ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News From the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The Ball State University library, Muncie, Indiana, has recently acquired more than 180 items of Steinbeckiana. This collection includes a number of autographed first editions, deluxe editions, Armed Service editions, such rare items as Si. Katy the Virgin, a booklet, which Steinbeck privately printed in 1936, Their Blood Is Strong (1938), Un Americain a New-York et a Paris, published by René Jul- liard in 1956, letters, several printed nonbook materials including a map of the Steinbeck Country published by Normandie House Publishers in 1939, German, French, and Italian editions, as well as critical books about Steinbeck. These Steinbeck items will be placed in the special collections of the university library.

• The papers of the late James C. Rettie, senior economist, Department of the Interior, have been placed in the University of Oregon library by Mrs. James C. Rettie of Arlington, Virginia. Rettie was a career economist in the federal government, specializing in economic research and programming in water and power development, forest and land economics, resources utilization, and river basin development. From 1942 to 1944 he was United States director of the North Pacific Planning Project, which produced a series of economic studies of Alaska. In the 1960s, he was involved in Alaska studies, this time with the Federal Review Committee and the Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska.

As senior economist in the Interior Department, Rettie kept a close and practical watch on a variety of programs and plans proposed or underway in that department. His critiques of official memoranda and position papers indicate that he was a stout opponent of bureaucratic obfuscation and “Federalese,” as well as a keen analyst and detector of economic imbecilities. The Rettie papers provide an inside view of federal planning and internal operations at the top level. They are of major importance to students of public administration and to historians.

• The University of Washington library has acquired the personal papers of Rev. Sydney Dix Strong, his son Tracy Strong, and daughter, Anna Louise Strong. They are now open for research (under some minor restrictions ). Each was educated at Oberlin for which there is material. The Reverend Strong, a Con- gregationalist committed to social reform and pacifism, worked mainly out of Oak Park, Illinois and Seattle. Tracy Strong, a leader in the World Alliance of YMCA’s and executive secretary of War Prisoners’ Aid, worked mainly from Geneva from 1924. Anna Louise Strong was director of Child Welfare Exhibits of Children’s Bureau (ca. 1912-1914), reporter for Seattle Union Record, member of the Seattle School Board (recalled, 1917), editor Moscow News, world traveller, and author. The collection is of value for studies in social gospel movement, American reform and labor movements, the Soviet revolution, pacifism, aspects of Chinese history in the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War, and the YMCA.

GRANTS

• Howard University, Washington, D.C., will receive a $100,000 grant under a joint program of the Council on Library Resources and the National Endowment for the Humanities that will provide funds for a program which seeks to establish the university library as an integral part of students’ intellectual environment. This will be done by demonstrating the library’s ability to respond to students’ curricular needs and interests while at the same time anticipating and stimulating other intellectual requirements in a broad range of areas. The award, which will be matched by $100,000 from Howard, is the eighth under the joint College Library Program of the Council and the National Endowment.

The project at Howard is expected to result in the assumption by Founders Library of a more focal role in the instruction of undergraduates, thus contributing to greater efficiency in the learning process. It is hoped that it will also lead to the identification of areas in which the overall resources and services of the library to the university may be improved.

One aspect of the five-year program will be student information/orientation service operated out of the revamped Browsing Room in the university library. Through a variety of media and methods, including audiovisual, and on as personalized a basis as possible, undergraduate students will be made aware that the library can service both classroom and noncurricular needs. There will be a revolving collection of current and topical print and nonprint materials dealing with such student concerns as drugs, black awareness, and ecology; portable “minicollections” will be developed for student dormitories.

The university believes that reference and information services are the initial points of contact between the library and its public and that through this part of the program the individual student’s image of the library will change for the better, with a concomitant improvement in his attitude toward it.

A second element of the project is a series of workshops which will demonstrate the library’s capabilities as an active agent of ideas and thought. Workshop topics will be those selected by the students themselves, and will provide a forum for the exchange of ideas on issues of interest and concern to students at Howard. To a large degree, these workshops will deal with the problems of the black student and the black community. In addition to creating an opportunity for an open intellectual forum, it is hoped that the workshops will provide both the library and the university faculty with the opportunity to experiment with a variety of teaching and informational resources, which may herald changes in future curriculum presentations.

• The man who pioneered the national “Morris Plan” for consumer bank credit in Norfolk, Virginia more than sixty years ago has given the University of Virginia $350,000 for its law library to be housed in a new building for the School of Law.

Announcement of the gift from Arthur J. Morris of New York City was made by University President Edgar F. Shannon, Jr., at a dinner honoring Morris in the university’s Rotunda. Dr. Shannon also announced that the Board of Visitors had decided to name the new law library for Morris, who received his law degree from the university in 1901.

Construction for the new law school building, expected to cost an estimated $4.8 million in state and private funds already secured, is scheduled to begin next year. It will be situated northwest of the main grounds of the university on the Duke property and will be the first structure in the law-graduate business complex there. The law school, which has an enrollment of 950 śtudents, is now housed in Clark Hall. Its library is considered one of the most extensive of any law school in the nation.

MEETINGS

March22-25, 1972: The Alaska Library Association annual meeting will be held at the YWCA Building, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada. The general theme will be “Redesign.” Program chairman is Miss Nancy Lesh, 1802 11th Ave., Anchorage, AK 99501.

April4, 1972: “Management, Instruction and Technology in the Academic Library” is the subject of the 1972 institute of the Library Association of the City University of New York. The Institute, to be held at the Statler-Hilton Hotel in New York City on April 4, is open to librarians, interested students, faculty, and administrators, and will feature presentations by the following persons.

Melvin S. Day, Head, Office of Science Information Service, National Science Foundation, who will discuss management in academic libraries; David Roy Watkins, Director of Libraries, Brandeis University, who will consider the subject of instruction in the use of college and university libraries; and Susan A. Artandi, Professor of Library Service, Rutgers University, who will speak on the role of technology in the academic library. Welcoming remarks at the luncheon will be made by Timothy S. Healy, Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs, The City University of New York.

For further information contact Professor Betty Seifert, City College Library, 135th St. and Convent Ave., New York, NY 10031 (Phone; 212-621-2268).

April6-8, 1972; The Seventh Annual Conference of Junior College Libraries will be held on the campus of Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois, from April 6 through April 8, 1972. The theme for this year’s conference is “The Junior College Library—Putting It All Together.” The conference is definitely not limited to junior college librarians or media specialists from Illinois.

The formal program and other details are available from Beverly H. Humphries, Reid Memorial Library, Lewis & Clark Community College, Godfrey, IL 62035. Further details can be found in the January News.

April7-8, 1972: The Washington Department of Audio-Visual Instruction will hold its spring conference at the Chinook Hotel in Yakima, Washington, April 7-8, 1972.

April13-15, 1972: The Oklahoma Library Association will meet at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma. Mrs. Neysa Eberhard, Curriculum Materials Laboratory, University Library, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74074, is the convention publicity chairman.

April24-26, 1972: A three-day seminar on indexing to be held April 24-26, 1972, has been announced by the National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services and the American Library Association. The seminar will be sponsored by the Subject Analysis and Organization of Library Materials Committee, Cataloging and Classification Section of ALA’s Resources and Technical Services Division. It will be hosted by the University of Maryland’s School of Library and Information Science at the University of Maryland’s Center of Adult Education.

The seminar will cover the vocabularies used in indexing; indexing systems and formats; and the effects of indexing on the retrieval process. Emphasis will be placed on relating indexing developments of the past twenty years to the entire field of information science and library science; against this background lecture, specific case histories will be presented and discussed.

The principal lecturer for the course is E. H. Brenner (American Petroleum Institute) with guest lecturers including Hans Wellisch (University of Maryland) and Stella Keenan (National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services).

The course is designed to serve as an introduction for the person with little or no experience and to provide a perspective review to the more experienced. Each day there will be a special session at the basic level and an opportunity for an in-depth examination and discussion of the specific case history presented.

The following questions will be among those covered in the seminar: What is the relationship between classification and indexing? What differences and similarities exist between classification decimal entries, subject headings, terms, descriptors, etc.? What are the characteristics of a classification scheme, a subject heading list, and a thesaurus? What effect has the computer had on all indexing vocabularies? What are the characteristics of serial and inverted (horizontal and vertical) files? How do subject indexes differ from coordinate indexes? How is the computer affecting the manual card file?

Seminar fee is $85.00 which includes lunch for three days, background writing, bibliographies and special kits developed for the seminar. Full details may be obtained from the National Federation of Science Abstracting and Indexing Services, 2102 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19103; or from Mrs. Carol Raney Keim, Executive Secretary, Resources and Technical Services Division, American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.

April27-29, 1972; The Department of Library Science at Indiana State University will hold a three-day institute entitled “Library Management: Quantifying Goals” at the University’s Allendale Lodge, Terre Haute, Indiana. The institute is open to all librarians; those with administrative and planning responsibilities will benefit especially. It will be conducted by eight speakers most of whom are leading library practitioners. For additional information, interested persons may write to the Department of Library Science, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809.

April 30-May3, 1972; The annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing will be conducted by the Graduate School of Library Science, University of Illinois, from Sunday, April 30, to Wednesday, May 3, 1972, The theme of the Clinic will be “On-Line Systems Applied to Library Automation.” Further information may be obtained from Mr. Leonard Sigler, Division of University Extension, 111 Illini Hall, Champaign, IL 61820.

May4-6, 1972: The Council on Library Technology will hold its sixth annual conference May 4-6, 1972, at the Hotel Radisson, Denver, Colorado. The theme of this year’s conference will be “The LTA and Employment— How to Fulfill the Promise.” The conference will focus on the many problems related to the employment of the library technical assistant. Emphasis will be given such topics as the techniques of securing a job, and problems involving the placement of LTA’s by the institutions they attended. During one session, the conference registrants will have a chance to discuss among themselves particular problems relating to the employment of graduates of their LTA programs.

Speakers for the conference will include Mrs. Anna Mary Lowrey, associate director, School Library Manpower Project, ALA, and Mr, John J. Donahue, managing director of Library Career Consultants.

A fee of $30.00 will be charged for the entire conference. A preregistration fee of $25.00 will be accepted until April 10. Hotel accommodations should be made directly to Hotel Radisson, 1790 Grant St., Denver, CO 80203. For registration and further information write Mrs. Noel R. Grego, Program Chairman, COLT, Chicago State University Library, Rm. 311 C, 6800 S. Stewart Ave., Chicago, IL 60621.

May18-20, 1972: The Midwest Academic Librarians Conference will meet May 18, 19, 20, 1972, at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Included is a visit to the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. Convention chairman is Donald E. Thompson, Wabash College Library, Crawfordsville, IN 47933.

June19^_23, 1972: The American Theological Library Association will hold its 26th annual conference, June 19~23, 1972, on the campus of Waterloo Lutheran University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Host librarian, to whom inquiries about the conference may be directed, is Erich R. W. Schultz of Waterloo Lutheran University. Details may be found in the January News.

July16-28, 1972: The School of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, is planning the sixth annual Library Administrators Development Program to be held July 16-28, 1972. Dr. John Rizzo, professor of management at Western Michigan University, will serve as the director. As in the past five summers, participants will include senior administrative personnel of large library systems—public, research, academic, special, governmental, and school—from the United States and Canada. The faculty is made up of well-known scholars, educators, management consultants, and lecturers drawn from universities, government, and consulting fields.

Seminar sessions will concentrate on the principal administrative issues which senior managers encounter. Leadership, motivation, communication, personnel policy, decision-making, problem-solving, financial planning and control, performance appraisal, the impact of technology, and the planning of change are among the issues considered in lecture, case analysis, group discussion, and seminar.

The two-week resident program will again be held at the University of Maryland’s Donaldson Brown Center, Port Deposit, Maryland, a serene twenty-acre estate overlooking the Susquehanna River and offering a variety of recreational facilities and an informal atmosphere conducive to study, reflection, and discussion. 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, MD 20742.

MISCELLANY

• A Charter of the Book, stressing the importance of the free flow of books across frontiers and setting forth the treatment to which books are entitled nationally and internationally, has been approved by international professional organizations at a meeting in Brussels in support of International Book Year 1972. The first internationally approved statement on books, the Charter notes the vital role of printed matter in education and also points to the way in which books can contribute to international understanding and peaceful cooperation. It outlines the key contributions of the producers and distributors of books in making available to readers the books that help foster individual well-being and economic and social progress.

The meeting of the fourteen-member committee expressed its satisfaction with preparations for the celebration of International Book Year in 1972. Members decided to link their 1972 international conferences to International Book Year. Chaired by Mr. Herman Liebaers, Royal Librarian of Belgium and president of the International Federation of Library Associations, the committee included representatives of the major publishing oountries and spokesmen from the International Community of Booksellers Associations, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, the International Federation for Documentation, the International PEN and the International Publishers Association, as well as the International Federation of Library Associations.

International Book Year 1972 was proclaimed by the General Conference of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Under the slogan of “Books for All,” the Year has four main themes: (1) promotion of authorship and translations; (2) stimulation of the production and distribution of books, including librarian- ship; (3) the promotion of the reading habit; and (4) the use of books in the service of education, international understanding, and peaceful cooperation.

• Charles H. Stevens, associate director for library development, Project Intrex, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been appointed the first executive director of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, Washington, D.C. The announcement was made by Frederick Burkhardt, the commission’s chairman.

Dr. Burkhardt, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, who was named head of the new commission by President Nixon earlier this year, expressed satisfaction with the commission’s choice: “The library field and the information community as a whole have awaited this appointment with some anticipation, and we are fortunate indeed to find a man who is at once a librarian of acknowledged national stature and an expert on the technical aspects of information retrieval systems. We have every expectation that Mr. Stevens will bring to his new duties a balanced consideration for the mounting problems of traditional libraries as well as for innovations in the field.”

The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science was created by act of the 91st Congress in July 1970 in response to the multitude of problems facing library systems throughout the country. Established as an independent agency within the Executive Branch, the commission is charged with developing plans, studies, and analyses with librarians and others interested in information problems in the various library systems that exist in federal, state, local, and private agencies, and with advising the President and the Congress on overall policies to meet national needs for library and information services. The commission consists of the Librarian of Congress and fourteen members appointed by the President, who direct the new agency.

• Declining library budgets and soaring costs of library materials have resulted in the formation of a cooperative group among college and university libraries in Northern Utah. The University and College Library Council (uclc) includes directors and other professional librarians from the University of Utah libraries, Brigham Young University libraries, Utah State University Media Center, and the Weber State College library. Dr. Brigham D. Madsen, University of Utah director of libraries, will serve as chairman of the new council for 1971-72. Mr. August Hanniball,’ university extension librarian, was named executive secretary.

Member libraries have already instituted many cooperative enterprises, including a daily van service interconnecting each library, reciprocal borrowing privileges for faculty and graduate students, guidelines to avoid duplication in the purchase of expensive items, and the use of microfilmed catalogs to immediately determine possession and location of materials by call number.

• The staff of the University of Massachusetts library in Amherst has presented to the library as its 1,000,000th volume, a copy of the first edition of Jonathan Edwards’ Freedom of the Will. Published in 1754, and generally considered the greatest philosophical and literary work to come from English North America in the eighteenth century, Edwards’ Freedom of the Will, and this copy of it, are closely associated with the Connecticut Valley. Edwards matured its principal ideas toward the end of his twenty-first-year incumbency as minister of the First Church in Ipswich. He had been expelled ten years earlier in his senior year at Yale College for refusing to dissociate himself from the religious radicalism preached by George Whitefield, a philosophy known as the “New Light,” of which Edwards was at first also a proponent.

PUBLICATIONS

• The 1971-72 edition of the ALA Handbook of Organization (formerly, ALA Organizational Information) is available, free upon request, to personal members of the American Library Association. Copies are being mailed, automatically, to organizational members, special members, and to members listed in this year’s edition. Nonmembers wishing to order copies must pay a charge of $3.00 per copy. Please direct your request to the Public Relations Office, American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.

• A Bibliography of Use Surveys 1950-1970, by Pauline Atkin, has now been published as a special issue (no. 14) of the Library and Information Bulletin. Mrs. Atkin, a research assistant at the Polytechnic of North London, compiled the bibliography during the last six months of 1970 as part of a larger project on cooperation between public and academic libraries. Some 700 titles of surveys are included, with brief abstracts in many cases. The list is closely classified and there is a subject index. Copies are available at £0.75. from Librarian and Information Officer, The Library Association, 7 Ridgmount St., London WC1E 7AE.

• Black Perspectives: A Bibliography, compiled by the Library Department at New York City Community College of The City University of New York, lists 1,353 titles relating to the black experience in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author’s name under such headings as Race, Afro-American Curricula, Non-Book Materials, and others. Those interested in building black studies collections may obtain this useful bibliography for $1.00 a copy. Checks payable to Community College Press should be mailed to Faculty Student Association, Community College Press, New York City Community College, 300 Jay St., Brooklyn, NY 11201.

• Coming of Age of LTAs. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Council on Library Technology held at Palm Beach, Florida, June 4-6, 1970 is now available; it is edited by Sister Mary Chrysantha Rudnik, CSSF, and published by the Council on Library Technology, 1971. Topics include The Role of the Library Technical Assistant—Actual and Potential; LTAs—Themselves and Their Employers; Certification of LTAs; and Job Descriptions. The publication is available for $3.00 ($4.50 outside the U.S.A.) from Council on Library Technology, 3800 Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL 60659.

• Now available from the Minnesota Historical Society is a Guide to a Microfilm Edition of the Mexican Mission Papers of John Lind by Deborah K. Neubeck. It accompanies seven rolls of manuscripts on film which have been extracted from the society’s larger collection of John Lind papers. Filmed in a single, integrated sequence of correspondence and miscellaneous papers, the bulk of the material covers the years 1913-1914, plus those items from the period 1917-1931 which relate to Mexico.

Lind, a Swedish-born Minnesota progressive, former governor, congressman, and university regent, was selected by President Woodrow Wilson to serve as his personal representative to revolution-torn Mexico in 1913. Of the eight months he spent in that country, the first half was devoted to implementing Wilson’s plan to reestablish social, economic, and political order by removing from power Mexico’s military dictator, Victoriano Huerta. With the failure of this effort, Lind was instructed to remain on the scene to report and observe. The story of the mission itself is contained primarily in the diplomatic dispatches'—usually from Lind to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. But Lind’s observations of the Mexican situation continued to pour back to Washington and were frequently augmented with letters, memoranda, and reports sent to him from various Mexican-based American confidants.

Mrs. Neubeck’s informative Guide provides a brief biography of Lind and a selective chronology of events in his life, a sketch of the historical background of the United States-Mexi- can involvement, a list of events in the history of the Mexican revolution from 1910 to 1920, and a description of the microfilmed material. A bibliography, a selected list of authors, and a subject index are included.

The microfilm edition of John Lind’s Mexican mission has been published by the Minnesota Historical Society because of the collection’s demonstrated value to scholars in the field of United States and Mexican relations. It is the seventh such project to be completed and the first to be published independent of monetary support from the National Historical Publications Commission. The earlier NHPC-sponsored microfilm editions include the papers of Ignatius Donnelly, Alexander Ramsey, Henry H. Sibley, Lawrence Taliaferro, James Wickes Taylor, and the National Nonpartisan League papers supplemented by those of Henry G. Teigan.

Seven rolls and guide, $105; individual rolls, $17.50; Guide only, $2.00.

• Publication of the fourth edition, revised, of the Library Telecommunications Directory: Canada—United States has been announced. The Directory has been updated through October 1971, and contains 882 listings of libraries in the United States and Canada using TWX or TELEX for interlibrary communications. Arrangement is by state or province, and by Answerback identification code. The Directory is available at a price of $2.00; copies will be sent automatically to libraries which purchased the third edition.

Orders from libraries in the United States must be sent directly to Library Systems and Communications Division, Duke University Medical Center Library, Durham, NC 27710, with payment directed to the Duke University Medical Center Library, accompanying the order.

Libraries in Canada may order directly from Mr. David Skene Melvin, Suite LL7, 24 Queen St. East, Brampton, Ontario, Canada, with payment accompanying order. It will not be possible to accept orders through jobbers.

• LNR: Numerical Register of Books in Louisiana Libraries is a computer-produced location list of 548,000 books represented by LC catalog card numbers. This 600-page offset publication is the work of a Louisiana Library Association committee under the chairmanship of William E. McGrath, Director of Libraries, University of Southwestern Louisiana.

With an LSCA Title III grant from the Louisiana State Library, 450,000 numbers were keypunched from the retrospective holdings of six major libraries, and sixteen participants reported current acquisitions during the last year and a half. Entries are arranged in numerical sequence (600 on a page) and each is followed by alphabetic character location symbols. For additional information on LNR, write Mr. Sam A. Dyson, Librarian, Louisiana Tech University —Library, Ruston, LA 71270.

• The University of Utah libraries and the University of Utah Middle East Center announce publication of Supplement One to Volume I of Middle East Catalogue Series: Arabic Collection Aziz S. Atiya Library for Middle East Studies. This volume includes 3,065 facsimile main entry cards for monographic works cataloged from September 1967 through February 1970, along with a list of Arabic periodical holdings to the cutoff date of February 1970, and author and title indexes to both the Supplement and the earlier Volume I of more than 8,000 cards, which was issued in 1968.

It is expected that the indexes will facilitate use of both volumes, which are arranged in the general subject areas of the Library of Congress classification. The supplementary volume, including indexes to both Volume I and the Supplement, is priced at $15.00. Orders and inquiries should be directed to Mr. Roger Mathi- son, Gifts & Exchanges Librarian, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. Copies of Volume I are still available at the published price of $20.00 and can be ordered from the same address.

• The Operational Archives of the Naval History Division recently prepared a microfilm publication containing English translations of forty monthly volumes of the war diary of the Operations Division, German Naval Staff (Seekriegsleitung), 1939-1945. Although these translations cover only certain periods of the war years and were originally for internal naval use, they have been of value to a number of students of World War II history. The publication consists of sixteen 35mm reels which are available on interlibrary loan or which may be purchased for a fee of $8.00 per reel. Interested scholars and institutions can obtain a brief description of the translations, details on the exact months contained on each reel, and information on ordering procedures by writing to the Operational Archives, Building 210, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, DC 20390.

• Kansas State University library, Manhattan, has recently published number 9 in its Library Bibliography Series: Civil-Military Relations and Militarism; a Classified Bibliography Covering the United States and Other Nations of the World; with Introductory Notes, by Arthur D. Larson, University of Wisconsin- Parkside. History professor Robin Higham is faculty adviser for the series, and acquisitions librarian John Vander Velde, editor. One hundred thirteen pages in length, the volume sells for $3.00. Order from Bibliography Series Editor, KSU Library, Manhattan, KS 66502. Standing orders for future publications will be accepted.