ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The University of Georgia, Athens, has received from Patricia A. Turner of Augusta, Georgia, “one of the most valuable gifts of books ever received by the university.” Included in the gift are color-plate books, the works of nineteenth- century illustrators, books on heraldry, and several rare first editions. Among the first editions is Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other important items are Samuel R. Meyrick’s A Critical Inquiry into Antient Armour (London, 1824) and a copy of Orationes de Vera Mobilitate printed in Leipzig, Germany, in 1494.

• U.S. Representative Claude Pepper is donating his collection of official papers, documents, and memorabilia to Florida State University, Tallahassee. Pepper’s wife, Mildred Irene Webster Pepper, who died March 31, in her lifetime also determined to donate her papers to Florida State. The congressman has asked that the collection be named the “Mildred and Claude Pepper Library.”

• The University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, have acquired as a gift more than 600 monographs and serials on Byzantine studies from the library of the late professor Paul Alexander. In addition to professor Alexander’s collection of Byzantine material, his Jewish studies library was also made available by his widow.

• The Cuneo Press has given a twelve-foot working replica of the Gutenberg press to Northwestern University Library. The gift also includes 750 handmade bookbinding tools, 3,000 pounds of unused type in many styles, several books printed during the fifteenth century, paper, leather, and other related materials.

• The Rhode Island Historical Society has announced the opening of the Brown & Ives collection of manufacturing records. Included in this collection are records of the venerable Providence firm of Brown & Ives; their principal management agency, the firm of Goddard Brothers; and cotton mills owned by Brown & Ives.

• Mrs. Donald F. Yakeley of Armonk, New York, has presented the Esther Raushenbush Library of Sarah Lawrence College with a collection of books on the history of the American southwest. The volumes contain source material, on exploration, westward expansion and frontier life, Indians and Indian wars, cowboys, rangers, oudaws, and state and local history.

• The Atkins Library of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte has completed processing the papers (1945-1970) of Harry Golden, editor of the Charlotte-based Carolina Israelite and author of Only in America and other best-sellers.

The library has also recently acquired papers and printed materials relating to the 1970 Supreme Court case of Swann v. Charlotte! Mecklenburg Board of Education, and the Evelyn Bottome Lewis Collection of about 200 children’s books.

• The John Davis Williams Library in the University of Mississippi has acquired the folklore library of Professor Kenneth S. Goldstein, noted folklorist and author of A Guide for Field Workers in Folklore, Two Penny Ballads and Four Dollar Whiskey, Thrice Told Tales, and Folklore, Performance and Communication. One of the largest folklore collections ever formed privately, the Goldstein Collection comprises more than 12,000 volumes and 4,500 phonodiscs. It includes a comprehensive 3,000-volume collection of editions of collected folksongs and works about the evolution of the Anglo-American folksong, as well as a complementary array of works (ca. 3,850 volumes) treating the folklore and folk life of Britain, Ireland, Canada, and Australia.

The collection contains specialized holdings on children’s lore and games, Afro-American folklore, and folklore theory. Also represented in the collection are 132 different English-language folklore series, mainly in complete runs. Both Professor Goldstein’s former association with Riverside and Prestige records and his continuing research interests are reflected in the phonodisc component of the collection. Composed chiefly of LP recordings, the phonodisc collection is rich in examples of American, English, Scottish, and Irish revival.

GRANTS

• The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has received a grant of $55,867 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the microfilming of its ethnic newspapers. The project will cover a full year, from July 1979 through June 1980. More than 700,000 pages of newspapers will be filmed. Inquiries about titles included in this project should be directed to Roy H. Tryon, Library Director, The Balch Institute, 18 S. Seventh St., Philadelphia, PA 19106.

• The American Antiquarian Society has received a $149,072 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the H. W. Wilson Foundation of New York for the compilation of a definitive catalog of American engravings to 1821. The catalog will revise American Engravers upon Copper and Steel, a two-volume work by David McNeely Stauffer published in 1907 with biographical sketches of about 700 American engravers active through the nineteenth century.

• Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin—Madison were among the recipients of grants awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at its June 7-8 meeting. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, received a $50,269 award to conduct a collection/ record group level survey of manuscript and archival resources in repositories in nine New York counties. The University of Wisconsin-Madison was awarded $34,595 for a pilot program to develop strategies for the scheduling, accessioning, and retrieval of information from machine- readable records of Wisconsin state agencies.

• The government of Japan has awarded the University of New Mexico General Library a $10,000 grant for the purchase of books and journals about Japan. The grant will be used to purchase English-language materials in all fields relating to Japan.

MEETINGS

October 29-31: The Fourth International Conference on Approval Plans and Collections Development will be held at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “Shaping Library Collections for the 1980’s” will be the theme of the meeting. Topics discussed will include: impact studies, automation and the approval plan, which approval plan is right for you, and issues and trends. Registration is $59 for ACRL members, $89 for non-ACRL members. Contact: Charles MacCleod, Conference Treasurer, the Library, University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211.

October 31: The Archives-Libraries Committee, African Studies Association, will hold its fall meeting at the Los Angeles Hilton Hotel in conjunction with the twenty-second African Studies Association Annual Conference. Topics to be discussed include bibliographical needs and cataloging problems. A panel on “African Government Archives and the Expatriate Researcher” will be presented during the conference. For further information, contact Elizabeth A. Widen- mann, Herbert Lehman Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.

October 28-November 3: The annual conference of the Association of Caribbean University and Research Libraries (ACURIL) will be held in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic. The theme of the conference will be “The Position of the Librarian in a Developing Society.” For information, contact: María Elena A. de Cardona, Presidenta, Comité de Promoción, ACURIL, a/c Universidad Interamericana, Apartado Postal 1293, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico 00919; (809) 753-8008, ext. 205, 207.

November 11-14: The Twenty-Fifth Allerton Institute will have the title “Organizing the Library’s Support: Donors, Volunteers, and Friends.” Sponsored by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Graduate Library School, the institute will be held at Allerton Park, about twenty miles southwest of Champaign. The registration fee is $100. Contact the Institute Supervisor 03-903, University of Illinois, 116 Illini Hall, Champaign, IL 61820. ■■

ACRL MEMBERS SHOULD VOTE “NO” ON ALA DUES INCREASE

Dear Editor:

According to the latest issue of American Libraries, ALA members will be asked to approve a $15.00 increase in personal dues, or 42.8 percent above the current rate, making a new total of $50.00 for each personal member, and $15.00 for each division, thus effectively increasing an ACRL member’s dues to $65.00 per year (for comparison, the proposed SLA dues increase, including divisional and state chapter memberships, is $55.00).

Understandably, in times of inflation, everything costs more. All of us who operate libraries or library schools have been faced with stable budgets and some with actual decline in income. Adjustments have been made by reducing services, cutting activities, or reordering our priorities. Perhaps the time has come for ALA to do the same and to moderate continual increases in dues and registration fees. For at the same time as the dues increase, ALA proposes to spend $10,000 for ERA activities, and to establish a new Chapter Relations Office which will probably cost about $50,000 per year. These are new activities, which may very well be worthwhile, but they are being added without any reduction in previous commitments.

One comment is that there has not been a personal dues increase for five years. While that is true, the statement is also misleading. In 1978 conference registration fees for members increased from $30.00 to $50.00 (or $25.00 to $40.00 if one paid in advance). A new organizational dues schedule also went into effect in 1977-78, resulting in higher dues for many libraries. According to the Executive Director’s Report, conference income (always a money-maker, as John . Berry pointed out a year ago [LJ 103:1097]), publishing income, and grant income are all up this year. Total income last year, excluding gifts and grants, amounted to almost $7 million, a lot of money even in these inflationary days.

My chief concern is the impact on ALA divisions, which must generate their own income through personal memberships. ACRL and other divisions seem likely to suffer a decline in membership if the $15.00 increase is passed. If COPES had proposed a smaller increase, perhaps $5.00 or even $10.00, that might have made a difference in my attitude. However, I share the views of the AASL, RASD, and ACRL boards that a dues increase of $15.00 is not warranted at this time, and I urge ACRL members to vote against it.

Edward G. Holley

Dean, The School of Library Science

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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