ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Acquisitions

Alton P. English's privately published book, The Young Family, 1240-1990,has been acquired by the Arizona State University Libraries’ Arizona Collection, Department of Archives and Manuscripts. English’s book traces the lineage of the Young (Yang) Family from its roots in 11th-century China to settlement of the “Young Association” in Ï9th-century Hawaii and 20th-century Los Angeles and Phoenix. English’s work is based partly on original ancestral tablets transported from China to Hawaii by the Young family in 1935.

The Barbara Simonds Cornerstone Collection of Ecumenical Study Documents and Papers has been acquired by the Cathedral Library of St. John the Divine in New York City. The collection consists of papers and correspondence from 1890-1989. Simonds founded the library in the 1930s, and later moved the collection to Rome, where she organized and hosted pilgrimages to promote her conviction that church unity was necessary for world peace.

The collection of the Los Angeles CountyMedical Association Library, which closed in 1991, has been acquired by the Huntington Library and UCLA’s Louise Darling Biomedical Library. The collection has great historical significance to medical historians. The Hunting- ton Library received 6,250 volumes, including 1,500 rare books on medicine and botany. UCLA received 24,943 volumes, including the whole of the Barlow Medical Library, a 14,000-vol- ume collection of 19th- and early-20th-century medical works.

The papers of geographer and poet JamesWreford Watson have been acquired by the McMaster University Library. Watson taught geography at various British and Canadian universities—among them Sheffield University, McMaster University, and the University of Edinburgh—and published numerous books and articles on the geography of Canada and the United States. He was also an accomplished poet who received the 1951 Governor General’s award for poetry for his book Of Time and the Lover. Watson’s papers include many journals of poetry, some dating back to when he was a young man.

The personal papers of Dr. C. Everett Koop,Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service from 1981 to 1989, have been acquired by the National Library of Medicine. Koop’s papers, totalling almost 50 linear feet, touch on all important activities of his term. The collection contains personal correspondence, nonofficial copies of official correspondence, invitations, copies of speeches, and many publications about the health concerns of the U.S. in the 1980s. Koop advised the public on matters such as smoking and health, diet and nutrition, environmental health hazards, and the importance of immunization in preventing the spread of disease. He also led a vigorous campaign to prevent the spread of AIDS, and he worked to protect handicapped infants.

Six thousand Russian children's and youngadult books, 1,250 volumes of Russian literary works, and 450 volumes on Russian performing arts, as well as items on Russian linguistics and Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian history, have been acquired by the Stanford University Libraries from the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas at Austin. Most of the books in this acquisition were published from 1940 to 1965.

The archive of Eric Walter White (1905-1984),an English musicologist, author, and arts administrator, has been acquired by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. White, who wrote extensively on English opera, is best known for his biographies: Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works (1966), Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas (1970), and Tippet and His Operas (1979). The archive contains over 150 autograph letters and postcards from Tippet to White, 50 letters and postcards from Britten to White, and correspondence from Stravinsky, including autographed pen-and-ink sketches of him conducting. The archive also contains White’s lifelong correspondence with such British literary figures as W. H. Auden, John Betjeman, E. M. Forster, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas, and Stephen Spender. ■