ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Galloway

New York University (NYU), with theassistance of a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), will join Phase 4 of the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS), an innovative virtual library of ancient papyri begun in 1996 and recently granted a fourth round of funding from NEH. APIS was originally a partnership with the six U. S. institutions owning the largest collections of papyri. NYU is one of several institutions joining Phase 4 of APIS, along with Stanford and the University of Wisconsin. APIS brings together in a single digital site information about texts written on papyri and their cultural context. It combines high-quality digital imaging with descriptive information. Each papyrus image in the database is linked to a detailed record that ideally includes physical description, provenance, content notes, and references to relevant publications.

University of Louisiana-Lafayette hasbeen awarded a Louisiana Board of Regents Traditional Enhancement Grant for $90,487. The project, “To Preserve Cultures and Nurture Generations: Building a Collection of Cajun and Creole Music at the University Library,” will use grant funds to acquire commercial recordings of Cajun, Creole, zydeco, and swamp pop music. Equipment for listening and archival purposes will also be purchased.

SOLINET and the HBCU Library Alliancehave received a $160,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a collaborative project to assess needs and develop a program to increase the effectiveness and visibility of libraries at the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). The 12-month project will promote the roles of the librarians on each campus and advocate for total integration of libraries into campus programs for teaching and learning. The HBCU Library Alliance will identify what it means for a library at an HBCU to be integrated into teaching and learning processes and determine what HBCU libraries need to be able to do this effectively; gather input from the HBCU community and the academic library community about the role of the library in teaching and learning; and develop an educational program that will improve the skills, knowledge, and ability of HBCU librarians to enable them to integrate their libraries more effectively into their institutions’ teaching and learning missions.

Ask a Librarian, a collaborative projectbetween the College Center for Library Automation (CCLA) and the Tampa Bay library Consortium (TBLC), has been awarded a $339,000 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant to help fund the new service’s continued development and delivery. Ask a Librarian provides library patrons with fast, convenient access to a library professional who can offer one-on-one assistance with locating online resources. The librarian can link with the patron to see what the patron sees, provide instruction using a live chat session, help the patron locate information, and provide professional guidance on how to use that information—all in a real-time, interactive, virtual environment. Ask a Librarian is a pilot program designed to provide the Florida Library Network Council with information about cost, procedures, and operations for a virtual reference service component of a larger Florida Electronic Libraiy to serve all Florida citizens.

Columbia University Libraries, the University of Chicago Library, and North Carolina State University have recently received $530,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Education. The new three-year grant will be used for the second phase of the Digital Dictionaries of South Asia (DDSA) project. The project will add at least ten monolingual dictionaries for modern literary languages of South Asia to its Web site at dsal.uchicago.edu/ dictionaries/. These additions will complement the 34 bilingual dictionaries already being made available under the project’s first phase.

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

The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation(NAPF) is donating its historical archives and related materials to the University of California- Santa Barbara for use by students, scholars, and the public. Established in 1982 and based in Santa Barbara, NAPF is dedicated to abolishing nuclear weapons and working for a peaceful future. Historians, political scientists, sociologists ‚ and other researchers will be drawn to the NAPF collection, which addresses topics such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, weapons of mass destruction, missile defense systems, the constructive use of science and technology, and establishing an international criminal court.

The National Public Radio (NPR) NewsTape Collection has been donated to the University of Maryland (UM). The collection of some 21,500 audiotape reels chronicles all of the major world news events that occurred between 1971 and 1983. An additional 8,000 reels will provide the university with NPR News programming through 1988. As part of the agreement, NPR will transfer 4,000 additional tapes each year to the UM Libraries spanning events beyond 1988.

The Menninger Foundation's Library ofPsychiatry and Psychoanalysis has been acquired by the Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center (HAM-TMC) Library. The gift includes the foundation’s clinical library, historical and rare book collections, and complete runs of the Menninger publications. Nearly 18,000 clinical monographs, 6,000 journal volumes, and more than 3,000 rare books and journals were transferred to HAM-TMC. The clinical library is a wide-ranging collection pertaining to psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis in adults and children. The publications by and commentaries about Sigmund Freud are so extensive that the Menninger staff devised an expanded classification scheme to shelve these titles. There are also a large number of titles devoted to community mental health, pastoral counseling, and social work. The rare book collection includes a large number of early journals on psychoanalysis, hundreds of German psychiatric texts, and special reports from many American asylums.

Nelson S. Bond, veteran science fiction/fantasy writer, has donated his papers to Marshall University. Bond published 257 stories in 68 different magazines between 1935 and 1958 and over the past half-century, wrote 7 books of short fiction; his stories have appeared in more than 100 anthologies. Bond is possibly best known, however, for his radio and television scripts. During the 1943-44 radio season, he wrote 46 half- hour crime dramas for ABC’s Hot Copy, plus a smattering of scripts for The Dr. Christian Show, Author’s Playhouse, and Curtain Time. In subsequent years he wrote scripts for Tlx Black Book, Ford Theatre, Make Believe Time, The Sheriff Show, Mystery on the Air, Dimension X, Molle Mystery Theatre, Escape, and other classic radio shows. In 1946 his script on Mr. Mergenthwirker’s Lobbllies became the first play ever aired over a television network. Bond, who at 95 continues to write, recently published a book entitled The Far Side of Nowhere and is completing work on another monograph, Other Worlds Tlhan Ours, due for publication in 2004. Bond is a graduate of Marshall University (class of 1935).

The Arthur Ashe Papers (1959-2003) havebeen donated to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture by Ashe’s wife, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, to mark the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death in 1993. The collection contains correspondence; speeches and other writings by Ashe, including his autobiography Days of Grace: A Memoir written with Arnold Rampersad; articles and dippings; awards and tributes; photographs; tapes; memorabilia; and records documenting his involvement in numerous organi- zations and projects, including handwritten notes from his trip to South Africa and meeting with Nelson Mandela in 1991. The papers include drafts and research materials compiled by Ashe for his three-volume history of African American athletes, Hard Road to Glory, donated to the center in 1990. In the collection are letters from Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu, six American presidents, other public officials, fellow athletes, friends, and fans.