ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News From the Field

ACQUISITIONS

•A new collection of papers at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, documents the political contest between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912. The papers were collected by William Brown McKinley, congressman from Illinois who directed the Taft for President Bureau in that year. More than 28,000 letters are in the collection, most of them written by supporters or opponents of the Taft candidacy. There are also copies of replies from McKinley’s staff. Among the correspondents are Charles Ballinger, Charles G. Dawes, Henry A. Du Pont, Henry L. Stimson, and governors, congressmen, civil servants, and citizens, with wide differences of political opinion. The collection covers the years from 1906 to 1920, but most of the papers are from 1908–1918. National campaign records from 1908 to 1918 show organizational charts, mailing lists, Republican National Committee lists, and minutes of the National Republican Congressional Committee between 1908 and 1916. The papers include state campaign records of 1912 as well as the national Republican records. Financial records, speeches, and position papers are also in the collection.

•A Mark Twain collection which includes first editions of all of his published books and many of his stories and sketches in magazines has been presented to the Wake Forest University library, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, by Mrs. Nancy Susan Reynolds of Greenwich, Connecticut. The collection, valued at $18,000, contains 337 items, including several letters written by Twain and members of his family, several books from his library, and more than fifty books and articles about the author. The collection contains multiple early editions of much of Twain’s work. For example, there are fifteen editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the first in 1884 to one published in 1901. There are a number of first editions of books published in England. Many of the early editions are well designed and profusely illustrated. Books from his personal library include a minor work of Charles Darwin, whom Twain read exhaustively; a minor work by his neighbor, Harriet Beecher Stowe; and a novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr., an 1883 graduate of Wake Forest, who is best known for his novel The Klansman.

•A group of George Bernard Shaw letters is among the papers of Lowell Brentano given to the University of Oregon library by Mrs. Frances Brentano of New York City. Mr. Brentano was editorial director of the publishing department of Brentano’s, Inc., and at the same time a writer of novels, plays, musicals, and motion picture scripts. His correspondence includes letters from such well-known literary figures as Leland Hayward, Fulton Oursler, and Jerry Wald, as well as Shaw. The Shaw correspondence provides evidence of the playwright’s antipathy toward “de luxe” editions of his work, a form of publication he refers to as artificial rarity, and a conspiracy to “pluck pigeons.” The Brentano Papers consist of letters, manuscripts, contracts and published pieces of both Lowell Brentano and Mrs. Brentano, and are a major addition to the library’s collection of source material for literary and publishing history.

AWARDS/GIFTS

•The Utah Library Association has been named winner of the seventh Annual $1,000 Grolier National Library Week Award “for sponsoring the outstanding statewide Library Week Program of 1970.” The Library Associations in Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Virginia were also cited for “special recognition.” Twenty-three state programs were submitted in this year’s competition. The Award was established in 1964 by Grolier Inc., encyclopedia publishers, to encourage and reward the most effective use of the national reading and library development campaign to advance local and statewide library goals. In Utah, the State NLW Program was headed by Gordon Owen of KSL, the GBS affiliate in Salt Lake City, who was chairman of the Citizens’ Library Week Committee, with Mrs. Doreen Mohrke, of the Salt Lake City Sprague Branch Library, as executive director.

• Robert Penn Warren, much honored as a poet and novelist, was today named winner of the 1970 National Medal for Literature. The award, consisting of $5,000 and a bronze medal, is conferred annually by the National Book Committee to honor a living American writer for the excellence of his total contribution to the world of letters. The award is endowed by the Guinzburg Fund in memory of the late Harold K. Guinzburg, president of The Viking Press and a founder of the Committee. A prolific writer whose literary career has spanned forty years, Mr. Warren is the sixth recipient of the Medal. In previous years, it has been awarded to Conrad Aiken (1969), Marianne Moore (1968), W. H. Auden (1967), Edmund Wilson (1966), and Thornton Wilder, who received the first National Medal for Literature at a presentation ceremony at the White House in 1965. Mr. Warren has achieved success in a variety of literary forms, and has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry. In 1947, his novel All the King’s Men (Harcourt) was the recipient of the Prize and was later made into an Academy Award winning film. His Promises: Poems, 1954-1956 (Random House) received the Pulitzer Prize in 1957, as well as the National Book Award for Poetry and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Award of the Poetry Society of America.

GRANTS

• The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has received an additional grant from the National Science Foundation for a project entitled “Strengthening Information Services in Electrical and Electronics Engineering.” The recent grant of $18,666 will support an extension to the project, now in progress for over a year, which has led to the development of new methods of author-assisted indexing and to the creation of a computer-readable bibliographic data base of IEEE literature. This additional award brings the total funds under this grant to $91,684. The Information Services Department of IEEE is the principal operating unit for the grant. Established in 1967, the department’s aim has been to explore the new computer-based technologies for solutions to information problems. This work has led to a magnetic tape service which enables computerized information systems to take advantage of a large data base in electrical and electronics engineering, computer science, and applied physics. The Information Services Department plans to be able eventually to provide on-line computer access to the data base, so that scientists and engineers may be able to interact more effectively using the information it contains.

MEETINGS

Oct. 7-8: Microforms and their place in academic libraries will be the subject of the first institute for academic librarians to be sponsored by the University of Kentucky’s School of Library Science. This institute was planned primarily for the administrators and the specialists in technical processes of the junior and community colleges, the four-year colleges, and the universities of Kentucky. It will be held in Louisville on October 7 and 8, just prior to the Kentucky Library Association’s 1970 convention. The institute’s participants will be supplied with information on the use of microforms in solving specific library problems, and on the acquisition, organization, and care of microform materials. Demonstrations of microform readers and other equipment will be included in the program. Dr. Herman L. Totten, a specialist in academic library administration and in the use of nonbook materials in libraries, will be the institute’s principal speaker. A former member of the University of Oklahoma staff. Dr. Totten is now college librarian of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. Inquiries about this institute should be addressed to Dr. Charles Evans, School of Library Science, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506.

Oct. 11: The American Society for Information Science will hold its 33rd annual meeting Sunday, October 11, through Thursday, October 15, 1970, at the Sheraton Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “The Information Conscious Society” is the theme. The Convention Chairman for the 1970 meeting is Mr. Kenneth H. Zabriskie, Jr., Biosciences Information Services of Biological Abstracts, 2100 Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Oct. 16: The Upper Mississippi Academic Library Association, whose members come from Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, will have their fourth annual fall meeting in the Murphy Library, Wisconsin State University—La Crosse. Members will invite their history faculties to attend as guests. Dr. Richard Marsh, of Hamline University, will speak on archival research in the undergraduate library.

Oct. 21-24: The 1970 annual conference of the Pennsylvania Library Association will be held at the Sheraton Hotel, Philadelphia. More information is available from the Pennsylvania Library Association, 200 South Craig Street, Room 506, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15113. For complete information on the program see July/ August CRL Views, pages 220.

Oct. 30: The Department of History of Notre Dame University, the Society of American Archivists, and the National Archives and Records Service (Region 5) are cooperating in the presentation of a symposium on using the resources of the Presidential Libraries. It will be held Friday, October 30, 1970, in the Continuing Education Center on the Notre Dame campus. An informal gathering of participants and those arriving the afternoon of October 29 is also being planned.

Those desiring to receive a program should send their requests to the following address: Regional Archives Branch, Federal Records Center, 7201 South Leamington Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60638. The program and cost of attending can be found in the July/August CRL News, page 220.

Nov. 11-14: The annual conference of the New York Library Association will meet at the Hotel Americana, New York City.

Nov. 12; The annual conference of the New York Library Association (see above) will include a conference-within-a-conference on the Preservation of Library Materials, November 12, 1970. For further information see September CRL News, page 248.

Nov. 13-16: The Oral History Association will hold its Fifth Annual Colloquium, November 13 through 16, 1970, at Asilomar, on the Monterey-Carmel Peninsula, California.

For registration information contact Mrs. Willa Baum, Regional Oral History Office, Room 486, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720. For further information on the program and costs see September CRL News, page 248.

Nov. 20-21: An institute for librarians, “The Reference Bibliographer in the Subject Specialties,” has been scheduled for November 20– 21 (Friday and Saturday) in San Diego, California. Participants will work with such distinguished librarians as Louis Shores, Robert Burgess, Carl White, Florrinell Morton, and Melvin Voigt. The two-day institute will give librarians in-depth training in such support areas of subject-area bibliography as: (1) how to write a guide to the literature, (2) how to train students in specialized bibliography, (3) how to survey and upgrade a specialized collection. Institute members will attend as observers a symposium of the American Anthropological Association on “Information Needs of the Anthropologist” on Friday morning. Reference librarians and subject bibliographers are invited to submit papers for the institute to Donald McKie, Central University Library, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037. Areas in which interest has been expressed include: data banks, microform services, computer-aided tutorial packages for subdisciplines, guides to the recent reference literature in geographically defined areas. Since anthropology is being used to some extent as a sample focus, papers which focus on narrow specialties in anthropology will be especially welcome. Fee for the two-day meeting, including hotel accommodations for two nights, two lunches, and two dinners, is $75.00. Registrants are invited to contact: Conference Department, University Extension, P.O. Box 109, La Jolla, California 92037.

Nov. 28: The Fifty-sixth Annual Conference of Eastern College Librarians will meet at Columbia University. The Conference topic will be “Research Libraries and the Publishing Industry.” Inquiries should be addressed to; Mr. Basil Mitchell (Chairman of The Program Committee), Executive Director, Southeastern New York Library Resources Council, 103 Market Street, Poughkeepsie, New York 12601.

Jan. 6-12, 1971: Following on the XXVIIth International Congress of Orientalists Library Panel at Ann Arbor in 1967, Library Seminars will be held during the 28th International Congress of Orientalists, Canberra, 6-12 January, 1971. These may be regarded as the first major activities of the International Association of Orientalist Librarians set up at the Ann Arbor meetings.

Apr. 23-24, 1971: Sixteenth annual Midwest Academic Librarians Conference at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

May 30-June 3, 1971: The 70th Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association will be held in New York City, May 30– June 3, 1971.

A letter of intent to submit a formal paper for consideration, accompanied by a short abstract, should be sent by September 1, 1970, to: Alfred N. Brandon, Librarian, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Fifth Avenue and 100th Street, New York, New York 10029. The deadline for submission of completed papers is

February 1, 1971, For information regarding the type of papers needed see July/August CRL Views, pages 220 and 224.

Aug. 22-27, 1971: An International Conference on Information Science will be held in Israel on August 22-27, 1971. Papers will be presented in the following areas: (1) Information Analysis and Information Analysis Centers; (2) Retrieval of Information; (3) Selection, Education, and Training of Personnel; (4) Publishing and Reproduction. Titles and summaries of papers are due not later than December 1, 1970. For further information contact: Conference Secretary, ISLIC—Israel Society of Special Libraries and Information Centres, P.O.B. 16271, Tel-Aviv. See also September CRL News, page 249.

Sept. 30-Oct. 2, 1971: 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.

MISCELLANY

• The University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences (GSLIS) will administer the 1970 Multi-National Librarian Project, a fifteen-week cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State for career librarians from foreign countries. The project, to run from October 1, 1970, through January 14, 1971, is designed to acquaint participants with American librarianship and its relationship to American life and society. After a ten-day orientation in Washington, D.C., the seventeen participants, representing fifteen countries, will come to Pitt for a three-week seminar. At the conclusion of the seminar, participant librarians will serve five-week internships in libraries around the country for training and consultation in their fields of specialization. Following their internships, they will travel throughout the United States to visit representative, and unique, library operations. The ten women and seven men who have been selected to participate in the project represent university, public, school, and special libraries; two of the representatives also are on the faculties of library schools. Countries sending librarians include Argentina, Chile, Ethiopia, Guyana, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. The participants were chosen by U.S. embassies in their respective countries.

• Libraries, academic departments, and other agencies which have facilities for exhibiting books may apply now for the 1970 Southern Books (Southern Books Competition) and the 1970 Midwestern Books (Midwestern Books Competition). Approximately twenty to forty volumes will be selected in 1970. Apply to Lawrence S. Thompson, Project Director, Department of Classics, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506. The books must be displayed in locked cases, but handling by interested persons is permitted. For the exhibitors who receive the books in February, March, and April only a typed list will be available, but thereafter the printed handlist will be supplied in twenty-five copies. Additional hundreds of copies may be ordered for $8.00 per hundred from the project director. Each applicant for the exhibit should indicate the months in which the exhibit is wanted, in order of preference. Every effort will be made to supply the exhibit in the month in which the books are wanted, but preferences will be given to exhibitors within the pertinent region. There is no charge for the exhibit; but exhibitors will be requested to send the books, prepaid and fully insured (maximum of $200.00) in time to reach the next exhibitor by the first of the month in which the books are to be shown. Applications for the exhibit will not be acknowledged immediately unless there is a specific request. A schedule of the exhibits will be sent out early in February 1971.

PUBLICATIONS

• The English Department at Indiana State University has announced the publication of The Dreiser Newsletter. The Newsletter will be published twice a year. Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring 1970) is now available. Its contents include: news of the coming Dreiser Centennial; “Two Dreisers Plus One,” an essayreview by Philip L. Gerber; “Dreiser Studies; Work To Be Done,” a prospectus of projects for Dreiser scholars by Donald Pizer; and “The Lilly Library Holdings,” an annotated listing of Dreiser manuscripts and materials available at Indiana University, by Richard W. Dowell. Subsequent issues will include interviews with prominent Dreiser scholars; “Dreiser’s Medical Journal,” a study of the original manuscript, wherein Dreiser tells of his inability to write during a struggle with neurasthenia; and an annual annotated checklist of Dreiser scholarship. Critical articles are welcome, but priority will be given to material of a bibliographical nature. Manuscripts should follow the MLA Style Sheet, and be accompanied by return postage. Subscription fee: $2.00 for two years (four issues). Single copies: 75 cents. All correspondence and checks should be addressed to: The Dreiser Newsletter, Department of English, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana 47809.

• The Slavic Bibliographic and Documentation Center of the Association of Research Libraries has begun the publication of a monthly acquisitions guide to new Slavic publications. It is designed to provide, in one place, bibliographical information about forthcoming and recent titles in the social sciences and humanities published in all Slavic languages, in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria. The guide is intended primarily for those college and smaller university libraries which do not collect in depth, but which do need a good, well-rounded working collection in one or several Slavic languages and/or subject areas. The first three issues of New Slavic Publications, A Guide to Selection and Acquisition in the Social Sciences and Humanities have been distributed free of charge. Beginning with vol. 2, no. 1, September 1970, subscriptions will be accepted at a rate of $10.00 a year for institutions, and $5.00 for individuals. Subscriptions and requests for more information should be addressed to the Slavic Bibliographic and Documentation Center, Association of Research Libraries, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.

• The Proceedings of the Standing Conference of National and University Libraries seminar on Human Aspects of Library Instruction held at the University of Reading on December 9, 1969, are available for purchase from the Secretary of the Conference, The Library, University College, P.O. Box 78, Cardiff, England, at a price of 10 shillings.

• The 1970 annual Serials Holdings List of the UCLA Biomedical Library has recently been printed. This computer-generated publication includes information on over 12,000 ceased as well as current titles, complete holdings statements, call numbers, history notes, and shelving locations of 6,495 current unbound titles. A limited number of copies of the List are available for purchase at $5.00 each. Purchase requests should be addressed to; Mrs. Nancy Brault, Serials Librarian, UCLA Biomedical Library, Center for the Health Sciences, Los Angeles, California 90024. All requests must be accompanied by a check for $5.00 made out to Regents of the University of California.

• The Union List of Scientific and Technical Serials in the University of Michigan Library,

5th edition, is now available. It includes more than 23,000 titles drawn from the holdings of twenty-three of the libraries in the University of Michigan library system. Each title entry gives the official main entry, library location, holdings, and call number. Some 5,500 crossreferences have also been provided to assist users. All new entries and corrections submitted to the editorial staff through March 15, 1970, have been included. The fifth edition may be purchased for $10.00 from Business Services Division, Technical Services Department, University Library, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104.

• The first edition of the Rochester Regional Research Library Council’s Union List of Serials has been published by the Council. The list contains 12,798 titles representing the holdings of thirty area academic and special libraries. It does not include either the Rochester Public Library or the University of Rochester’s holdings, which will be included in the second edition. The list is available from the Rochester Regional Research Library Council, Room 525, Hall of Justice, Rochester, New York 14614. Price $50.00 per copy.