ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the field

Acquisitions

•Brenau College, Gainesville, Georgia, has acquired a 200-volume collection of assorted works from the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia. The transfer was made in memory of the late John L. Snare, a friend of the institute who taught at the college. Titles in the collection range from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments to modern works such as Charles Murray’s Losing Ground, Richard Epstein’s Takings, and Rosenberg and Birdzell's How the West Grew Rich.

•Harvard University’s Loeb Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts, has received the professional papers of architect Hugh A. Stubbins Jr., chairman of The Stubbins Associates, Cambridge, and an alumnus and former faculty member of the Graduate School of Design. Stubbins also donated funds to catalog, conserve and store the materials. Comprised of correspondence, plans, drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, color transparencies, artwork, and memorabilia, the collection spans Stubbins’ more than 50 years in professional practice. Stubbins was a member of the GSD faculty for 12 years during the 1940s and ’50s, and chaired it briefly following Walter Gropius’ retirement in 1953. He left Harvard the following year to enter private practice but has maintained a close relationship with Harvard ever since. Among the university buildings designed by The Stubbins Associates are the Loeb Drama Center (1960), the Countway Library of Medicine (1965) ‚ and the Pu- sey Library (1976).

•The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., has acquired an unusual collection of sound recordings, motion pictures and other materials pertaining to the South Sea islands of the Pacific from Margaret Fahnestock of Great Mills, Maryland. Together with her late husband, Sheridan Fahnestock, and his brother Bruce, Mrs. Fahnestock sailed throughout the region in the early 1940s on an expedition sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History. The collection includes 143 16-inch disk recordings of music from the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa, New Caledonia, Bali, Java, Madura and the Kangean Islands. Five reels of color film and numerous letters, magazine articles, and newspapers document the progress of the expedition, including its disastrous end when the Fahnestock’s three-masted, 137-foot schooner “Director II,” struck a shoal and sank on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

• North Park College, Chicago, Illinois, has acquired the library of the DeLiSa Norwegian Literary Society of Chicago, a collection of nearly 500 volumes. Included are works of poetry, fiction and prose from many well-known Norwegian authors such as Ibsen, Bull, Garborg, Falkberget, Grieg, Lie, Bjornson, Lutken and Hamsun.

• North Texas State University, Denton, recently received a collection of more than 2,000 volumes concentrating on the modern evangelical movement in America from Timothy W. Grogan of Cleveland, Ohio. The collection as a whole encompasses a broad range of philosophical and religious subjects.

• Ohio University, Athens, has been designated as the United States depository for Malaysian materials by the government of Malaysia. The designation follows the joint establishment in 1985 of the Malaysian Resource Center in the Libraries’ Southeast Asia Collection by Ohio University and the Malaysian government. The depository arrangements will be handled by Malaysia’s National Library, the national depository agency, which is expected to supply Ohio University with copies of materials it receives. University officials believe it is the first such arrangement established between an American institution and a foreign government. Malaysians are the second largest group of foreign students in the United States, totalling more than 21,600 in 1987-87.

• The State University of New York at Albany has acquired the records of the Society for the Preservation of Water Resources, Inc. ‚ an environmental group founded in 1977 to prevent construction of a shopping mall on the Rotterdam-Schenectady line over a natural aquifer. Of related interest are two collections concerning the construction of the Crossgates Shopping Mall in the Albany Pine Bush (1979-1982), which were previously added to the Archives of Public Affairs and Policy, housed in the Department of Special Collections and Archives.

SUNY/Albany has also acquired the papers of Samuel B. Gould (b. 1910), documenting his career as a leading American educator since the 1950s and as chancellor of SUNY from 1964 to 1970 during the system’s greatest years of expansion. Gould also served as president of Antioch College (1954-1959), chancellor of the University of California at Santa Barbara (1959-1962), and president of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (1962-1964).

• Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, has acquired approximately 2,800 hymnals from the family of the late Paul Wohlgemuth, music professor at Kansas Christian College from 1961 to 1976. The hymnals range from pocket-sized books dating from the 18th century to modern editions from various parts of the world, and have been classified into 42 categories encompassing 25 denominations. Represented are Jewish hymnals, German hymnals, Christmas music, and music for various voice groupings, as well as a large proportion of gospel music. Of particular interest is a 1580 Geneva Bible with Sternhold-Hopkins psalter attached. The psalter, a translation of psalms set to music, is the earliest known hymnal in English.

• The University of Delaware, Newark, has acquired an extensive group of letters by American author Djuna Barnes (1892-1974). The collection contains 224 letters—numbering more than 800 pages—written by Barnes to her friend and fellow American expatriot, author Emily Coleman. They span a 40-year period beginning in 1934 and include an early typescript excerpt from Barnes’ most famous novel, Nightwood. Barnes had great difficulty in attracting a publisher for the book, and complained in February 1934 that “all say that it is not a novel; that there is no continuity or life in it, only high spots and poetry.” Coleman campaigned actively for the book, which was published by Faber and Faber in 1936 at the instigation of T.S. Eliot.

• The University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Marr Sound Archives and the Conservatory Library have received a gift of cylinder recordings and sheet music from Dr. James Hopkins of Kansas City. The 341 cylinders in the collection, which is comprised primarily of popular music recorded between 1900 and 1929, include rare cylinders of speeches by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, as well as speeches on various topics by Senator William Jennings Bryan. The 1,600 pieces of sheet music, which will be added to the Library’s Popular American Sheet Music Collection, likewise date mostly from the early 20th century and include a large number of rare ragtime pieces as well as Kansas City and Missouri publications.

• The University of Pittsburgh’s Library Science Library, Pennsylvania, has received a collection of 274 historically notable children’s books from Mrs. Charles Covert Arensberg. Included are many first editions and numerous books with illustrations by artists such as Louis Boutet de Monvel, Walter Crane, Henriette Willebeek Le Mair, Gustave Doré, Charles and William Heath Robinson, Howard Pyle, Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Willy Pogány, Kay Nielsen and Feodor Ro- jankovsky.

Grants

• Fort Valley State College, Georgia, has been awarded a $40,100 grant by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan, to develop a videotape collection for persons who might not otherwise patronize the library. Together with North Carolina A&T State University, the FVSC Cooperative Extension program will develop a series of 15- and 30-minute videos designed to appeal specifically to small and part-time farmers, singleparent families, inner city youths, and other groups with limited economic and educational resources. Subjects to be covered will include agriculture and natural resources, home economics, 4-H, youth and community and rural development. Once completed, the tapes will be available for check-out or loan at local Extension offices, or open to viewing at various community sites.

Fort Valley State will use a second Kellogg grant of $40,132 to complete the equipping of its unique mobile teaching trailer. Known as Track III: New Educational Delivery Systems Mobile Teaching Unit for Adult Learners, the 45-foot customized trailer, built with the help of an earlier Kellogg grant, features an onboard generator that will enable it to function in isolated areas lacking the necessary power sources. The trailer’s main function will be to heighten awareness of the variety of electronic and non-traditional means of access to information among local librarians, educators, health officials and others.

• George Washington University, Washington, D. C., has received a $54,951 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to develop an archives and records management program for the University. Principal activities will include survey identification of historically valuable records, creation of a comprehensive organizational plan, and definition of policies and procedures for appraisal, arrangement, description, preservation, housing and servicing of records. The grant is for a two-year period.

• Ohio State University, Columbus, has re-ceived the first year’s funds of a three-year, $170,725 grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. The grant is being used to develop microcomputer programs for students not familiar with library automation. Part of Ohio State’s “Gateway Project,” the programs will function as an introduction to the library’s mainframe system, as well as other specialized databases, without requiring specialized knowledge.

• The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has been awarded a $172,571 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to begin the bibliographic phase of the Arkansas Newspaper Project. Begun in January, the phase will involve the inventorying and cataloging of nearly 2,600 newspaper titles held by libraries throughout the state. Work is expected to proceed through the end of 1989.

• The University of California system has received a continuation grant of $160,236 from the National Library of Medicine to fund the third year of the MELVYL MEDLINE project. The grant covers the period from April 1 of this year through March 31, 1989, and brings the total amount awarded to $521,392. During the second year of the project, the MELVYL MEDLINE database of 900,000 records was released for public access in the UC health and life sciences libraries. The emphasis during the final year will be on training and refinement of the system based on user evaluation. The database will also be made available in all UC libraries.

• The University of Maryland, College Park, has received a $192,255 NEH grant for its Mary- landia Department to locate, catalog, and prepare a guide to all Maryland newspapers as part of the United States Newspaper Project. It is estimated that more than 1,400 newspapers have been published in Maryland since the Maryland Gazette appeared in Annapolis in 1827. The project is expected to take two years.

• The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has received a $125,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to establish three one-year internships in preservation management. The positions will provide professional-level training for qualified librarians seeking administrative positions in library preservation and conservation programs. They are aimed primarily at experienced librarians in mid-career.

News notes

• Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Florida, hosted the third Earlham College-Eckerd College Bibliographic Instruction Conference from February 3-5. Ninety-three librarians and classroom faculty representing 69 institutions attended from 24 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. In addition to presentations by Earlham head librarian Evan Farber, and by librarians, faculty and administrators of Earlham and Eckerd, six vendors demonstrated CD-ROM technology.

• George Washington University, Washington, D. C., has received a new contract extending the University’s role as the national clearinghouse for information on higher education. The contract places the U.S. Department of Education’s Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) at George Washington for an additional five years, 1988-1993. ERIC has been maintained at the university since 1968.

• Purdue University Libraries’ Independent Study Center, West Lafayette, Indiana, was presented with one of three affirmative action awards by the president of the university. The unit was recognized for its programs for the visually impaired with a plaque and a check for $7,000. The service provides a reader program, audio and visual aids, and special equipment including a Perkins Brailer and a speed synthesizer.

• The University of Hawaii at Manoa Library, in partnership with the University Computing Center, opened a new Computerized Learning and Information Center in February. Students, faculty and staff can use the Center’s equipment to access information via computer workstations and related equipment. Computer-assisted instruction programs involving software that aids skill development are being emphasized. Faculty are encouraged to deposit “reserve” copies of their own programs or commercially purchased software (within copyright limitations). The CLIC features 80 workstations incorporating IBM and Macintosh PCs as well as dumb terminals, dot matrix and laser printers, and nine PLATO terminals.

• The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio now offers access to the Microme- dex Corporation’s Computerized Clinical Information System. The CCIS database contains information on drugs, poisonings, and emergency treatment through the DRUGDEX, POISINDEX, and EMERGINDEX files, and is available to authorized users of the library’s VAX system at any library terminal. CCIS is generally located in hospitals and emergency centers.