ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Galloway

California State University-Northridge(CSU) was awarded a five-year $1.6 million Hispanic Serving Institutions Grant from the U.S. Department of Education. This award acknowledges CSU and the university library’s education programs and affords the opportunity to further enrich the relationship between the university and its 30 percent total Hispanic enrollment (fall 2001) and the San Fernando Valley’s 37 percent Hispanic community.

Southwest Missouri State University(SMSU) has been awarded a $130,999 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to establish an effective university archives and records management program. The two-year grant project will conduct a campus records survey, revise retention schedules, produce a records management manual, and provide workshops for records administrators. The workshops will also publicize the establishment, services, and holdings of the university archives.

The University of California-BerkeleyLibrary, in partnership with the office of the vice provost for undergraduate education and the undergraduate division of the College of Letters and Sciences, has received $138,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a pilot project to establish Mellon Library/Faculty Fellows for Undergraduate Research. The program will be inaugurated with a Summer Institute for the Teaching of Undergraduate Research Competencies. Faculty and graduate student instructors selected for the program will participate in an intensive series of symposia, workshops, and individual consultation sessions that address information literacy, scholarly communication and publishing trends, new instructional technologies, student research, and the pedagogical strategies that need to be applied within this new instructional environment.

The John W. Barriger III NationalRailroad Library at the University of Missouri- St. Louis has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Union Pacific Railroad Corporation. The grant is designated to strengthen the library’s resources by acquiring rare and unique materials, including books, documents, archival materials, and artifacts related to the history of railroading in the United States.

The Ohio State University Librarieshave received $7 million, originating from Thomas E. and Patricia A. Duke Robinson, to support the renovation of the William Oxley Thompson Memorial (Main) Library. The Robinsons’ gift of $5 million will be augmented by an additional $2 million from the Paul G. Duke Foundation.

Acquisitions

The Ferry Hill Ledger (1797-1804) and anIngles Family Bible (1823) have been acquired by Virginia Tech’s Digital Library and Archives. This donation from a descendent of the Ingles family provides documentation of pioneers Mary Draper Ingles and William Draper, owners and operators of an early ferry across the New River, Ingles Ferry Hill Tavern, and a blacksmith shop. The Ferry Hill Ledger is important on a variety of levels as it documents this family’s extraordinary history and activities at the Ingles Ferry, as well as business transactions in Southwest Virginia at the turn of the 18th century. The library also recently received important Civil War materials, including the letters of David Earhart, whose unit, the 4th Virginia, Stonewall Jackson Brigade, saw some of the most intense fighting of the war. The Ferry Hill Ledger has been digitized for longterm preservation and eventual public access.

The papers of William Gosnell, DallasNicholas, and Larry Gibson have been acquired by the Thurgood Marshall Law Library at the University of Maryland School of Law. Gosnell and Nicholas were attorneys practicing in Baltimore from the 1930s through the 1950s. Gibson is a current faculty member of the law school and has been active in the civil rights movement in Baltimore as a practicing attorney and political figure. Together the papers represent the initial collections of the African Americans in the Law Special Collection project.

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e- mail: agalloway@ala.org.

A birch bark manuscript from a Buddhistmonastery, believed to have been written in the first or second century A.D., was recently acquired by the University of Washington and will become a key component of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project. The manuscript, among the earliest Buddhist writings known to exist, is from a private collector who recently died. The chain of possession from its location of origin to the collector is unknown. The manuscript consists of eight fragments of a scroll and is written in the Gandhari language, a derivative of Sanskrit. The style of script and the language suggest the manuscript comes from Gandhara, a region of what is now eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. ■