ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Galloway

The Folger Shakespeare Library has received a gift of $1.25 million from the Mellon Foundation to endow senior fellowships. The endowment builds on the success of a grant that since 1996 has supported 16 fellowships at the Folger. These fellowships have benefited scholars from the United States, New Zealand and Canada researching a range of early modern topics from “Renaissance Fetishisms” to “Africanism in Early Modern England and English America.” The Folger Shakespeare Library is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works and the third-largest collection of early English printed books.

Nichols College's Conant Library, inDudley, Massachusetts, has received a $56,000 grant from the Davis Education Foundation in support of its information literacy program. The primary goal of the three- year project is to integrate information literacy instruction and assessment into the curriculum at both the general education and subject-specific levels through close collaboration between faculty and instructional librarians.

Rutgers University has received a$10,000 grant from the Fred J. Brotherton Foundation to upgrade the lighting in the Special Collections’ Gallery ’50 on the first floor of Alexander Library and for the complete restoration and encapsulation of five significant New Jersey wall maps. Each exhibition hosted by Special Collections features between 100 and 150 items on display, many of which are vulnerable to light damage. With the grant, Special Collections will install a surface track lighting system in Gallery ’50 to better illuminate and preserve the items on display. The maps to be preserved include two 1819 maps of the United States, an 1853 map of New Jersey, an 1847 map of Newark, and an 1874 map of Greenwood Cemetery. The Brotherton Foundation supports initiatives in research libraries.

The Division of Libraries of New YorkUniversity (NYU), in partnership with the New-York Historical Society, has received a National Leadership Grant of $199,499 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to create a digital resource. The centerpiece of the project will be the Richard Maass Collection of NYU’s Fales Collection, which consists of over 300 autograph letters, documents, broadsides, and newspapers that chronicle the early history of New York from its colonization by the Dutch in the 17th century through the Revolutionary War. The collection includes such significant items as autographed letters by George Washington, one of which outlines his plans for the battle of New York City; a land treaty from 1680 for the purchase of Connecticut land from the Native Americans; and a letter byjohn Quincy Adams from 1839 articulating his position on the freedom of the slaves. Complementing the Maass Collection, the New-York Historical Society will contribute its William Alexander Papers, a collection of letters and military reports relating to the American defense of New York and campaigns following the fall of the city to the British. The historical society will also contribute its 262 Erskine/DeWitt military survey maps.

The Greater Western Library Alliance, aconsortium of 30 research libraries in the Midwest and Western United States, has been awarded a National Leadership Grant totaling $249,736 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to begin constructing a digital library of water resources information for the western United States. The total amount for the project, including matching funds, is $452,826. The new Western Waters Digital Library will create a freely and widely accessible information resource from a geographically dispersed consortium of major universities. Water usage and conservation is a major policy issue in the western United States, as natural water scarcity in the region is combined with the highest current growth rate in the countiy. Currently, no federal or state agency or other organization provides a comprehensive information resource about water to researchers, policymakers, educators, and citizens. The project will use the Western States Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, developed by the IMLS-funded Western Trails project, and will incorporate the standards and principles of the Open Archives Initiative.

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e- mail:agalloway@ala.org.

Acquisitions

Exxon Mobil Corporation has donated itshistorical collection to the University of Texas- Austin’s Center for American History. Exxon Mobil has also provided the university with a $300,000 grant to catalog and preserve the collection. The collection, which has an estimated market value of $ 10 million, includes vast archives, including historical documents from John D. Rockefeller and Charles Lindbergh. Exxon Mobil’s archive collection includes historical artifacts and documents dating back to Exxon and Mobil’s earliest predecessor companies from the 1870s through the creation and operation of Standard Oil Company. The archives contain one of the most comprehensive broadcast advertising collections on record, 1.5 million original photos, and an equally extensive collection of posters, graphics, and publications. Artifacts, including historical signs and gas pumps, are also part of the collection.

One of the earliest known letters detailing plans for the Maryland Agricultural College has been acquired by the University of Maryland Libraries. The college was chartered in 1856 and would ultimately become the University of Maryland, College Park in 1920. Charles Benedict Calvert sent the handwritten letter on September 29,1858, to J. C. Nicholson, a Baltimore businessman. Calvert was a central figure in the founding of the college and a member of the Board of Trustees, as well as a well-known philanthropist, planter, and congressman. He served as acting president of the college from 1859 to I860.

The personal country music collection ofEugene Earle of Nipomo, California, has been donated to the University of North Carolina (UNC)-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library. Movie posters, magazines, song folios, cassette tapes, soundies (precursors to music videos), and 60,000 78-rpm records comprise the collection. Earle, a retired electrical engineer, thought that UNC would be a good home for his collection because the artists in his collection were from or sang about Appalachia. Earle used his vacation time to scour the country looking for records. The collection, which will require original cataloging, contains hundreds if not thousands of artists, including complete runs of Mainer’s Mountaineers, a North Carolina-based group; Bill and Charlie Monroe; Bill Cox and Cliff Hobbs; and Jimmie Rogers.

Avid country music fan Eugene Earle has donated his personal collection of recordings to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Clark Kerr's personal collection of 500books has been donated to the University of California-(UC) Berkeley Institute of Industrial Relations Library. These titles represent a lifetime of study, scholarship, and publishing in several fields associated with labor and industrial relations. Kerr, 92, received his Ph.D. in Economics from UC in 1939, served in various capacities on the War Labor Board (1942-47), and was the first director of the Institute of Industrial Relations at UC-Berkeley (1945-52), where he still has an office. Kerr went on to serve as Berkeley chancellor (1952-58) and UC president (1958-67). ■