ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Young

The University of North Carolina (UNC)at Chapel Hill has received a $530,000 grant from the E.S.P. Das Educational Foundation, a private organization in New York City, to produce a 3-D digital rare book library. UNC’s School of Information and Library Science, the university’s academic libraries, and ibiblio.org., a free library on the Web that is based at UNC, will use the funding to introduce the experience of viewing a book in three dimensions to the digital form. The 3-D library will consist of two components: an interactive system for viewing rare books and historically significant material in single or collection form, and a set of procedures and software tools for scanning, converting, and distributing the material online.

The University of Pittsburgh's East AsianLibrary has received a $223,500 grant over four years from the Freeman Foundation to build library resources for undergraduate students majoring in Asian studies. The program includes two components: a bibliographic instruction class designed for students in the East Asian Studies program and a comprehensive undergraduate-oriented, Web-based information service for students at the University of Pittsburgh and other institutions.

Appalachian State University (ASU) is therecipient of a 2001-2002 EZ-LSTA Digitization Demonstration Grant in the amount of $49,995. The grant will support the development of the Western North Carolina Heritage (WNCH) Web site by the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection and the Appalachian Cultural Museum of ASU and their partners, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville-Buncombe Library System, University of North Carolina- Asheville Special Collections, and the YMI Cultural Center. The WNCH site will build upon and incorporate last year’s Land of the Sky project (also funded through an EZ-LSTA grant to the Asheville-based partners). This site will be developed in coordination with the State Library of North Carolina’s North Carolina ECHO (Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) program and shares its goals of making North Carolina’s cultural heritage available online to all of its citizens, particularly to students in North Carolina’s schools and colleges. The primary focus of the first stage of WNCH development will be the digitization of materials concerning ethnic groups and ethnic diversity in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. This project is 100 percent supported with federal LSTA funds made possible through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, administered by the State Library of North Carolina, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources.

The UCLA Library has been awarded achallenge grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help staff address the problem of protecting the most fragile and highly used library resources. The initial grant of $340,000 will be used to hire a conservation specialist and to establish a conservation treatment laboratory for preservation activities. The foundation will award the library an additional $750,000 if an equal amount is raised from other library donors within three years. This fund of $1.5 million will be used to create an endowment for conservation and preservation.

Acquisitions

The Snow L. and B. W. C. Roberts Collection of fiction has been acquired by the East Carolina University Library. The collection includes more than 1,100 novels, novelettes, and collections of short stories from 1830 to the present, set wholly or partially in North Carolina. The collection includes rare titles, first editions, original dust jackets or bindings, and authors’ signatures.

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

The research papers of thelate Gordon W. Prange, history professor at the University of Maryland (UM) and a scholar on Pearl Harbor and World War II, have been acquired by UM. Prange is perhaps best known for his 1969 book on Pearl Harbor, Tora! Torn! Torn!, which was made into a movie of the same name. Following his death in 1980, several of his works were published posthumously, including Miracle at Midway wnâAtDawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. Prange’s working papers include notes for his early writings on Hitler, interviews with U.S. and Japanese military figures, correspondence with friends and publishers, drafts of books, maps, and lecture notes from UM classes. ■

Present at the Prange gift signing at the University of Maryland were, seated (from left): Dean of Libraries Charles Lowry and Polly and Winfred Prange. Standing (from left): Barbara Harr, assistant dean and director of external relations; Jennie Levine, assistant curator for historical manuscripts; DesiderVikor, director of collection management and special collections; Eiko Sakaguchi, curator, East Asia and Prange Collections; Amy Wasserstrom, manager. Prange Collection; and Lauren Brown, curator, archives and manuscripts.