ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News From the Field

ACQUISITIONS

•Recent acquisitions of The New York Historical Society include four linear feet of correspondence and papers, 1842-1920, of Richard Grant White, author, and of his son, Stanford White, architect. Included in the father’s papers are literary manuscripts, manuscript music, twenty-six letters from James Russell Lowell, and eleven letters from Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The Stanford White material includes a great many letters from American artists and sculptors such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge.

•On January 29, 1971, The New York Public Library made available to the public for the first time one of the world’s largest collections of H. L. Mencken’s correspondence. Some 30,000 letters to and from the great American writer and editor came to the library’s manuscript division soon after Mencken’s death fifteen years ago, but in accordance with the terms of his will, were not made public until now.

Mencken’s hundreds of correspondents came from all over the world and many walks of life: writers, editors, artists, politicians, actors and actresses, musicians, and many ordinary people who contributed words and phrases to his collection in The American Language. There are letters from contributors and would-be contributors to Smart Set and The American Mercury, the magazines Mencken and George Jean Nathan edited 1914-23 and 1924-33, respectively. Mencken exchanged letters with librarians, publishers, prison inmates, and many members of his family, even those living near him in Baltimore. The letters were kept in neat files, often with cross-references and Mencken’s own comments and observations. There is a postcard from Harlan Miller, a Des Moines journalist, describing a visit with the ninety-two-year-old George Bernard Shaw and asking Mencken to send Shaw some books. Aldous Huxley, who was to edit D. H. Lawrence’s letters in 1930, wrote to Mencken in 1921 about the newly published Women in Love. In 1947, when James Thurber wrote some gossip from The New Yorker, he said that Harold Ross (the magazine’s editor, with whom Mencken had copious correspondence) had been campaigning to rid the language of the word “which.” Thurber admits to having called Ross’s plan a “which hunt.”

•In April 1970 the University of California library at Riverside acquired a collection of about 7,500 volumes in the field of fantasy and science fiction collected by the late Dr. J. Lloyd Eaton of Oakland, California. His collection is especially rich in early and scarce items published from 1870 to 1930, and is one of the largest of its genre in the United States. Many major eighteenth-century titles are included, works by minor eighteenthand nineteenth-century English and American authors, as well as in-depth collections of the works of H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is now enjoying a revival, and many contemporary authors such as A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, and E. E. Smith.

During the twenties and thirties, Dr. Eaton began collecting fantasy and science fiction and picked up many periodicals. He began to collect seriously during the forties, corresponding with American and British bookdealers to secure copies of works in his field of interest. Dr. Eaton’s collection has been recognized as one of the foremost of its type. E. F. Bleiler, the first bibliographer of science fiction, acknowledged Dr. Eaton’s help and cooperation in the compilation of his own work. Other bibliographers also acknowledged their indebtedness to Dr. Eaton, often presenting him with inscribed, first-edition copies of their works.

The University of California library at Riverside had previously collected early works in utopian literature and imaginary voyages, and now plans to expand the Eaton Collection by acquiring the more recent volumes of science fiction and fantasy, as well as the classic titles needed to round out the collection.

• The University of Iowa libraries have received as a gift the library of the late Professor Leo W. Schwarz. Professor Schwarz was a visiting professor in the School of Religion for several years during the 1960s prior to his death in 1969. In making the gift, Mrs. Schwarz, who resides in New York City, stated that she was particularly desirous that her late husband’s books and papers come to the University of Iowa as Professor Schwarz had developed great fondness for the institution and admiration for the concept of the School of Religion.

The collection consists of approximately 850 books in Hebrew and about a thousand in other languages. A particularly valuable and rare group of the books deals with Hasidic literature. Other portions comprise Old Testament studies and works on Jewish history, philosophy and culture, the Jews in Nazi Germany, Jewish folklore, and the history of the Jews in the United States. In addition, there are manuscripts of several of Professor Schwarz’s books and articles, as well as correspondence, notes, and background research relating to his publications.

• The collections department, University of Maryland libraries, has acquired samples of all material published since 1876 by the Stanbrook Abbey Press, Worcester, England. Run by members of the Benedictine order, the press was originally created to provide religious texts for that community. Its work soon came to the attention of such private pressmen as Sydney Cockerell and Emery Walker, and by the late 1920s it was active in the revival of fine printing in England. Now the oldest continuous private press in England, Stanbrook Abbey has expanded its work to include poetry, essays, and other secular work. The collection contains more than 200 items, including copies of the Rule of St. Benedict published in 1887, 1892, 1898, and 1930; announcements, sample pages, and text of Siegfried Sassoon’s The Path to Peace; variant bindings of Raissa Maritain’s Patriarch Tree; other specimens of printing in types by Jan Van Krimpen, a number of these supervised by him before his death in 1958; and samples of calligraphy and graphics.

• A collection of notebooks, letters, family papers, first editions, manuscripts, and other papers of Robert Frost has been given to the University of Virginia Alderman Library by collector C. Waller Barrett of Charlottesville. The gift includes the only surviving copy of “Twilight,” Frost’s first collection of poems printed in 1894 by a job printer in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Frost had two copies of this first book printed; one for his future bride, Elinor White, and one for himself, which he later destroyed.

The gift from Barrett, a member of the university’s Board of Visitors, is “one of the best Frost collections in existence,” says William H. Runge, Alderman Library’s curator of rare books. Included in the gift, which is valued at $60,000, are first editions of nine Frost books, autograph manuscripts of two unpublished plays, a letter of proposal from Frost’s father to his mother, and the order of exercises of the forty-first anniversary of Lawrence High School of Lawrence, Massachusetts, containing the “Class Hymn” written by Frost, then senior class poet.

• Gerard McCabe, director of university libraries at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond has announced the acquisition of a significant collection of materials centered on novelist James Branch Cabell. The collection falls into several broad categories: almost one hundred books and pamphlets by Cabell—first editions, revised volumes, and reprints—many of which he inscribed; books to which he contributed, comprising some twenty volumes; books in part or completely about him, some twenty-two in all; bound magazines, containing over 225 original stories by Cabell and some twenty-eight magazine articles about him from the major periodicals of the day; and twenty-seven letters. Most of the letters are from Cabell to Maurice J. Speiser, a Philadelphia attorney, who helped Cabell publish his works in Germany and France. They were written between April 1921 and October 1934.

GRANTS

• The Seeley G. Mudd Fund of Los Angeles has awarded Oberlin College a grant of $2,750,000 toward its planned new library building. Oberlin is the first undergraduate college to be awarded a grant from the fund. The new building will be named The Seeley G. Mudd Learning Center in memory of the late Dr. Mudd of Los Angeles, who died March 10, 1968. It will contain the main library collection of the college, plus audiovisual and computer facilities. Estimated cost of the project is $11,000,000. The Seeley G. Mudd Learning Center will be located at the center of the campus, between Wilder and Dascomb Halls. It will be five stories high and contain 190,000 square feet, making it the largest building on the Oberlin campus. The center was designed by the New York architectural firm of Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde. The new library in the learning center will accommodate nearly 800,000 volumes and will have seating space for 1,300 students with emphasis on individualized study carrels.

• The University of Iowa has received a federal grant of $2,335,755 from the Division of Educational and Research Facilities, Bureau of Health Professions Education and Manpower Training, National Institutes of Health, to help finance construction of a new Health Sciences Library. The total building cost is more than $4,000,000. That portion not funded by the federal grant is provided by private gifts contributed through the University of Iowa Foundation. Construction will begin in 1971.

The library will have approximately 90,000 gross and 60,000 net square feet located on four levels in the center of the health sciences campus. For the first time, the medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, and speech pathology libraries will be combined in one building within walking distance of the colleges, the laboratories, and the teaching hospitals. Current journals are to be located on the main floor, and books are to be one floor above while older journals will be on two levels below the main floor. The estimated book capacity is 220,000 volumes. Seating has been provided for slightly more than 1,000 readers, most of which will be at carrels rather than at tables. Forty intensive study units are planned for faculty, visiting scientists, and Ph.D. candidates who are in the process of writing dissertations. The architects are Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Miss Louise Darling, biomedical librarian, University of California at Los Angeles, is library consultant.

MEETINGS

April 1-3: The third meeting of the Conference on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries will be held April 1-3, 1971. Sponsors of this meeting are The New York Botanical Garden and The Horticultural Society of New York. Conference registration and membership information is available from John F. Reed, Curator of the Library, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458.

April 8: “The Academic Librarian: Educating, Yes; Serving, No” is the subject of the 1971 institute of the Library Association of the City University of New York. The institute, to be held at Queens College on April 8, will be open to librarians and to interested students, faculty, and administrators. For program information see March CRL News.

For further information contact Betty Seifert, City College Library, 135th Street and Convent Avenue, New York, New York 10031. Phone: 212-621-2268.

April 16: A one-day lexicography conference at Indiana State University will concern itself with the history of dictionaries in England and North America, as well as their study. Members of the standing committee on lexicography of the Modern Language Association and well-known authorities and collectors of dictionaries will serve as speakers and panel-discussants. Anyone interested in further details should direct inquiries to Professor J. Edward Gates, Department of English, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809.

April 23-24: The College and Reference Section of the Kentucky Library Association will be meeting on April 23-24 at Rough River State Park in Kentucky. The theme of the meeting will be the “College Library.”

Contact Brantley H. Parsley, Library Director, Campbellsville College, Campbellsville, Kentucky 42718 for further information.

April 29-May 2: The Library Association of Alberta will be holding its annual meeting in Calgary April 29-May 2. The program is described in March CRL News. Anyone interested in further information on the conference should contact B. B. Manson, Information Center, University of Calgary, Library, Calgary 44, Alberta, Canada.

April 30-May 1: “Modern Trends in Library Evaluation” will be the subject of the spring conference of the College and University Libraries Section, New York Library Association, scheduled for April 30 and May 1, 1971, at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. The program is being cosponsored by the Resources and Technical Services Section of NYLA. For additional information please contact Miss Margaret Martignoni, Executive Secretary, NYLA, Box 521, Woodside, New York 11377.

May 6-7: The 8th Annual National Information Retrieval Colloquium (ANIRC) will be held in Philadelphia, May 6-7. For details see March CRL News.

The 8th annual meeting will be held at the new Holiday Inn, 18th and Market Streets, Philadelphia. Additional information may be obtained from program chairman Don King, Graduate School of Library Service at Rutgers, The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. Inquiries and registration material requests should be addressed to Miss A. Berton, MDS-COP, 19 South 22d Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103.

May 7: Exploring a number of practical solutions to the problems of how to motivate students to use the library, how to teach the proper methods of research, and how to assist teaching faculty in the maximum usage of library resources for curriculum planning will be the central theme for the First Annual Conference on Library Orientation for Academic Libraries to be held on May 7, 1971, at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Librarians, administrators, faculty, and students who are concerned with this vital and challenging problem are invited to participate. Registration will close on April 15 and registrants will be limited to 75 persons. For further information please contact Sul H. Lee, Associate Librarian, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan 48197.

May 7-8: Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians will hold its annual meeting at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, May 7-8. The topic will be “The Challenge of Reprints.”

May 13-15: Library Automation: Workshop in Administration and Management. See entry for Mar. 11-13, above.

May 20-22: A three-day institute entitled “Library Management: Man-Material-Service” will be held at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, May 20-22, 1971. The institute is intended for library administrators and supervisors. For further information, write Department of Library Science, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809.

May 21-22: Sixteenth annual Midwest Academic Librarians Conference at Indiana University, Bloomington. For information contact Dr. Jane G. Flener, Assistant Director, Indiana University Libraries, Bloomington, Indiana 47401. The previously announced dates of April 23-24 have been changed due to conflicts.

May 30-June 3: The 70th Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association will be held in New York City, May 30-June 3.

June 14-17: The University of the Americas in Puebla, Mexico, will be the site of the Sixteenth Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, June 14-17. Information on the content of the program and working papers can be procured from Dr. Nettie Lee Benson, Latin American Collections, The University of Texas Library, Austin, Texas 78704. For details on the program and arrangements see the March CRL News. For other information refer to the Executive Secretary, Mrs. Marietta Daniels Shepard, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C. 20006.

June 17-19: Library administrators faced with shrinking tax dollars and expanding needs in 1971 can expect more of the same in 1972. As library finances reach crisis proportions, many are searching for new approaches to the perennial problem of allocating funds. To help decision-makers in this process, the Library Organization and Management Section of ALA’s Library Administration Division is sponsoring a preconference institute June 17-19 at the Holiday Inn in downtown Dallas. Called “Dollar Decisions,” the institute will cover several types of program and performance budgeting systems and will feature Dr. Selma Mushkin, Director of the State and Local Finances Division, Georgetown University, and leading authority in the budgeting field. Also on the program are Robert Rohlf, director of Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library, which is now in the process of converting its fiscal operation to PPBS (Planning-Performance Budgeting System); and William Summers, formerly Florida state librarian, now research fellow at Rutgers University School of Library Service, who will compare several types of budgeting systems now in use. Participants will get a chance to try these techniques in two problem-solving sessions. The registration fee is $35.00, and the group is limited to 150 persons. For further information write Dollar Decisions, Library Administration Division, American Library Association, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago 60611.

July 11-13: The School of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, is planning the fifth annual Library Administrators Development Program to be held July 11- 23. Those interested in further information are invited to address inquiries to Mrs. Effie T. Knight, Administrative Assistant, Library Administrators Development Program, School of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742. The January News contains complete details.

July 20-23: The third Cranfield International Conference on Mechanised Information Storage and Retrieval Systems will be held July 20- July 23 in Bedford, England.

See the December News, Meetings section, for complete details on the topics to be covered and general theme outline.

Enquiries or offers to present papers should be sent to the Conference Director, Cyril Cleverdon, Cranfield Institute of Technology, Cranfield, Bedford, England.

Aug. 29-Sept. 3: The International Conference on Information Science in Tel Aviv originally announced for August 23-28, has been changed to the week following the IFIP Conference in Yugoslavia, from August 29 to September 3. Group flights at reduced rates will be available from various points including Yugoslavia. Titles and abstracts are due no later than January 1971. Registration fee ($50) includes a ladies’ program and a tour of Jerusalem. For further information contact: The Organizing Committee, P.O. Box 16271, Tel Aviv, Israel. See also September News, page 249.

Sept. 30-Oct. 2: The Indiana Library Association will meet at Stouffer’s Inn, Indianapolis, Indiana. Further information can be obtained from Jane G. Flener, President, Indiana Library Association, Indiana University Library, Bloomington, Indiana 47401.

Oct. 22-23: The North Dakota Library Association will hold its 1971 convention in Fargo on Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23. Headquarters will be the Town House Motel.

MISCELLANY

• The 1971-72 ALA Nominating Committee is soliciting suggestions from membership for candidates for the office of President-elect; Treasurer, 1972-76; and Councilors-at-Large, 1972-76. The committee is especially interested in securing the names of individuals who have made contributions to state and regional organizations but who may not yet be known nationally. Short statements, outlining the contributions of those persons suggested and accompanying the recommendations, will be particularly helpful to the committee. Letters can be addressed to any member of the committee: Mrs. Susanna Alexander (Chairman), Associate State Librarian, Missouri State Library, 308 East High Street, Jefferson City, Missouri 65101; William D. Cunningham, Library Services Program Officer, U.S.O.E., 601 East 12th Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106; Mrs. Yuri Nakata, Documents Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus Library, Chicago, Illinois 60680; Dr. Nasser Sharify, Dean, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York 11205; Miss Peggy Sullivan, 1219 West Foster Avenue, Apartment 7, Chicago, Illinois 60640.

• An institute dealing with the physical and natural sciences and their relationship with law librarianship is now being planned for the summer of 1971. The proposed four-week course, to be funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, will be administered by the University of California Extension under the auspices of the Association of American Law Schools and will be held at the Earl Warren Legal Center, University of California, Berkeley, from July 19 to August 13, 1971.

The institute, the third in a series, will investigate the interconnections of the physical and natural sciences with the uses and needs of law librarians. Emphasis will be on bibliographical research and individually directed study in addition to lectures and laboratory work. The proposed institute will endeavor to introduce the participants to the literature and research tools in some of the biological, behavioral, and natural sciences, as well as social sciences that have implications for legal study and scholarship today. Leading scholars in the fields of anthropology, biology, city and regional planning, environmental engineering, demography, medicine, etc., will lecture on and hold round table discussions on the basic bibliography and literature of their particular disciplines.

The permanent faculty will consist of professors Roy M. Mersky of Texas and J. Myron Jacobstein of Stanford; Thomas H. Reynolds of the University of California, Berkeley, will be the resident director. The faculty will then be augmented by some ten scholars and scientists. Enrollment will be limited to twenty experienced law librarians who will each receive stipends of $1,000 to cover living and travel expenses. The University of California will provide pleasant dormitory and cafeteria facilities within two blocks of the School of Law at a reasonable cost.

While this institute is not yet an assured and final project, because of the currency and importance of the subject matter this advance announcement is being made. Such a program will not only increase the expertise and knowledge of the participating librarians, but should have lasting benefits for their law libraries in the form of an increased awareness of the part these sciences now play in legal education as well as in the actual bibliographies that will result from the individual research.

Complete information and a tentative program will be distributed as soon as the grant is made, but pending this, it will be helpful to those planning the institute if interested law librarians would communicate with professor Mersky at the University of Texas Law Library, 2500 Red River, Austin, Texas 78705.

• The program for the inauguration of the newly enlarged Medical Library of Washington University will be held in St. Louis on May 3, 1971. A session on medical history will feature talks by William LeFanu, retired, of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, and Dr. Peter Olch of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland. Talks on computers in libraries will be presented by Dr. Robert Hayes of UCLA, a former trainee in computer librarianship at the Washington University School of Medicine library. An additional feature will be a slide presentation on the design of libraries by Harry Richman of the architectural firm of Murphy, Downey, Wofford, and Richman. All are welcome. Further details can be obtained from Dr. Estelle Brodman, Librarian and Professor of Medical History, Washington University School of Medicine Library, 4580 Scott Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri 63110.

PUBLICATIONS

•San Diego State College Library has published two bibliographies available without charge from the Director of Libraries, Malcolm A. Love Library, San Diego State College, San Diego, California 92115: Afro-American Bibliography, compiled by Andrew Szabo, 327ρ.; and Literature of Time in the Ernst Zinner Collection, compiled by Gerald Johns, 25p.

•The Stanford University Libraries have issued a 180-page manual entitled Book Selection Policies of the Libraries of Stanford University. It comprises detailed statements of book selection and collection-building criteria for all the libraries of the university, organized in accordance with the schools, departments, research institutes, and special or interdepartmental programs. While it is intended primarily for the use of librarians and faculty at Stanford, there are a limited number of copies for sale at $10.00 each. Orders should be addressed to Financial Office, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94305.

• An Index to Festschriften in Religion,compiled by John L. Sayre and Roberta Hamburger, is an author-subject guide to eighty-four festschriften in the Graduate Seminary Library of Phillips University. Honorees include such men as Albright, Barth, Bultmann, Cullmann, Hook, Knox, Muilenburg, Pittenger, Rowley, Tillich, and Whitehead. There are 1,531 individual entries, all indexed by author and Library of Congress subject headings. Full bibliographic information is given for each festschrift. Each entry notes the author, tide, the catchword which serves to identify the festschrift, and the inclusive page numbers. The index is available from the Graduate Seminary Library, Phillips University, Box 2218, University Station, Enid, Oklahoma 73701. Price, $5.30, including postage and handling.

• An eighty-seven page list describing “Newspapers in Microform” in the Pennsylvania State University libraries has been compiled by June R. Morroni, head of die Microforms Section. The list includes current and retrospective holdings in 35mm reel microfilm, microfiche, and microprint. Each newspaper is listed under the latest or best-known form of its title, and cross-references have been used to clarify variant titles. In addition to the full title and the issues available in Pattee Library, information regarding frequency of publication, date first published, place of publication, and history of each newspaper is given where available. Following the alphabetical arrangement there is a geographical index and a chronological index. Copies of the list are available without charge by writing Miss Morroni, Microforms Section, Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802.

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