ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the field

Acquisitions

• The Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, has acquired the important manuscript library of the now defunct China Trade Museum, formerly of Milton, Massachusetts. The gift consists of over 50 linear feet of manuscripts plus a large collection of graphic and photographic material and 42 annotated navigation charts. A large segment of the acquisition, spanning the years 1732-1930, consists of the papers of three generations of the Forbes family: Robert Bennet, Francis Blackwell, and Francis Murray Forbes, Boston merchants. The collection surveys the China Trade from various points of view. The Samuel Austin papers provide a good insight into the China market, while those of Captain Eben Linnell record the trade and times from the quarterdeck. Samuel Shaw, first American consul at Canton, presents the view from China, the Lewis Wharf papers and Thomas Lewis papers reveal the Boston scene, while the papers of Charles A. Tomes relate his work as an agent for Russell and Company.

• Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, has received an extensive collection of state and national historical literature from newspaper publisher Warren Shonert. The Presidential Signature Series consists of portraits and photos of every President from Washington to Reagan, accompanied by authenticated signatures and personal or biographical notes. Memorabilia from past Presidential and Congressional campaigns add color and scope. The 1,500-title book collection contains Civil War literature, Kentucky history, and works on Abraham Lincoln, and is richly enhanced by several rare works, including John Filson’s Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky. The acquisition also includes numerous Civil War artifacts, many from the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky.

• The University of California, Los Angeles, has acquired a large number of books and documents, including much scarce and unique material, from the estate of the late Han Yu-shan, the first professor of Chinese history at UCLA. The collection is Han’s personal library which he had started as a student in China sixty years ago. Highlights of the collection include: 500 examination papers and other papers related to China’s civil service system dating from the 17th to the 19th centuries; materials describing individual private academies which prepared many candidates for the civil service examinations; a complete set of printing blocks for the Diamond Sutra (Chin-kang ching), one of the most highly regarded of the Buddhist scriptures; 24 manuscript patents from a superior conferring a promotion or other mark of distinction on someone for outstanding achievement in a scholarly or human field of endeavor, such as unusual filial piety; and a 1775 Japanese reprint of an early Chinese herbal, the Cheng-lei pen–ts’ao.

• The University of California, Santa Barbara, has been given a collection of maps of the 16th-18th centuries by Peggy A. Maximus, of Santa Barbara. Printed from copper plate engravings, the 310 maps of various regions of Europe were drawn by 12 master mapmakers, among them Gerhardus Mercator, Willem Blaeu, and Abraham Ortelius. Many of the maps originally had been published as part of bound atlases and later removed.

• The University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, has acquired a large collection of works by and about W. Somerset Maugham. The collection was assembled by Roland E. Gunsburg, a Michigan alumnus. Many presentation copies, signed limited editions, and American and British first editions of novels, short story collections, essays, and plays are well represented. One of the most unusual items is a typescript of The Camel’s Back, an unpublished Maugham play.

• The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Academic Affairs Library, has received a collection of 8,600 volumes that were the file copies of books from the publishing firms of John Murray, of London, England, and Smith, Elder & Company, another London publisher that was absorbed by John Murray in 1917. Two very successful periodicals were associated with these firms, the Quarterly Review (1809-1967) and the Cornhill Magazine (1860-1975). The first important book published by John Murray was The Revolutionary Plutarch, a tract on French politics published in 1803. The Smith, Elder firm was responsible for the Dictionary of National Biography, begun in 1882. Both companies have published such important authors as Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, Charles Darwin, Charlotte Bronte, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, George Meredith, Henry James, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

• The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, has been given a 60,000-volume collection of Latin American materials by San Fernando Valley civic leaders Jane and Herbert Boeckmann II. The collection contains materials published from the 17th to the 20th century, primarily in Mexico, Brazil, Central America, and the West Indies. Over 80% of the volumes are non-fiction, including many rare political, literary and theological treatises.

• The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been given the Paul Leon collection of James Joyce materials by an anonymous patron. Leon was one of Joyce’s closest friends, who transcribed and corrected his manuscripts and saw to his contracts with publishers. The collection includes personal letters and telegrams to Leon and his wife in addition to first editions, rare manuscripts, and signed books owned by Joyce. Other highlights are photographs and negatives of Joyce and Leon and others, and recordings of Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake, and other Joyce works.

• The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, has received a collection of 994 volumes of poetry, fiction, literary criticism, essays, and biographies as well as long backruns of noted literary journals including Poetry, Paris Review, Partisan Review, and Kenyon Review. Among autographed first editions are works by Wallace Stevens, John Ciardi, James Dickey, Richard Eberhart, and Brewster Ghiselin. The gift was presented by the estate of May Collins Flint, a Utah alumna.

• Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, has acquired an important collection of 2,400 jazz recordings, plus 100 instantaneous recordings, spanning the years 1925-1955. The collection was given by John L. Clarke, a Richmond businessman and former jazz drummer. Major jazz performers, including Paul Whiteman, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, are represented, but the focus is on such lesser known ensembles as the Dutch Swing College Band, the Quintette of the Hot Club of France, and the Jazz Club Mystery Jiv- ers. European jazz, relatively rare in U.S. collections, is also very well represented.

Grants

• Indiana University, Bloomington, has received a grant of $153,640 from the National Endowment for the Humanities in support of a project to catalog 5,935 books and 1,114 manuscripts from the Elisabeth Ball collection of children’s literature recently acquired by the university’s Lilly Library.

• The University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded $84,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to establish a Preservation Implementation Project that will serve to train conservation staff on four other campuses — Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. Staff trained by the Project will study practical approaches to planning, decisionmaking, and implementation of conservation goals and policies.