ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the field

ACQUISITIONS

•The John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, has received from the New York Correctional Association the original worksheets from which Richard Dugdale compiled tables for his criminal and genealogical study, The Jukes. These sheets contain handwritten raw data on over 800 individuals collected during a tour of New York county jails in the summer of 1874. They are in the process of being cleaned and encapsulated.

•Pennsylvania State University’sPattee Library, University Park, has received the papers of Richard S. Schweiker, former Secretary of Health and Human Services, U.S. Congressman, and Senior U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. The collection consists of legislative and bill files, press notices, speeches, political campaign materials including those from the 1976 Vice-Presidential race, photographs, and audio and videotapes covering 22 years of public service.

•Texas A&M University’sSterling C. Evans Library, College Station, has acquired the book collection of Henry Seldis (1925-1978), noted lecturer and art critic. A figure of international respect in the art community, Seldis is remembered most as art critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1958 to

1978. The Seldis Collection, consisting of over

4.0 rare exhibition and museum catalogs and 1,500 monographs, reflects Seldis’s lifelong concern as a critic with contemporary art and the makers of the modern movement.

•The University of Michigan Music Library, Ann Arbor, recently acquired a Women’s Music Collection. The core of the collection consists of

2.0 scores by women composers published in Europe from about 1780 to 1960 and illustrates the work of some 400 women. Included are over 100 pieces of sheet music by the French composer Cécile Chaminade (1857-1944), and nearly as many by Loïsa Puget (1810-1889), Augusta Holmes (1847-1903), and Liza Lehmann (1862-1918). The first catalogue of scores will be available at cost in early fall of 1984.

•The University of Pittsburgh’s Archives of Industrial Society has been given over 16,000 photographic images by the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad depicting its history from 1903 to 1970. The railroad began operating in 1879, financed in part by the Harmony Society, a communal religious sect located at Economy, Pennsylvania. The photographic records, along with other historical documents and business records, capture railroad operations and various aspects of life in the cities, small towns, and rural areas along the P&LE’s lines in southwestern Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio. Complementing the still photographs are over 2,000 feet of 16mm movie film which depict such scenes as railroad work crews in the 1930s, construction projects, and a parade of boats along the Monongahela River.

GRANTS

•The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia Library has received an HEA grant of $19,060 to enter its 3,500 current serial titles into the Pennsylvania Union List of Serials (PaULS) online database. Approximately 500 non-current titles will also be entered during this 12-month project.

•The Boston College Library, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has received a grant of $250,000 from the Pew Memorial Trust. The money will be used to further the computerization of the library. Boston College already has in operation a Geac circulation system and an online catalog that includes all of its retrospective holdings. An acquisition module is planned in the near future.

•The Henry Gerber-Pearl M. Hart Library, Chicago, a Midwest lesbian and gay resource center, has received a grant of $7,500 from the Chicago Resource Center for use in building the library’s book and journal collections, fulfilling basic equipment needs, and to begin an outreach program. Emphasis will be placed on the acquisition of lesbian materials to expand the library’s Jeannette Foster Collection of Lesbiana.

•The John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, has been awarded a one-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to microfilm and prepare a computerized index to approximately 2,700 volumes of trial transcripts primarily from the New York City Court of General Sessions and New York Supreme Court for the period 1883-1926. The criminal court trial transcripts provide unique insights into the value systems of American society during the period of mass immigration into New York City.

•Rutgers UniversityLibraries, New Rrunswick, New Jersey, have received $33,750 from the New Jersey Department of Education to produce three cumulative microfiche editions of the New Jersey Union List of Serials. This union list is a database of serials and periodicals holdings representing the collections of 67 institutions and 131 separate libraries in New Jersey. It contains 70,000 title entries and nearly 200,000 holdings, as well as other bibliographic data describing the titles. It is estimated that over 3,000 new titles will be added and 30,000 holdings changes and additions will be made to the database during the project period.

The Libraries have also been awarded $20,000 from the State of New Jersey to fund the tapeloading of Rutgers Cataloging Records from the past several years onto the OCLC database. The process will add a Rutgers location to items already in OCLC as well as add certain unique records.

•Southern Illinois University’sMorris Library, Carbondale, has been awarded $106,650 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a cooperative conservation program for research libraries and archives. The two-year project will concentrate on stimulating preservation program development in a five-state region of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. In addition to an information service, major program services will include on-site consulting and workshops. Week-long training sessions in simple conservation procedures will be available at the Library’s conservation lab for individual staff members from participating libraries. In 1984 the program will begin offering an at-cost service to construct custom protective enclosures for rare books.

•The University of Illinois at Chicago Library has received $500,000 from the Robert R. McCormick Charitable Trust. The grant will establish the Robert R. McCormick Endowment Fund, the income of which will be used to acquire books and manuscripts that illustrate the history and development of Chicago.

•The University of Tennessee Library, Knoxville, has received a preliminary grant from the Council on Library Resources to study ways to improve access for high school students to university and college libraries. The Undergraduate Library, in conjunction with the UTK College of Education, will develop a national model for library use to expand high school students’ competence in writing, reading, and reasoning to prepare them better for college-level work. The model will define a close working relationship between secondary schools and colleges and universities. ■ ■