ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Revitalize library exhibits

If the exhibits area in your library needs revitalizing consider adapting some of the ideas developed by the University Research Library (URL) at the University of California Los Angeles: greater emphasis on campus/community events; more publicity of exhibits in both UCLA and other publications; more emphasis on service-related issues (e.g., introduce new CD-ROMs, new ORION capabilities, etc.); and greater focus on timely topics (e.g., events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) as a way to highlight collections. A further goal of the URL staff Exhibits Committee is to broaden staff participation in exhibit preparation. (Adapted with permission from the UCLA Library Newsletter.)

Think before you Post-it™

Stop! Don’t put that handy little “yellow sticky,” a.k.a. Post-it™ note, on libraiy materials or you could cause staining and permanent damage. Post- its™ were designed for short-term use on nonpermanent materials. After a month or two the adhesive hardens and leaves a film that becomes acidic. Julia Page, preservation librarian at the University of California, San Diego, recommends against ever using them in materials that will be added to the collection and is trying to make libraiy users aware of the damage Post-its™ can cause.

Signage reminds patrons not to use the Post-Its in library materials and patrons returning library materials complete with Post-its™ are sent the following letter: “Recently you returned materials to the library with ‘Post-it™ Notes’ inside them. Perhaps you are not aware of the negative effects of these seemingly harmless ‘markers.’ As staff removed these notes, there was some damage to the pages. In the long term, the glue on Post-it™ notes, can have a harmful effect on paper. Please help us in trying to preserve library materials by not using Post-it™ notes. Your cooperation is appreciated.”

Page also discovered that the bindery they were sending materials to was using Post-its™ in its internal processing and asked them to stop the practice. The pressure applied during the bindery process can impregnate the notes into the paper.

Post-its™ are also unfriendly to newsprint (check the reverse side of the note and you will see that the type has been lifted off the newsprint) and brittle paper. Removal of Post-its™ left for more than a month or two on brittle paper causes the paper to tear.

Warns Page, “Don’t fall into the scotch tape syndrome.” Save your Post-Its for your own papers and reports and be careful of leaving them in place for more than a month or two.

Help available for locating copyright holders

ALA’s Graphics Department has published “Locating Copyright Holders,” an informative tool developed by ACRL’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section’s Literary Rights Committee, chaired by Cathy Henderson. The document explains why it is important to locate copyright holders, provides definitions and brief explanations of the provisions of the U.S. copyright law, answers frequently asked questions, provides a brief bibliography, and offers 11 steps that can help library patrons track down c— Tight holders of both manuscript and nonmanuscript materials, such as audio- tapes, photographs, works of art, and motion pictures. Camera-ready artwork of the two-page 8 1/2" x 14" flyer (item number 12891) is available for $10 from the ALA Graphics Department,-50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; (800) 545-2433, press 8.

Information literacy topic at AAHE spring meeting

“Integrating InformationTechnologyintoTeach- ing and Research: Incentives and Aspirations” will be presented by the Information Literacy Action Community of die American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) during AAHE’s national meeting, April 5-8, 1992, at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. A panel of speakers including Patricia Senn Breivik of the National Forum on Information Literacy, will highlight technologies of value to instruction and research and offer practical and cost-effective approaches for building a campus environment that encourages faculty to use technologies in their instruction and research. Contact AAHE at (202) 293-6440 for more information.

Acquisitions

(Listings of acquisitions, grants, and gifts are taken from press releases, library newsletters, and notes to the editor. To ensure that news about your library is considered for inclusion, send the information to C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611; bitnet: U38398@UICVM.bitnet.)

• The Atlanta Historical Society, Inc., ac- quired the papers of Sam Massell who served as mayor for one term beginning in 1970. The collec- tion includes information pertaining to his real estate business as well as his mayoral years. The Society also added to its collection of Charles Weltner papers. Judge Weltner served as a U.S. Congressman and continues to work as a Supreme Court Justice for the state of Georgia. The papers include correspondence and documents relating to his career as a judge.

• Boston University acquired the papers of Clare Hayes Timberlake, the first U.S. Ambassa- dor to the Congo (now known as Zaire). Tim- berlake’s career as a for- eign service officer spanned 40 years, includ- ing posts in Canada, Ar- gentina, Uruguay, Swit- zerland, India, Peru, and Germany. He also served as a special assistant in the State Department and with the Arms Con- trol and Disarmament Agency. The collection contains diplomatic and personal correspondence, speech manuscripts, scrapbooks, photographs, awards, and information related to the Congo and South America.

Clare H. Timberlake

• The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin acquired a large literary archive of the English novelist John Fowles, whose work is known by the general public as well as the literary critic and scholar. Included in the papers are working notes, and early, intermediate, and final drafts of much of his published work, as well as corrected and revised proofs. Present are various draft versions of five of his published novels and his book of short stories: The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Magus, A Maggot, Daniel Martin, Mantissa, and The Ebony Tower. There are also revised early drafts for The Aristos, a volume of informal philosophy that Fowles subtitled “a self-portrait in ideas.” Manuscripts, typescripts of plays, poetry, interviews, essays, articles, reviews, and translations and adaptations by Fowles of works by other writers are also included. In an interview about the novel form in 1979 Fowles said, “The novel is also a very important nature reserve’ for language, and the pleasure uses of language—being able to image off printed symbols. What terrifies me is an increasing lack of ability in children to do this . . . words losing their colours, their histories, their echoes, their emotive values, all the rest. The metaphor is the miracle of higher civilization.”

• The University of Nebraska-Lincoln received a copy of Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (The First Folio, 1623), the first printed collection of Shakespeare’s plays, which contains 36 of the 37 plays attributed to Shakespeare. While some of the plays had been printed previously, never before had a book of such size been devoted to plays, a genre then considered inferior by many. The Nebraska First Folio, now the only copy between Chicago and California, was donated by Sidney Johnsen Wayland as the two millionth book to be received by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries (UNL).

Other recent gifts to the UNL Libraries include two dozen first editions of works by and about Immanuel Kant donated by professor Thomas Iwand. This collection contains some very scarce early works published by Kant before the 1780s including his first book (Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung derlebendigen Kräfte [Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces, 1746]). UNL also acquired some limited edition publications of Penny-royal Press, among them Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with wood engravings by Barry Moser (1985) and Benedictus de Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma (1677), the gift of Cliff Hillegass, and the three-volume Quadrupeds of North America by John James Audubon and the Reverend John Bachmann (1854), given by Harold Anderson.

• The History of Medicine and History of Nutrition Collections at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Library have acquired Fasting Girls; Their Physiology and Pathology (1879), a scarce work on anorexia and the physiology of starvation written by William A. Hammond, M.D., surgeon-general of the Union Army, 1862-1864. A rare British cookbook by John Armstrong entitled, The Young Woman’s Guide to Virtue, Economy and Happiness (1806) was also acquired. The 680-page household encyclopedia contains 200 pages of recipes, “rules for securing health,” “rules of nursing and educating children,” “a history of the work,” “direction for writing letters,” “memoirs of illustrious females,” and a “history of women in different ages and countries.”

Grants & gifts

• The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded nearly $13.1 million in Challenge Grants to 26 educational and cultural institutions located in 15 states and the District of Columbia. Recipients of NEH challenge grants must generate three or sometimes four dollars for each dollar provided by the endowment. In all, nearly $40.6 million in non-federal matching funds will be generated by the awards, bringing the total amount of support provided to $53.7 million. Academic institutions receiving the challenge grants include:

• Amherst College received $500,000 to support the renovation and expansion of the college’s Robert Frost Library by providing space to accommodate a growing collection of books and manuscripts in the humanities, including a Center for Russian Culture. Plans proposed for the library project also include a new media center and an array of expanded reference technologies.

• Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, received $500,000 to support the construction and furnishing of a library addition and the creation of an endowment for library acquisitions in the humanities.

• DePaul University, Chicago, received $500,000 to contribute to the construction of a new $25 million library on its Lincoln Park Campus and to create an endowment fund to support acquisitions in the humanities. The challenge grant is the first ever received by DePaul, and the largest NEH grant ever given to the university.

• Emory University, Atlanta, received $750,000 to support the creation of an endowment fund for library acquisitions in the humanities.

• The John Carter Brown Library (Rhode Island) will endow two staff positions and the activities of a Center for New World Comparative Studies with its $383,180 challenge grant from NEH.

• Saint Bonaventure University (New York) will support the endowment of library acquisitions in the humanities with its $250,000 challenge grant.

• The Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., received a $100,000 matching grant from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation. The general operating grant was made in recognition of the library’s Diamond Jubilee anniversary year, which is being celebrated throughout 1992 with a series of special events and new programs for the general public. New programs introduced this year include Saturday activities for families with young children, an evening lecture series, a series of gallery talks by exhibition curators, and a scheduled tour program. These programs will be followed in subsequent years by other initiatives aimed at increasing the accessibility of the Folger Library and its educational and cultural resources for diverse segments of its community.

• The University of Indiana Libraries (IUL), Bloomington, have been awarded two grants from the Department of Education to facilitate retrospective conversion. The Music Library received $178,000 to provide a centralized Name Authority Cooperative center for all of the participating libraries of the Associated Music Libraries Group, and to retrospectively convert some sound recording titles. The second grant totals $74,000 and is for conversion of the Latin American Materials Project. IUL will convert 22,600 titles in the subject areas of Caribbean, Central, and South American history and literature. The university will also convert brief records for 1,000 titles from the pamphlet collection.

• The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries, Raleigh, received a U.S. Department of Education Title II-D research and demonstration grant of $71,690 to continue the NCSU Digitized Document Transmission Project. The project investigates the transmission of digitized documents via campus telecommunication networks and the national NSFnet/Intemet network. During the first year of the project workstations were installed, network linkages were tested, and documents were transmitted between institutions. The NCSU Libraries and Computing Center are developing a model for distributing the digitized research materials across campus networks directly to the scholar. The project began in 1988with initial funding by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and additional equipment donated by Apple Computer, Inc.

• The University of Arkansas at Little Rock received a $1 million grant from the Ottenheimer Brothers Foundation to strengthen library collections and upgrade library technology. The library also received a $25,000 grant from the Jonsson Foundation to purchase technology and science materials.

• The University of California, Santa Barbara, has been awarded $127,800 by the National Endowment for the Humanities for the writings of Henry David Thoreau for 1991-93. The project, located in the library, will produce new editions of all of Thoreau’s works including his journal and correspondence. Ten volumes have been published of an anticipated 30.

• The University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign received an $18.7 million private gift to honor William Wallace Grainger, apioneer in the distribution of electrical equipment and components, to construct the Grainger Engineering Library Information Center. The planned 12,000 square foot facility will be a part of the University Library system, university librarian David Bishop said, “This generous gift in memory of William Grainger enables us to be in the forefront of library service and technology, which are so important to the engineering community. The new… center will provide the opportunity … to develop one of the most sophisticated and effective information dissemination capabilities in existence while still satisfying traditional library needs.” Grainger graduated from the University of Illinois College of Engineering in 1919 and went on to found W. W. Grainger, Inc., a leading distributor of equipment, components, and supplies to the commercial, industrial, contractor, and institutional markets.

• Whitman College’s Penrose Memorial Library, Walla Walla, Washington, received a $26,463 LSCA Title III PULSe grant from the Washington State Library Commission to enter detailed serials holdings records into the WLN database, andthecollege’s Innovative Interfaces INNOPAC online catalog and circulation system.