, and all meals. Last year’s enrollment was in excess of seventy persons so applicants are advised to register early. Those desiring more information should contact the program s director, Harry F. Brooks, School of Business Administration, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056; (513) 529-4129.

September 18-21: The FID Seminar on Education and Training will be held in

Edinburgh, Scotland. A draft program is available from the Conference Organizer, c/o Aslib, 3 Bel- grave Square, London, SW1X 8PL, Great Britain, or from the USNCFID Secretariat, National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20418.

September 19-22: The Aslib 52nd Annual Conference will be held in the Appleton Tower, Edinburgh University, Scotland. The theme will be “Information: Presentation, Politics and Power.” For program and registration form, contact Conference Organiser, Aslib, 3 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8PL, Great Britain.

September 24-26: The Annual Conference of the New England Library Association will be held at Wentworth-by-the- Sea, Portsmouth, NH. For further information, contact Nan Berg, P.O. Box 273, Holden, MA 01520; (617) 829-6545.

September 25-28: “New Trends in Documentation and Information” is the theme of the 39th FID CONGRESS to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland. For a preliminary program and registration materials, contact Conference Organiser, Aslib, 3 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8PL, Great Britain, or USNCFID Secretariat, National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20418.

MISCELLANY

• The board of directors in late 1977 approved planning for a major renovation of the library building at UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY in New York City. The over one-half-million volume collections of the seminary are housed in a facility opened in 1910. A special librarian for research and planning will be added to the staff at least through the renovation of the facility. Major considerations in the program will be upgrading of the atmospheric controls and systems, increased reader spaces, and open stacks for the teaching collections.

• The opening of a newly established Asian Dance Archive, containing more than 7,000 films and videotapes, books, manuscripts, and artifacts, was announced at a press conference held Monday, April 3, 1978, in the Dance Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. The Asian Dance Archive will provide an important repository for the documentation and preservation of the dance forms of the East, to be used by an international body of scholars, specialists, and performers.

In ceremonies in the Dance Collection, Richard W. Couper, president of the New York Public Library, and Genevieve Oswald, curator of the Dance Collection, acknowledged the generous support of the JDR 3rd Fund in the establishment of the archive. They also acknowledged the cooperative participation of NHK-Japan Broadcasting Corporation in facilitating the acquisition of films on Asian Dance.

• A local experiment in sharing acquisitions planning may affect both reference services and budget planning at participating Philadelphia-area institutions. At a meeting earlier in the year, PARLIE (Philadelphia Area Reference Librarians Information Exchange) members decided that a centralized acquisitions information clearinghouse would be a good idea. Temple University’s Paley Library, host for the meeting, volunteered to take on the job for a six-month trial period.

Why an acquisitions clearinghouse? Every day libraries in the Philadelphia area (and nationwide) receive publishers’ notices of and advertisements for potentially useful reference material. Much of this material is, however, very expensive. Most librarians responsible for acquisitions decisions find themselves in a quandary: Will the potential usefulness of an item offset its high cost? Will another library nearby purchase this item and allow other “outsiders” to use it? Couldn’t local libraries, ideally, “pool” their resources, so that duplicate purchases might be avoided and at the same time users’ needs be satisfied? But how do we all find out what other libraries are purchasing, or considering for purchase? PARLIE’s answer is a kind of centralized information exchange, which hopefully will cut down on relatively inefficient efforts at information exchange via mail or telephone. Temple will coordinate the records and make them available to requesting libraries.

Details have yet to be ironed out. Discussion of record and request format at the meeting leaned toward written forms, supplemented by telephone communication, since many major acquisitions decisions must be made quickly to take advantage of prepublication or other discounts. Information regarding purchasing decisions already made is just as valuable. Area librarians would like to be able to direct users requiring, for example, the Energy Bibliography and Index ($295 per volume) or the International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurology ($675) to the appropriate area institution. Another potential outcome of such a clearinghouse is shared acquisition of major reference sets. Might not one library agree with its neighbor down the street to share the cost of Newsbank ($996 per year) or the Combined Retrospective Index to Journals in Political Science ($750), History ($985), or Sociology ($550)?

PARLIE’s efforts demonstrate its basic philosophy of “United We Stand …” (and its alternative) and are, we think, to be applauded. Another project on next meeting’s discussion agenda is the implementation of an indexing effort directed at one of Philadelphia’s major newspapers. Such cooperative efforts may offer at least a partial solution to many an institution’s budgeting or reference service headaches.—Newsletter, Joseph XV. England Library, Philadelphia College of Pharmaceutical Science.

• Indiana Library Association executive director Sue Cady reports that every college and university library in Indiana will benefit from newly enacted funding for the INDIANA COOPERATIVE

Library Services Authority (INCOLSA). The state funding in the amount of $350,000 for fiscal year 1978-79 was appropriated by the 1978 Indiana General Assembly for the four-year-old multitype library network. The funds will support telecommunications costs, central staff, a centralized processing center, and an Indiana serials data base.

Of INCOLSA’s seventy terminals linked to the Ohio College Library System, forty-eight are in Indiana colleges and universities. Terminal installation was facilitated by a grant to sixteen schools from the Kellog Foundation and INCOLSA’s own initial grant from the Library Services and Construction Act administered by the Indiana State Library. It is believed that INCOLSA is one of the first independent multitype statewide library networks to receive state funds.

• Library acquisitions have become the fastest growing component of Stanford University costs, their long-range financial forecast for 1978-83 indicates.

Written by vice-provost Raymond F. Bacchetti and several colleagues, the forecast was published Wednesday, February 1, in Campus Report, the university’s weekly newspaper for faculty and staff.

The forecast indicates library acquisition costs now are growing 10 percent faster than inflation, which is estimated at 6 percent. By 1983 the university hopes to hold the increase to 5 percent more than inflation. Awareness of the long-term trend led provost William F. Miller last fall to appoint and personally head a task force on Stanford library services from 1980 to 2000 A.D.

• The New England Library Board (NELB) has announced a decision to phase out the New England Serials Service (NESS) in its present form. The action set March 24 as the cutoff date for NESS to accept new requests for periodical article reprints. All requests in process at that time are expected to be completed by April 30, 1978.

In its two-year existence as a pilot project, NESS has served many libraries not having a network of interlibrary loan resources. It has also generated a profile of New England ILL practices which will be valuable in planning future regional services. NESS statistics will be analyzed for their significance to the New England configuration as well as for their relevance to the emerging plan for a national periodicals program.

The decline in requests since the last rate increase in September has shown that the $7.50 minimum set at that time is above the current level of tolerance for all but a few special and still fewer academic libraries. The number of requests was down by 48 percent in the last quarter of 1977.

Although the NESS experience suggests that it is not financially feasible to offer a periodical reprint service without the economic advantage of an on-site collection to serve as a basic resource, the board still sees a potentially valid role for a regional service that would bring a wide range of resources and bibliographic services within reach of all types of libraries. For that reason, NELB is developing a proposal to study the feasibility of creating a New England Bibliographic Resource Service (NEBRS) in conjunction with a regional repository currently being planned for possible construction. Under such an arrangement, it is anticipated that the new service would have available the substantial collections of an academic library as its primary resource.

If the concept gains support from New England librarians and information specialists and attracts financial assistance from one or more funding agencies, NEBRS will offer not only periodical reprints but also the location and delivery of all types of materials in a variety of forms. The program could serve as a link with the NELINET/ OCLC data base and prospective interlibrary communication system, providing access to libraries without OCLC terminals. NELB is consulting with NELINET and New England libraries in developing the NEBRS proposal. Further announcements will be made as the planning progresses.