ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News From the Field

ACADEMIC STATUS

Editor’s note:The following general report on the Brooklyn College Library academic status problem was submitted to the News by a representative of the Library Association of the City University of New York at the Editor’s request. As was noted when the first Academic Status item was published, we invite general replies pertaining to the problem of academic status for librarians.

Brooklyn College librarians, along with all other librarians of the City University of New York, enjoy full faculty rank and status. Although they do not have as short a work week or as long a vacation period as classroom teachers and college administrators. For some twenty years the custom in the City University libraries has been to have a 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday work schedule. Evening, weekend, and holiday service has been given by librarians who volunteered to work these additional hours with compensation. Some of these librarians came from the regular day staff; others from other college and public libraries.

On October 5, 1970, well after the semester had begun, the Library Department of Brooklyn College received a memorandum from College President, John Kneller, ordering that “beginning at once, the practice of hiring members of the professional library staff to work during the evening and weekend is discontinued. Professional staff schedules must be arranged to provide coverage during all hours when the library is open.” In compliance with the directive evening librarians were fired and the regular day staff was assigned to work “staggered schedules.”

Librarians protested angrily, arguing that this arbitrarily changed the working conditions under which they were hired, terminated evening positions without notice, and made it impossible for some librarians to fulfill educational and professional commitments made for the semester. An official grievance was filed with the Legislative Conference, collective bargaining agent for the faculty. The grievance was heard, the librarians won, and the order was rescinded.

However, President Kneller called a meeting of the Library Department and stated that no tenure or promotions recommendations for librarians would be signed by him until librarians gave him a personal commitment to work staggered schedules and to give up their rights to file a grievance.

The librarians accused President Kneller of “blackmail” and immediately went again to their bargaining agent. Grievances were filed on behalf of those being denied tenure and promotion. (These people had all been passed on favorably by the College Faculty Personnel and Budget Committee, and ordinarily the presidential recommendation is a mere formality.)

At this point the Faculty Personnel and Budget Committee involved itself. A subcommittee was formed to investigate the library situation. After several meetings and the presentation of various documents, the Faculty Personnel and Budget Committee became convinced that the librarians’ view was the correct one and that the role of the Committee would be to help the President “save face.”

A new staffing pattern was sent to the President that would make a staggered schedule possible. He accepted it and “lifted the freeze on library personnel actions.”

ACQUISITIONS

• The American Antiquarian Society has received 1,265 early American children’s books from the late d’Alte A. Welch and his family of Cleveland, Ohio. Two hundred and eighty volumes of this collection were printed in this country before 1821 and were bequeathed to the Society under the terms of Mr. Welch’s will. The remaining nine hundred and eightyfive were given to AAS by Mrs. Welch and her family.

The addition of the Welch books brings the Society’s already preeminent collection of American juvenile literature to twenty-eight hundred volumes. AAS holds what is considered to be the finest such collection in the United States, nearly three times the size of its nearest institutional colleague, the Library of Congress. In it are represented more than twothirds of all known children’s books printed in America before the year 1821.

• The Library of Carleton University has acquired a collection of some 7,000 books and periodicals relating to French literature in the second half of the nineteenth century. Included in the collection are large numbers of texts by all the French symbolist and decadent writers, as well as some critical works written about them. Major writers of the period are well represented, as are relatively minor figures, such as Paul Adam, René Boylesve, Abel Hermant, Pierre Louys, and others. Among the works on the French theatre between 1850 and 1900 is a collection of sixty-nine plays written and produced in the period.

• A gift of an extensive collection of miscellaneous books was given January 10 to the Library of Georgia Southern College, Statesboro, Georgia, through the Georgia Southern College Foundation by the Sea Island Bank of Statesboro. The collection includes approximately seven thousand items. Presentation of the gift was made by F. Everett Williams, President of the Sea Island Bank, to Dr. John O. Eidson, President of Georgia Southern, and Dr. Richard Harwell, Director of Libraries at the College. The collection given by the bank is an amalgamation of selections from collections put together by several private collectors over many years—mostly in New England and in New York State.

• The Iowa State University Library has recently received as a gift an important sociology collection of about 500 volumes—the private library of Dr. George Henry Von Tungeln (1883-1914) who was a professor at Iowa State from 1913-1944. Dr. Von Tungeln was probably the earliest regular staff member in rural sociology in any land-grant college in the country. At Iowa State he initiated the first formal research project in sociology. He was well known and recognized nationally for his pioneering work in rural sociology. He was called into consultation on the first Rural Life Study in 1919 by President Woodrow Wilson. The collection is rich in materials of rural sociology, family relations, welfare, agricultural economics, and the social and economic effects of the Depression. The books date from late nineteenth century through the late 1930s.

• A collection of historical aerial photographic maps of arable land in the United States was deposited in the National Agricultural Library by the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service on November 1, 1970. The collection consists of 20,000 maps photographing all arable land in 3,000 counties of the United States. These aerial photographs were made between 1940-1958. ASCS plans to add an annual increment of approximately 1,000 photographs to this aerial map collection. The collection will be available for study by agricultural scholars and researchers at the National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland.

• The manuscript diaries of Virginia Woolf consisting of twenty-seven bound volumes have been acquired by the Berg Collection of English and American Literature of the New York Public Library. Excerpts from it, selected and edited by her husband Leonard Woolf, were published in 1953 under the title A Writer’s Diary. Virginia Woolf kept a journal for twenty-six years. The last entry is dated just four days before she committed suicide in 1941.

A central figure of the “Bloomsbury Group” and a cofounder with her husband of the Hogarth Press, she knew most of the leading literary and artistic personalities of her day— E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, and Maynard Keynes, to name only a few. She used her diary as a means of describing people she met and for analyzing her ideas about the books she was reading and writing.

• Dr. Leonard W. Ferguson has presented to the Ohio University Library three volumes relative to exhibits by artists at the Provincetown Art Association 1915 through 1968. Volume I, Provincetown Art Register, gives alphabetically according to the name of the artist, the title of each artist’s exhibit. Volume 2, Record of Exhibits, gives the name of each exhibit in chronological order according to the year of the exhibit. Volume 3, Title Register, lists the exhibits in alphabetical order according to the title of the exhibit. The volumes catalog more than 14,000 exhibits by more than 2,000 artists. They represent the culmination of more than three years of work by Professor Ferguson and his wife, Edith P. Ferguson, and were prepared with the assistance of the Ohio University Computer Center. According to Dr. Ferguson copies of the volumes are to be available only in four prime centers: Ohio University; The Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, Massachusetts; the Library of Congress; and the Archives of American Art at the Detroit Museum of Fine Art.

• Mr. John M. Malone of Pittsburgh has donated his personal collection of some 300 volumes on the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) to the University op Pittsburgh Hillman Library. Mr. Malone is a longtime Mexico buff whose frequent visits to Mexican bookshops began in the 1920s. The collection focuses sharply and in considerable depth on the formative revolutionary years.

The value of the collection is enhanced by the presence of numerous works by prominent revolutionary leaders of the era. The politics of the 1920s and 1930s is well represented. Among the more impressive volumes included in the collection, which will be of interest to those who are not specialists in the revolution, are the Casasola collection of photographs of twentieth-century Mexico and the impressive volume of Mexican mural paintings published by the Bank of Foreign Commerce. A first edition of Lucas Alaman’s classic history of Mexico and virtually all of the works of the Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos are also present. With the addition of the Malone Collection, the Hillman Library’s Latin American holdings will be considerably enhanced.

• Washington University Libraries, St. Louis, has recently added the papers of poet Lee Anderson to the rare book department’s modern literature collections. The Anderson papers include more than 1,700 letters of substantial literary and personal content from other writers, editors, and critics, as well as over 120 letters authored by Anderson, writing from England in 1960 and from Berkeley, California, to John Trimmer in 1963-1965. Included also are materials relating to Anderson’s publication of four collections of his poetry: Prevailing Winds, privately published in 1941; Floating World, 1956; Nag’s Head and other poems, 1960, and a work-in-progress, Bearstone Tetralogy. In addition, there are seventy journals, 1933-1970, containing drafts of poems and letters, thoughts on poetry and the literary world, and records of meetings with contemporary poets. The collection is highlighted by an album containing autograph poems and quotations of numerous British and American poets collected from 1958-1969.

AWARDS/GIFTS

• The American Antiquarian Society has been notified that it is the beneficiary of approximately $268,000 from the estate of Ethel B. Lee and the trust in her name. Mrs. Lee, who died in 1966, was the widow of John Thomas Lee of Madison, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Lee was a member of this Society from 1917 until his death in 1953. This bequest is in addition to a previous gift of $50,000 made in 1966. The two bequests have been merged into one fund, known as the John Thomas Lee Fund, the income from which shall be restricted to the purchase of books, manuscripts, and rare pamphlets dealing with American history.

• Basic documents on the American Revolution and the Continental Congress will now be more readily available to historians and the public under two projects funded by Ford Foundation grants. A $150,000, two-year grant will enable the National Archives Trust Fund Board to prepare a complete computerized index of the papers of the Continental Congress, thus making possible systematic research on these voluminous papers, which are preserved in the Archives. A $500,000, eightyear grant to the Library of Congress will support an extensive revision and enlargement of what has been since 1936 the principal documentary source on the revolutionary period, Edmund C. Burnett’s Letters of Members of the Continental Congress.

The index of Continental Congress papers and at least the first volume of the letters will be completed by 1976, the year of the bicentennial of the revolution. In announcing the grants, McGeorge Bundy, the Foundation’s president, noted that rather than developing a special program of grants related to the bicentennial the Foundation intends to contribute in its normal course of operation.

• John Ben Snow, president of the John Ben Snow Foundation, has given a personal check for $100,000 to Syracuse University for its von Ranke Collection of rare books and manuscripts. The check was presented to Chancellor John E. Corbally, Jr., by Dr. Allen C. Best of the University’s development office at an informal ceremony. Warren N. Boes, director of the university libraries, was also present.

The von Ranke Collection includes the library of nineteenth century German historian Leopold von Ranke. Contained in it are sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century manuscripts dealing with the history of Venice and its relationships with the major European powers and the Ottoman Empire. The collection was purchased for the University in 1887 by John H. Reid and was formerly housed in what is now the administration building. Upon completion of the Ernest S. Bird Library in 1972, the collection will be permanently housed on its sixth floor.

Best emphasized that the latest gift of $100,000 was a personal gift from John Ben Snow. Snow, 87, formerly of Pulaski, New York, and 1900 graduate of Pulaski High School, now lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He graduated from New York University in 1904 with a bachelor’s degree in commercial science.

• Tulane University Library in New Orleans has received a grant of $500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York which will make possible a number of library improvements. The chief purpose of the grant is to strengthen the acquisitions and binding programs in a number of subject areas important to Tulane’s research activities. Some funds will also be used for construction, in the basement of the main library building, of a storage area for little-used books and a reading room to serve two collections. Additional personnel to process materials may also be employed, and it is hoped that some funds can be used as a base for endowed income. Strengthening of the acquisitions program and the improved facilities will be of importance to researchers throughout the city and region.

MEETINGS

Mar. 11-13: Library Automation: Workshops in Administration and Management, ISAD Institutes to be held March 11 13 at the Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, California, and May 13-15 at MIT Endicott House, Dedham, Massachusetts. A fee of $135 per person will include housing, meals, registration fee, and materials. Information and application forms may be obtained from Don S. Culbertson, Information Science and Automation Division, American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611. For further details, see January CRL News.

Mar. 18-20: Alaska Library Association annual meeting, Centennial Building, Sitka, Alaska. The theme is Marketing Library Resources. For further information contact the exhibits chairman, Richard Engen, Alaska State Library, Juneau, Alaska 99801; or the program chairman, Robert Geiman, Box 194, Auke Bay, Alaska 99821.

Mar. 25-27: The Sixth Annual Conference on Junior College Libraries will be held on the University of Illinois campus, Champaign, Illinois, from March 25 through March 27, 1971. The theme for this year’s conference is: The Junior College Media Center Looks at Itself. The Conference is partially sponsored again this year by the Illinois Library Association but is not limited to junior college librarians or media specialists from Illinois.

While the program is not yet completed, one of the speakers will be Roger H. Garrison, former chairman of the English department and vice-president at Briarcliff College, New York; presently, chairman of the Language and Literature department, Westbrook Junior College, Portland, Maine. Another is Terry O’Banion, associate professor of higher education at the University of Illinois.

The formal program and other details when completed will be available from: Ambrose Easterly, Harper College Library, Algonquin and Roselle Roads, Palatine, Illinois 60067.

April 8: “The Academic Librarian: Educating, Yes; Serving, No” is the subject of the 1971 institute of the Library Association of the City University of New York. The institute, to be held at Queens College on April 8, will be open to librarians and to interested students, faculty, and administrators.

The institute will feature E. J. Josey, Chief, Bureau of Academic and Research Libraries, Division of Library Development, New York State Department of Education, on “Librarians as Faculty: An Evaluation”; John H. Moriarty, Professor Emeritus of Library Science, Purdue University, on “Training and Needs of Academic Librarians as Teachers”; Dr. Fay M. Blake on “The Expendable Academic Librarian”; Kenneth Kister, Reference Librarian, The State University College at Potsdam (N.Y.), on “The Educator-Librarian; A View from the Front”; and “South Bronx, the Nightmare of Reality,” a multimedia presentation prepared by Daniel Davila.

For further information contact Betty Seifert, City College Library, 135th Street and Convent Avenue, New York, New York 10031. Phone: 212-621-2268.

April 23-24: The College and Reference Section of the Kentucky Library Association will be meeting on April 23-24 at Rough River State Park in Kentucky. The theme of the meeting will be the “College Library.”

Contact Brantley H. Parsley, Library Director, Campbellsville College, Campbellsville, Kentucky 42718 for further information.

April 29-May 2: The Library Association of Alberta will be holding its annual meeting in Calgary April 29-May 2. Its theme will be “Library Co-operation in Alberta.” The first day will be devoted to a workshop designed to acquaint librarians with the function of the National Library. The Saturday session will be keynoted by Earl Farlay, Director of the Clendening Medical Library of the University of Kansas Medical Center. Mr. Farlay will speak on library networks. The remainder of the day will be devoted to a variety of seminars. Anyone interested in further information on the conference should contact B. B. Manson, Information Center, University of Calgary, Library, Calgary 44, Alberta, Canada.

May 6-7: The 8th Annual National Information Retrieval Colloquium (ANIRC) will be held in Philadelphia, May 6-7, with the establishment of a goal of participation by practitioners and those new in the field of information retrieval as the basic objective of the meeting. Formal papers are not being solicited because source material for discussion is available to attendees and discussants in advance in this experiment to establish the type of interaction and dialog implied by the word, “colloquium.” Subjects for discussion will be the major information retrieval issues reviewed in chapters of the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.), categorized for purposes of the Colloquium as “design,” “implementation,” and “management.” Selected authors of appropriate chapters in the five volumes of the Annual Review and other skilled moderators will chair sessions. To develop the closer tie between panel and audience needed for active participation of attendees, one or more preregistrants will be selected randomly and invited to join the panel. Each can briefly sketch his point of view of the subject under discussion whether based on academic study, work experience, or other bases of conviction.

The 8th annual meeting will be held at the new Holiday Inn, 18th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. Additional information may be obtained from program chairman Don King, Graduate School of Library Service at Rutgers, The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Inquiries and registration material requests should be addressed to Miss A. Berton, MDS-COP, 19 South 22d Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

May 7-8: Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians will hold its annual meeting at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, May 7-8. The topic will be “The Challenge of Reprints.”

May 13-15: Library Automation: Workshop in Administration and Management. See entry for Mar. 11-13, above.

May 20-22: A three-day institute entitled “Library Management: Man-Material-Service” will be held at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, May 20-22, 1971. The institute is intended for library administrators and supervisors. The institute director will be John H. Moriarty, Professor Emeritus of Library Science, Purdue University. For additional information, interested persons may write Department of Library Science, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809.

May 21-22: Sixteenth annual Midwest Academic Librarians Conference at Indiana University, Bloomington. For information contact Dr. Jane G. Flener, Assistant Director, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana 47401. The previously announced dates of April 23-24 have been changed due to conflicts.

May 30-June 3: The 70th Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association will be held in New York City, May 30-June 3.

June 14-17: The University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, will be the site of the Sixteenth Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, June 14-17. Special attention will be given to the acquisition problems of the Latin American Libraries and the training of Latin American librarians. Other sessions will deal with progress made in the past year in the areas of acquisitions, bibliography, exchange of publications, photoduplication of Latin American materials, official publications, and booktrade. The program and working papers for the meeting are being planned by a committee composed of President, Carl Deal, and Elvia Barberena, Nettie Lee Benson, Ario Garza Mercado, and Elsa Barberena.

Institutional registration in the Sixteenth Seminar is $20.00. Preprint working papers are included in the registration fee and are available only through advance payment of the institutional registration. They will be distributed at the time of the meeting and to those registered but not attending. The registration fee for additional participants from the registering institution is $10.00 and includes preprint working papers. Additional sets of working papers can be subscribed to in advance for $7.00 each. Mexican librarians desiring to have the working papers may register for a payment of $7.00 each. Others not wishing working papers may register as observers at no cost. Librarians and professors from other Latin American countries and the Caribbean may attend without paying the registration fee and will receive the working papers.

Further information on local arrangements for meetings and hotels for the Sixteenth

SALALM as well as on registration will soon be available. Information on the content of the program and working papers can be procured from Dr. Nettie Lee Benson, Latin American Collection, The University of Texas Library, Austin, Texas 78704. For other information refer to the Executive Secretary, Mrs. Marietta Daniels Shepard, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C. 20006.

July 11-13: The School of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, is planning the fifth annual Library Administrators Development Program to be held July 11- 23. Those interested in further information are invited to address inquiries to Mrs. Effie T. Knight, Administrative Assistant, Library Administrators Development Program, School of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. The January News contains complete details.

July 20-23: The third Cranfield International Conference on Mechanised Information Storage and Retrieval Systems will be held July 20- July 23 in Bedford, England.

See the December News, Meetings section, for complete details on the topics to be covered and general theme outline.

Enquiries or offers to present papers should be sent to the Conference Director, Cyril Cleverdon, Cranfield Institute of Technology, Cranfield, Bedford, England.

Aug. 29-Sept. 3: The International Conference on Information Science in Tel Aviv originally announced for August 23-28, has been changed to the week following the IFIP Conference in Yugoslavia, from August 29 to September 3. Group flights at reduced rates will be available from various points including Yugoslavia. Titles and abstracts are due no later than January 1971. Registration fee ($50) includes a ladies’ program and a tour of Jerusalem. For further information contact: The Organizing Committee, P.O. Box 16271, Tel Aviv, Israel. See also September News, page 249.

Sept. 30-Oct. 2: The Indiana Library Association will meet at Stouffer’s Inn, Indianapolis, Indiana. Further information can be obtained from Jane G. Flener, President, Indiana Library Association, Indiana University Library, Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

Oct. 15-16: The North Dakota Library Association will hold its 1971 convention in Fargo on Friday and Saturday, October 15 and 16. Headquarters will be the Town House Motel.

Oct. 22-23: The North Dakota Library Association will hold its 1971 convention in Fargo on Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23. Headquarters will be the Town House Motel.

MISCELLANY

• The ALA-AAJC Joint Committee will meet during the 1971 AAJC Conference in Washington, D.C., March 1-5. The chief item before the Committee is a draft statement of “Guidelines for Junior and Community College Library Learning Resource Centers.” A forum discussion will be held for all interested conference attendees.

ALA members of the Joint Committee are Louise Giles, dean of learning resources, Macomb County Community College, Michigan; Joleen Bock, director of library services, College of the Canyons, California; and Harriett Genung, dean of library and audiovisual aids, Mt. San Antonio College, California. J. Donald Thomas, executive secretary of the Association of College and Research Libraries, is staff representative.

AAJC members are Joseph B. Rushing, chancellor, Tarrant County Junior College District, Texas; Richard W. Hostrop, former president, Prairie State College, Illinois; Rhea M. Eckel, president, Cazenovia College, New York; and Howard L. Simmons, associate dean of instructional innovation, Northampton County Area Community College, Pennsylvania. Roger Yarrington, director of publications for AAJC, is staff representative.

• Help is now available to nonprofessional church librarians in the form of the Church and Synagogue Library Association. Created to aid in the formation and improvement of library facilities and services in our houses of worship and schools, the CSLA is interdenominational and open to all interested people. It has members in forty-eight states and several foreign countries.

The theme of the 1970 annual conference held in May in Pittsburgh was “The Library Serves Families.” Professionally trained and experienced librarians shared their knowledge in seminars on book selection, processing, and cataloging repairing. Tours of local church and synagogue libraries, book exhibits, and talks by authors provided a well-rounded program of inspiration and information.

The 1971 conference will be on the campus of the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota (“The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes”), June 13-15. The program is being designed around a theme of the library as a media center. The handling of slides, mounted pictures, art masterpieces, and audiovisuals will be included at the three-day conference.

The Association offers a bimonthly bulletin and other publications geared to be helpful in a practical way, plus the knowledge that you are not alone with your problems. Write to the Church and Synagogue Library Association, P.O. Box 530, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010 for further information.

• The Columbia University libraries will undertake a comprehensive review of research library management while serving as the location for a case study of the forms of university library organization and the pattern of staffing library operations. The study, funded by the Council on Library Resources, Inc., will be carried out by the management consulting firm of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton under the general direction of an Advisory Committee established jointly by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Council on Education (ACE).

Columbia’s library system was selected for this phase of the study because it incorporates in representative portions the operational complexities, the service capabilities, and the financial problems characteristic of most large, academic research libraries. Further, the Columbia libraries are deeply involved in the development of computer-based record systems and in regional and national cooperative programs designed to extend access to resources on the one hand and to promote coordination of resource development and bibliographic control on the other.

The recently published report, “Problems in University Library Management,” prepared by the consultants under the direction of the ARL/ ACE Advisory Committee with the help of a Council grant, pinpoints specific library management problems and suggests approaches for their solution. For example, in the areas of organization and staffing, the report notes that organization plans have evolved gradually and do not reflect a total view or consider possible alternatives; library administrative officers do not have clear or appropriate standing within the university’s organization structure; libraries often have too few middle level executives; organization rationale and position responsibilities are rarely documented; staffing requirements are unclear and information on reported shortages is not available; training programs, especially those relating to management skills, are inadequate; subject specialists and other highly trained professionals are not given adequate recognition.

With the focus on these and other similar topics, the consultants will work to develop alternate plans of organization and will seek to identify the total staff capabilities required to meet service objectives. Working in the context of library goals and with the array of constraints and other elements that affect library performance, new ways will be sought to employ to maximum effect the talent and resources of the libraries in the university. In addition to internal organization, the organization of the library within the university and in relation to other large research libraries will also be considered. The fundamental purpose of this entire effort is to develop and to refine a library operating capability that is both responsive to the academic requirements of individual users and suitable for meeting longterm library obligations. The goal is not merely cost reduction. Rather, it is to secure for the university maximum benefits from its library resources—funds, talent, collections, and space.

• The First Conference on Horticultural and Botanical Libraries was held at Horticultural Hall in Boston on November 13, 1969. The conference was conceived as an opportunity to discuss problems of significance to libraries devoted to the botanical and horticultural fields. The response to this inaugural meeting was enthusiastic. Plans for a second meeting and a study committee to report on future developments were undertaken. The second conference was held at the Hunt Botanical Library in Pittsburgh on April 24-25, 1970. At this time the study committee recommended the formation of an official organization with a permanent secretariat. At the second meeting many new institutions were represented. A third conference will be held in New York City in the spring of 1971. It is cosponsored by the New York Botanical Garden and the Horticultural Society of New York. At the first two meetings emphasis was placed on the sharing of information in the fields of technical processing and preservation. Several cooperative programs are under discussion.

The Conference on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries is open to both small and large botanico-horticultural libraries of public and private institutions, subject specialist librarians, interested persons from, the horticulture and botany professions, and friends. Overseas memberships are encouraged. Institutional and personal memberships are available. For further membership and program information write to Charles R. Long, Chairman, The Secretariat, Conference on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138.

• The Idaho State University library has available over seventy reading lists on many diversified topics. Anyone wishing further information should send 10¢ in stamps or coin to the Gifts and Exchange Department, Idaho State University Library, Pocatello, Idaho 83201 for a three-page mimeographed “List of Reading Lists.” Any reading list wanted is available for 10¢ each.

• The recommendations of a subcommittee set up to consider the use of the Classification Research Group’s Classification of Library Science in Library & Information Science Abstracts have now been accepted by the Library Association’s Publications Committee. From 1971, the scheme will continue to be used as the basis for the arrangement, but processes and stock will be the leading facets rather than types of libraries and library users. This means that abstracts on compound subjects such as cataloging in university libraries and microforms in public libraries will be entered under cataloging and microforms, respectively, and not under the type of library. The feature headings will be in the following form;

Cataloguing. University libraries Microforms. Public libraries

Backing alphabetical subject index entries will be provided at:

University libraries: Cataloguing Public libraries: Microforms

A recommendation to make the annual cumulation of the alphabetical subject index lead to serial numbers of abstracts rather than to the notation of the scheme has also been accepted. Alphabetical subject indexes to individual issues will continue to lead to the scheme’s notation.

• The R. W. Norton Art Gallery library of Shreveport, Louisiana, has recently opened to provide a facility for art research. The present collection has 3,000 volumes of books and periodicals. Facilities have been provided for five study rooms in which the patron may work for an extended time, even for weeks, in private. The library has a large collection of books on the history of Virginia and Louisiana. In particular there is “The James M. Owens Memorial Collection of Early Americana,” 1,000 volumes given to the library by Mrs. Kathleen M. Owens, widow of the late Dr. James M. Owens of Shreveport. Recently, the library has been collecting as much material as possible on the state of Louisiana. Already in the library are outstanding works by artist/ornithologists from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, including James Audubon.

• “SPIRES/BALLOTS Report,” an awardwinning 16mm color film describing two Stanford University research projects designed to computerize library systems, is available for purchase, rental, and preview-before-purchase from the University of California Extension Media Center, Berkeley, California 94720. The fifteen-minute film enlivens its description of the research work with amusingly satiric glimpses of man’s previous efforts to solve the problem of information storage, and makes irreverent comments on the relationship of wisdom and bureaucracy in libraries. The film received the 1970 outstanding information sciences movie award from the American Society for Information Sciences.

SPIRES (Stanford Public Information Retrieval System) and BALLOTS (Bibliographic Automation of Large Library Operations using Time Sharing) are significant projects that show promise of revolutionizing library research. The Stanford system has been developed to a point where a computer can instantly search the university library by subject. “SPIRES/BALLOTS Report” may be purchased for $180; one-day rental is $12.50. The film was made by students in Stanford’s School of Communication. Further details may be obtained from the Extension Media Center.

• A conservation laboratory has been established by The New York Public Library for the extensive treatment of books and paper in the research collections. James W. Henderson, Chief of the Research Libraries, who made the announcement, said that the project has been made possible by an anonymous gift of $100,000. The new laboratory, in the library’s annex building at 521 West 43rd Street, is an essential part of “Conservation Program Number 3” under which materials in the general collections will be preserved in their original form. The program is so numbered because it is the third major effort of the library to deal with conservation of the collections. The first of these is the extensive microfilming program which has been carried out over the past thirtyfive years, creating some 40,000 reels of microfilm, the equivalent of over 200,000 volumes. A second effort is the library’s cooperation in a large number of reprinting projects during the past decade. The laboratory is under the supervision of H. Wayne Eley, Jr., a conservation specialist trained in New Haven during his studies at Yale. He will be staffing the program in early 1971.

• One of the most complete dental libraries in the West has opened in a well-known San Francisco architectural structure. The Ernest G. Sloman Memorial library of the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry moved into a nearby structure which was reopened and dedicated as a new comprehensive health sciences library for the Pacific Medical Center. The center’s library was constructed in 1912 for what was then Lane Hospital and Stanford University’s School of Medicine. The building had been closed since 1959 when Stanford moved its hospital and library to the Palo Alto campus, twenty-five miles south of San Francisco.

With 20,000 bound volumes, the dental library has a comprehensive dental journal collection and receives practically every dental publication in the United States. The library also receives dental publications from fifty-one foreign countries in twenty-three different languages. In addition to the main journal collection, the library has an extensive duplicate journal collection.

• The librarians of the University of Washington have recently organized the Association of Librarians of the University of Washington (ALUW). As stated in its bylaws, the objectives of the Association shall be: To promote library service of the highest quality at the University of Washington; to promote the professional standing of the members and to encourage their professional development; to provide a forum where matters of professional concern to the librarians of the University of Washington may be considered and appropriate courses of action determined; to develop an organization responsive to the ideas of its members in which each individual may participate freely without regard to administrative position or professional rank. A copy of the full text of the bylaws is available to any group interested in forming a similar organization. Please write Miss Clairann Schickler, Secretary, ALUW, Catalog Division-Main Library, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98115 and enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

• The Western Americana Collection at the University of Utah libraries has become the official archives for Utah labor organizations’ documents. The labor archives will preserve various documents and make them available for research projects in other universities or unions. According to Dr. Everett L. Cooley, curator of the Western Americana Collection and University archivist, “The collection now contains a number of records covering the Utah labor union movement from the 1880’s to the 1950’s, with major emphasis on the period between 1930 and 1956. More participation from all the state labor organizations and unions is needed.’’ Minute books, correspondence, arbitration records, account books, convention papers, constitutions, and scrapbooks are among the documents being sought for the archives. Documents gathered so far date back to the Deseret Typographical Union, the first labor union in Utah, and a locomotive engineers’ union. Other documents cover the Utah State Federation of Labor, the Utah State Industrial Union Council, and their affiliates.

• Western Kentucky University library, Bowling Green, Kentucky, recently began to automate its various functions. It will launch its first library automation project in cataloging instead of circulation or acquisitions. At the end of November 1970, ten ATS (Administrative Terminal Systems) were installed in the cataloging department. The ATS is an IBM 2471 (a programmed selectric typewriter) which has the capability to address and recall data directly into and from a computer. It serves as a terminal to connect on-line with the campus IBM 360/40 computer. With the joint efforts of systems librarian, Patricia W. Custead and head cataloger, Simon P. J. Chen, the ATS terminals will be utilized to convert 250,000 volumes from Dewey to LC, and, meanwhile, to key in the newly acquired library materials. The complete cataloging data are keyed in by ATS operators to store on magnetic tapes permanently.

The reclassification project is estimated to last from six to nine months. After the completion of the project, the computer will print a brand new card catalog containing two million cards, new labels in LC for the old Dewey books, and various printed bibliographies and catalogs.

PUBLICATIONS

• Duke University Library has announced the publication of a two-volume set, Periodicals and Other Serials in the Libraries of Duke University. This computer-based list contains over 50,000 entries for titles held in the Duke University libraries (excluding the Medical Center Library) as of January 31, 1971. Entry includes almost full bibliographical information in addition to holdings. Periodicals and Other Serials will be available in April from the Assistant Librarian for Technical Services, William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706, at $35 for the two-volume, paperbound set.

Libraries interested in acquiring a microfiche set (at 42 x reduction ratio) with comprehensive index should inquire at the above address.

• A revised and enlarged guide recently published by the Library of Congress will help researchers identify U.S. Government reports which have become known by the name of a person prominently concerned with them rather than by their official titles. Entitled Popular Names of U.S. Government Reports: A Catalog, this 43-page publication may be purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402, at 55¢ a copy.

The revised and updated edition supersedes one compiled and published initially in 1966. It has been enlarged by adding reports appearing after 1965 and reports published as early as 1821. Among the 753 reports listed are many that are important in U.S. history and those which are primary sources for research. These reports, known popularly by the names of persons prominently concerned with them, are difficult to locate in the absence of full identification since the published documents do not carry their authors’ name and are therefore cataloged under the name of the official issuing agency. The “Kerner Report” on civil disorders and the “Rockefeller Report” on the quality of life in the Americas are examples of titles for which full bibliographic identification is provided. The reports cited are arranged alphabetically by popular name.

The guide was compiled in the Serial Division of the Library’s Reference Department by Bernard A. Bernier, Jr., and Charlotte M. David, and the foreword was written by James B. Childs, Honorary Consultant in Government Document Bibliography.

• Number 16 in the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science’s Allerton Park Institute series, Serial Publications in Large Libraries, has recently been published. The 194-page volume, edited and introduced by Walter C. Allen, contains eleven articles dealing with serials and their relationship to large libraries. Authors and titles include: “The Bright, Bleak Future of American Magazines” by Theodore Peterson; “Serials Selection” by William A. Katz; “The Serials Perplex; Acquiring Serials in Large Libraries” by Peter Gellatly; “Serial Cataloging Revisited—A Long Search for a Little Theory and a Lot of Cooperation” by Kathryn Luther Henderson; “Library Binding” by James Orr; “Binding—A Librarian’s View” by William T. Henderson; “Serial Records; A Mechanism for Control” by Samuel Lazerow; “Serial Publications in Large Libraries: Machine Applications” by Donald P. Hammer; “Document Serials, Technical Reports, and the National Bibliography” by Thomas D. Gillies; “Bibliographic Control of Serial Publications” by Bill M. Woods; and “Service” by Warren B. Kuhn.

This indexed volume is available from the IIlini Union Bookstore, 715 S. Wright Street, Champaign, Illinois 61820, for $4.50. Standing orders for the Allerton Park Institute series may be placed by writing to the Graduate School of Library Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 331 Main Library, Urbana, Illinois 61820. LC Card Number is 74-629637 and the International Standard Book Number is 0-87845-011-4.

• In order to help the student and faculty member keep abreast of current developments in the law, Tarlton Law Library at The University of Texas is inaugurating a new series of special bibliographies on timely subjects. It is hoped that this series will make the resources of the Tarlton library and of other law libraries more accessible.

Beginning in 1966, bibliographies compiled by the library staff were included in the library’s bimonthly acquisition lists, Notes from the Tarlton Law Library. Although the Notes will continue to include staff bibliographies, those to be published in the new series, “Tarlton Law Library Legal Bibliography Series,” will be issued separately. The first in the series is entitled The Bill of Rights and Military Justice; a Selected Legal Periodical Survey, 1940 to 1970, and was compiled by Bardie C. Wolfe, Jr., Circulation Librarian. This bibliography covers a time period during which the cold war and the Vietnam “war,” as well as two major wars have occurred.

The second in the series is entitled A Bibliography on Student Activism, 1963-1970, compiled by Adrienne C. deVergie, Technical Services Specialist. It represents the outcome of an intensive investigation of materials concerning all aspects of campus unrest at colleges and secondary schools in the United States, and includes monographs, articles from both legal and general periodicals, and state and federal documents.

The third and latest in the series is A Bibliography on Juvenile Delinquency in Texas, compiled by Jane Olm, Librarian for the Criminal Justice Reference Library, a special collection housed in Tarlton Law Library. The bibliography was prepared specially for the Task Force on Juvenile Delinquency, recently created by the Texas Criminal Justice Council. Various state and private agencies, as well as numerous Texas colleges and universities, were contacted by Mrs. Olm and her staff in gathering data for the bibliography.

Numbers one and two in the series are available from the Tarlton Law Library for $10 each. Please address your inquiries to Mrs. Kathleen Long, Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas School of Law, and make your check payable to University of Texas Law School Foundation.

• A Union List of Current Periodical Subscriptions has been published by the six academic libraries affiliated with the Lehigh Valley Association of Independent Colleges consortium. This computer-produced directory lists the locations of more than 4,000 periodical titles on the subscription lists of the libraries at Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales, Cedar Crest College, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, Moravian College, and Muhlenberg College. Arranged alphabetically by periodical title, the directory identifies the library holding the longest file of each title and the beginning date of the file, and notes other libraries holding shorter runs. Title entries are accepted as submitted by each of the six participating libraries. Twice a year the list will be updated to record new titles and changes in holdings records. Copies of the 99-page Xerox list can be purchased for $10 each, without binders. Orders on institutional order forms should be addressed to the Mart Library, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015.

WE FIND THE UNFINDABLE

Scholarly Services Ltd. is in an unrivalled position to locate the books, manuscripts and letters you require to complete special collections.

Your letter or want-list will receive an immediate confirmation, with periodic bulletins as to items located and prices.

Scholarly Services Ltd. is unique in that we do not utilize common methods for the location of these materials, consequently the item located is uncommon as well, and not from a dealer’s catalogue.

The range and scope of our methods of location are beyond the means or ken of even the most worldly antiquarian bookseller. We seek out and retrive only the rarest titles, and only unpublished, hitherto unknown letters and mss. historic or literary.

We are also responsive to any quotes you may care to make, as regards the sale of items, but rarity and the inedited is our primary criteria.

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• Two new publications by members of the Pennsylvania State University faculty have been released in the bibliographical series of the university libraries. Theory of Wages and Collective Bargaining, a Bibliography, by Eugene A. Myers, professor of economics, is number two in the series, and A Tentative Portuguese-African Bibliography by Gerald M. Moser, professor of Portuguese, is the third number.

General theories, factors in wage determination, and related areas are covered in Myers’ 146-page bibliography. References to wage determination in selected industries are also included.

The literature of Portuguese sub-Sahara Africa, including Angola, the Cape Verdean Islands, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and the islands of São Tomé and Principe, is covered in Moser’s 148-page bibliography. Nine portraits, a frontispiece, and the cover of a Cape Verde periodical are included in the illustrations. His aim was to include all writings from earliest times through 1969 within the bounds of belles lettres, including books, pamphlets, or offprints. Manuscripts and periodical articles are included when no other form of publication was found. Oral folk literature, written literature, and literary history and criticism are covered. There is an index of authors which includes short biographical notes showing whether the writers were born in Africa or Europe and how long they lived in Africa.

The price of each bibliography is $5.00; they may be ordered from the Office of the Director of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802. ■■