ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Acquisitions

• Colorado State University, Fort Collins,recently acquired records representing nearly a century of history of the development and activities of the Women’s Athletic and Dance Departments, the Women’s Athletic Association and the Women’s Recreation Association. This new addition to the University Archives constitutes a potentially rich primary resource for the study of early women’s physical education and for the broader subject of the contribution of women faculty to higher education, especially in the first half of the 20th century.

• Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NewYork, has received the Biblioteca Ayacucho from President Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela. This massive series, designed to present modem editions of important literary and historical texts from throughout the Latin American region was inspired and sponsored by President Perez during his first term (1975-1980). On his recent visit to the Cornell campus to receive the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship, Perez delivered the first 135 volumes of the series which is projected to double in size by 1992, the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ initial voyage to America.

• Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas,has received the archival materials of CAM International, a missionary agency headquartered in Dallas, Texas. Founded in 1890 by C. I. Scofield, then pastor of First Congregational Church in Dallas, as the Central American Mission, it became CAM International after extending its work to Mexico, Spain, and South America. The Mission has had a close association with Dallas Seminary, founded in 1924 by Lewis Speriy Chafer, who served as general secretary of the Mission from 1921-1924. The CAM International records include administrative correspondence, mission records, publications, minutes of Council and Board meetings, news and prayer letters, and miscellaneous materials. The Mission designated Dallas Seminary as the repository for its archives in October 1989. The collection consists at this time of 15 boxes of records.

• Kent State University Libraries, Ohio, haverecently acquired the papers of Thomas Richard Wirth, a veteran of the New York Art scene of the past two decades, including correspondence with prominent artists, examples of “mail art,” and ephemera such as art announcements and catalogs. Wirth arrived in New York in the early 1960s and soon became friends with artists, writers, and actors. Wirth participated in the mail art movement both as a recipient of work from such networks as the Ontological News Service and as an artist using the postal service. His collection includes the 1982 drawing, “Mi Californita,” by his long-time friend Ira Joel Haber, and an altered photograph in Brian Buczak’s “You Are Here” series. Also in the collection are letters from poets Michael Andre, David Rattray and Carol Berge, composer Stephen Sondheim, director Melvin Bernhardt, bookbinder Gerard Charriere, editor Joseph McCrindle, filmmaker Roger Jacoby, and artists William Anthony, Buster Cleveland, John Evans, Ray Johnson, Lowell Nesbitt, Carlo Pittore and May Wilson. Wirth, a native of Minnesota, died in 1987 at the age of 47.

• The University of California at Berkeley’sEast Asiatic Library has received a major collection of Chinese books through a bequest made by the late Elizabeth Huff, head of the library during its first 20 years, beginning in 1947. She left a scholar’s working library of more than 5,000 volumes of Chinese literature, classics, philosophy, and history. In addition to reference works in Chinese, Japanese, English, and French, there are nearly 250 monographs in Western languages: translations of Chinese poetry and literary classics, and critical studies of Chinese literature. Among the books are several rare items. There is a single specimen volume from the voluminous Imperial Manuscript Library, the Ssu-k’u ch’uan-shu, commissioned by the Ch’ien-lung Emperor (1736-1796), Chuan 3 and 4 of the Chu-yeh lu, a 15th-century work. There is a fragment page of a manuscript from the Tun-huang cache, probably of the 9th or 10th century. Also included is a 16thcentury edition of the encyclopedia, I-wen lei-chu, in 24 fascicles. Included in the gift are 23 paintings, rubbings, works of calligraphy, and manuscript leaves; she also left to the University of California 97 ceramic pieces from China, Korea, and Japan and 37 cultural objects of jade, metal wood, and textiles. These articles have been housed in the Lowie Museum of Anthropology.

• The University of Connecticut’s Homer Babbidge Library, Special Collections Department, Storrs, has acquired the first installment of the archives of noted children’s book illustrator and author, Leonard Everett Fisher. It consists of Fisher’s complete correspondence with his publishers, agents, and others, from 1968 to the present. Also included in the first installment of material were manuscripts, galleys, dummies, and proofs, as well as notices of personal appearances, clippings, printing blocks, and an oil painting of Fisher.

• The University of Illinois Library at Ur- bana-Champaign has recently added 219 letters of H. G. Wells (1866-1946) to its extensive collection of Wells’s correspondence housed in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library. Purchased from his daughter, Anna Jane Kennard, of New Zealand, the letters are addressed to her and her mother, Amber Reeves Blanco-White, and dated between 1906-1939. Included also are 79 leaves from 5 fragments of unpublished drafts of manuscripts . The letters were purchased with funds from the E. Kenneth Gray Endowment.

• The University of Maine, Orono, has ac- quired two collections of business records significant to the history of lumbering in the state. The Ames Collection contains records of S. W. Pope & Co., 1856-1879, John K. Ames, 1879-1899, and Machias Lumber Co., 1899-1950. These enterprises included timberland holdings in townships at the headwaters of the Machias River, interests in a log-driving company on the Machias River, a sawmill and a company store in Machias, and interests in schooners sailing from Machias. Together they made up a vertically integrated operation at the center of the Downeast economy for much of the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The collection consists of 80 linear feet of day books, journals, ledgers, surveyors records, letter books, store inventories, and other business documents. The Coe Collection consists of records of Ebenezer Coe and the Coe Family from the 1870s to the 1940s. The Coe interests, based in Bangor, managed extensive undivided timberlands in northern and eastern Maine. The collection consists of 30 linear feet of day books, journals, ledgers, letters, and real estate documents. They include timbercutting records in northern Maine townships dating from the 1840s through the 1880s.

• The University of Texas at Arlington Li- braries have received a vast collection of maps, documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, newspapers, and other valuable historical material concerning Texas and the Southwest donated by Ted W. Mayborn of deCordova Bend Estates at Granbury, Texas. The donation is the first in series of gifts to the library by Maybom and has an appraised value of $140,000. It includes more than 1,400 original maps, many of which depict Texas and the Southwest. Among the Texas maps in the collection are circa 1884 city maps of Galveston, Houston, Brenham, and Palestine; a bird’s eye view map of San Antonio, 1891; Charles W. Pressler’s Traveller’s Map of Texas, 1967; Zebulon M. Pike’s A Map of the Internal Provinces of New Spain, 1807; and Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese’s Texas, 1844. In addition to the maps, the collection includes more than 800 individual newspapers from across the United States, reporting from Texas the events occurring during colonization, the revolution against Mexico, the republic and statehood periods, and the Civil War and post-war years. The fall of the Alamo, Travis’ letter, and the Texas Declaration of Independence are also fully reported in these papers. Also included are several hundred pamphlets concerning events in Texas communities, biographies, personal diaries, early county histories, and approximately 250 lithographs from the 19th century depicting scenes in Texas and Mexico.

Grants

• The Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, California, have received a total of $68,709 in federal funds provided by the Library Services and Construction Act, Title III. The funds are authorized by the California State Library for two retrospective conversion projects, which will permit the Libraries to catalog rare materials and to make them accessible online to library users throughout California and the country. One project will process 7,800 musical scores, 4,000 hymnals and songbooks, and 9,700 music books. The second will process 7,000 primarily pre-1900 imprints located in the Philbrick Library of Dramatic Literature and Theatre History at the Claremont Colleges Libraries.

• The Commission on Preservation and Pub-

lic Accesshas been awarded a grant in the amount of $300,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to help support national and international preservation and access programs. The grant will contribute to the support of a broad range of preservation programs and projects, both currently operating and to be developed over the next two years. Ongoing programs of the Commission include an international initiative to explore cooperative microfilming, a communication program to maintain national visibility and support for the preservation cause, scholarly advisory committees to assist in the indentifìcation of selection criteria for filming, and a number of technological explorations.

• The Library of Congress has received a$1,000,000 grant from Jones International, Ltd., andits subsidiary, Mind Extension University (ME/ U), based in Englewood, Colorado, for a Global Library Project that will link the vast repositoiy of information of the Library of Congress with the basic cable television service of ME/U. The Global Library Project will produce library-related informational and instructional programming for librarians and the public to be cablecast one hour per day on Mind Extension University beginning Januaiy 1, 1990. Mind Extension University is a television network devoted solely to continuing education via distance learning. The project also will form a task force consisting of industry leaders and futurists to address technological and dissemination issues related to the American Memory program at the Library of Congress. American Memory is a national program that will provide a series of products in different formats and media and take full advantage of the unique resources and capabilities of the world’s largest repository of knowledge and information at the Library of Congress. The program will disseminate throughout the nation collections that illuminate facets of American history and culture. American Memory collections will be drawn from Library of Congress holdings of manuscripts, sound recordings, books, motion pictures, and graphic and photographic materials.

• Pittsburgh Regional Library Center hasbeen notified of funding for its second College Libraiy Technology Cooperation grant proposal under the category of “Service to Institutions” for $20,134 to provide microcomputer training to members in higher education institutions in Pennsylvania and western Maryland. Last year the Center received a grant to provide training support for West Virginia. The College Library Technology Cooperation Grants program addresses regional and national needs for resource sharing in an attempt to bring new technologies to libraries. The grant assumes a one-third cost sharing arrangement on the part of the receiving institution. There is a $15,000 grant minimum which may be extended over a three year period. The grant money may be used for all related expenses necessary for resource sharing or the implementation of new technologies in the library. The Pittsburgh Regional Library Center is a not-for-profit, membership organization for libraries and information centers in Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Western Maryland.

• Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York,has been awarded a challenge grant of $500,000 from the Kresge Foundation for construction of the Dibner Library of Technology and Science. The state-of-the-art library and information center will be at the heart of MetroTech, the $1 billion academic/industrial research park conceived by Polytechnic and co-developed by the university and Forest City/MetroTech Associates. The University, which has raised more than $14 million to date, needs an additional $1.5 million to meet the Kresge challenge. Major support has come from the late Bern Dibner, a Polytechnic alumnus in whose honor the library wiil be named, from Joseph J. Jacobs, class of 1937, Polytechnic trustee and former chairman of the board, as well as from the Pfizer Foundation.

• The University of Tennessee, Knoxville,Libraries recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a computerbased training program for library staffs. The total cost of the project is budgeted for $103,667, of which the department of Education is providing $66,901 (67%). Equipment provided for the project includes seven Apple Macintosh computers and a scanner that turns pictures and other print images into electronic ones for incorporation into the training modules. At the conclusion of the development phase, the computers will be used as training stations for training and re-training UTK Libraries employees. After the training modules have been tested, they will be made available to libraries nationwide for use in their training programs.

• The University of Waterloo Library,Ontario, has received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant of $35,000 to acquire rare architectural books for the Rosa Breihaupt Clark Architectural Collection. The Rosa Breihaupt Clark Architectural Collection consists of works which have influenced architectural discourse since the 16th century. Now recognized as a national resource, the collection is indispensible for teaching and research which, in turn, link directly to architectural practice and its effect on city planning in Canada.

News notes

• The Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis,has begun construction of a new storage and conservation facility and renovation of the former United HebrewTemple for its library and archives. The new structure will provide 54,000 square feet of secure, climate-controlled space for preservation of the Society’s collections. Conservation laboratories, processing areas and research facilities are planned, as well as related staff offices. The 1927 temple building, used by the United Hebrew Congregation until September 17,1989, will house the main library, archives, and pictorial history collections with stacks, offices, and a community meeting space. The total cost of the new construction and renovation is estimated to be $7.5 million. Funding will come from the tax money received from the History Museum Sub-district and from private contributions.

• The Stanford University Libraries’ experi-ence with the recent earthquake is excerpted from a BITNET message of October 19, reprinted in the Arizona State University Newsletter: “Braun Music Center…had no structural damage, but the library was a mess with books and other materials all over the floor and one of our big card catalog units had fallen over….Other library facilities on campus did not hold up so well. There is major structural damage in the old part of the main library which houses all of the technical services [including] preservation and special collections. It seems that structural repairs to that building, if they can be made at all, are likely to take a couple of years. Planning is now going on for the best way to keep the technical services operation functioning and how best to extract all of the rare materials from that building; no one is allowed to enter that building at this point since it appears that the aftershocks are making the building even less stable. The undergraduate library and several of the other branches are still closed pending further inspection of the facilities for damage and asbestos problems. I heard an estimate that a third to one half of the books were knocked off the shelves library-wide. So it looks like we have a major clean-up effort ahead of us and that [regular] workflow and receipt of materials, binding, etc., may be disrupted for some time.”