ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Acquisitions

• The Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, have recently acquired an important group of 19th-century manuscript materials. The papers, consisting of more than 3,000 manuscript items, document the activities of members of the Stirling, Turnbull, Joyce, Lobdell, and Allain Families. Covering nearly the entire 19th century, the materials document the commerce and trade in which these families were engaged, the operations of their numerous plantations, including the buying and selling of slaves, and the personal matters of the various family members. This collection complements the already extensive holdings in the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections at LSU that document not only the very same families, but the entire West Florida area. The manuscripts fall into four main family groupings: the Lewis Stirling Family Papers, which relate to the Civil War career of Lewis Stirling and the life of the family during reconstruction; the Turnbull- Joyce Partnership and estate records, which document the trading activities of John Joyce and his partner John Turnbull, including accounts with individual Indian traders on the Louisiana-Mississippi frontier, and bills and receipts for trade goods; the Lobdell Family Papers, which trace the arrival John Lobdell in Louisiana during the 1820s and his subsequent participation in the legal, political, and economic life of the state, including his leadership in the Masonic Lodge; the Allain Family Papers, which consist of personal and family letters as well as the business and financial records of V. F. and Sarah Allain. The acquisition of these important papers was made possible through the generous support of the Friends of the LSU Library, members of the Stirling family, the West Feliciana Historical Society, and other generous anonymous benefactors.

• The St. Louis Mercantile Library Association has acquired an important new collection received in recent months from the Transportation Research Forum (TRF) Foundation, of Washington, D.C. Most notable among the titles received in the TRF Foundation’s gift is a nearly complete run from the early 1870s to the present of The Official Guide of the Railways and Steam Navigation Lines of the United States, Porto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Cuba, known to generations of its users simply as The Official Guide. Long one of the most important railroad periodicals, The Official Guide and various related predecessor titles has published each month since June 1868 the most complete available compilation of the passenger and freight service timetables of all railroads in the United States, and later, all of North America. Route and service maps and advertisements, listings of services offered, station lists, and rosters of principal managers and officers are also featured. Long runs of the Guide are rare, and nearly complete runs such as that received from the TRF Foundation exist in only a few repositories. With the Guides came other important titles of high research value. Notable is a complete run of The Pocket List of Railroad Officials, which has four times yearly since 1895 published the most extensive listings of railroad managers and officials to be found anywhere. As such, The Pocket List is an especially useful resource for biographical and genealogical research. And the quarterly Official Railway Equipment Register provides exhaustive listings by type and owner or operator of all railroad freight and passenger cars in service. The nearly complete run from the 1880s of this title will be especially useful to many technological history researchers using the Barriger Collection. Finally, a long run from the late 1800s of the Proceedings of the American Association of General Passenger and Ticket Agents will provide useful information on the organization of rail passenger service in its heyday, as well as in its long period of decline in the last 40 years. All of these titles are especially notable for being the publisher’s own file copies, donated to the TRF Foundation by International Thomson Transport Press, formerly the National Railway Publication Co. and related firms, through its former chairman and president, Mr. Paul H. Moore. All issues, originally published in paperbound editions, were hardbound by the publisher.

• The Texas A&M University Archives havebegun to receive the papers of Eugene Butler, a native of Mississippi and long time resident of Dallas, Texas. Butler was at one time assistant editor of the Texas edition of the Progressive Farmer and eventually rose to the position of chairman of the editorial board and editor-in-chief, which he retained until his retirement when the company was sold in 1985. Throughout his long association with Progressive Farmer, Butler took an active interest in all phases of agriculture and was a crusader for better rural life, legislation to assist farmers, and improved farm practices. Butler kept all of his papers filed under a variety of topics including fertilizer, rural health, seeds, cotton, cotton acreage allotments, and cotton diseases. Other topics included are Operation Blackland Income Growth (BIG) of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service, the Prairie View A&M University Centennial Council, and the Man of the Year in Agriculture. The Progressive Farmer is itself the topic of a large number of files. Several of them deal with the history of the magazine as Butler has been working on a history for several years.

• The University of Illinois Library has ac-quired the original manuscript of From Here to Eternity, by James Jones, complete with the many handwritten changes made at the request of his publisher’s censors. Despite what the critics had to say, From Here to Eternity is now considered one of the greatest war novels ever written, yet it has never been available in its original, uncensored form. In addition, UI English Professor George Hendrick has donated a signed edition of the book and a copy of Jones’s second novel, Some Came Running, both from Jones’s own library. They were given to Hendrick by Jones’s widow, Gloria Mosolino Jones.

Grants

• The Association of Research Libraries hasreceived a grant of $65,000 from the Andrew M. Mellon Foundation to support the ARL Statistics Database Development Program. The program is designed to refine and enhance the ARL database in order to extend the current data available on the ARL libraries. This project will make reliable data available to library managers and researchers in an easily-used format with documentation. It will allow a more thorough analysis of the development of ARL libraries and time studies for various data elements. In addition, new elements will be defined in the critical areas of automation and performance measures.

• The Boston Public Library and the Handel& Hayden Society have received a $4,000 matching grant from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities to microfilm the Handel & Hayden archives. The two-year grant will underwrite approximately half the cost of microfilming Handel & Hayden concerts programs and scrapbooks containing clippings from 1815 to 1989. Two sets of positive microfilms will be created with one being kept at the Boston Public Library and the other at the Handel & Hayden Society’s office.

• The Commission on Preservation and Accesshas received a three-year pledge of $5,000 a year from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri. The Commission was founded in 1986 by a coalition of institutions and became a non-profit organization in 1988. Its goals are to foster, develop, and support systematic, nationwide collaboration of library preservation efforts, and to provide equitable access to that information. The organization is an outgrowth of a national strategy planned by the Council on Library Resources, an organization created to put emerging technologies to use for the improvement and expansion of library services. A major thrust of the Commission is the establishment of a nationwide, collaborative, large-scale microfilming program to capture the intellectual contents of brittle books in a new master copy format and to create a central distribution service to provide equitable access to these preserved materials. As one of 26 universities throughout the United States to sponsor the Commission’s activities, Washington University will contribute financially to the organization’s projects and programs as well as participate in discussions regarding preservation priorities for the higher education community. Other institutions of higher education in the Midwest that are assisting in the Commission’s programs include Indiana University, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and Ohio State University. In addition, the Commission is receiving funding assistance from the Hewlett Corporation, the Council on Library Resources, and the Mellon Foundation.

• D’Youvillc College, Buffalo, New York, has been awarded a $65,300 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to begin the computerization of the library’s catalog system. The award, under the College Library Technology and Cooperation Grant Program, was one of 28 nationwide and will extend for a 3-year period. The program is designed to encourage the sharing of resources among college libraries through the use of computer technology and networking. The grant will cover the cost of the transfer of all files for existing holdings and future acquisitions onto computer records. The grant will also allow D’Youville to join the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). D’Youville will provide 64% of the funds needed to complete the library project.

• The Illinois Library Computer Systems Organizationhas been awarded a $108,673 combination grant by the U.S. Department of Education under the auspices of the College Library Technology and Cooperation Grants Program (Higher Education Act, Title II-D). This grant will be used to expand and enhance the interlibrary loan resource sharing network in Illinois. When fully implemented, the project will enable 2,500 Illinois libraries of all types to initiate interlibrary loan transactions against the nearly 5 million bibliographic records in the ILLINET Online database. These libraries will be able to access the database through dial access nodes placed in 11 metropolitan areas across the state.

• The North Carolina State University Li-braries and the National Agricultural Library (NAL) have received a joint grant, totalling $57,000, from the United States Department of Agriculture. The funding will support a demonstration project that tests the technical feasibility and administrative structures necessary to capture, transmit, and receive machine-readable page images at remote sites through SURAnet, part of the international research Internet. The NAL and the NCSU Libraries will establish a telecommunications link through the Internet which will enable NAL to transmit digitized page images of requested material to NCSU. As part of the sixmonth demonstration project, the images will be distributed to computers on the NCSU campus, one at the library and another at an agricultural research area. The project will test not only longrange transmission of images but ways to distribute them within a campus network.

• Saginaw Valley State University has received a $353,111 matching grant from the Harvey Randall Wickes Foundation. Secured on behalf of the Valley Library Consortium to expand its membership from its current three members to seventeen public, special, and academic libraries in the central Michigan area and to replace its existing automated circulation system. Project costs, which total an estimated $1,067,570, including the Wickes grant and $714,059 in matching funds, are directed toward the development of a joint automated library system.

• United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio,has received a $69,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, of Jacksonville, Florida. The major portion of the grant will provide for the computerization of United’s 31,000 bibliographic records not currently on computer and reclassify materials from the Dewey Decimal to the Library of Congress classification system. Once this is completed, the library will have all of its 85,000 bibliographic records, representing over 114,000 volumes, on the OCLC database. Included in the conversion will be materials relating to the history and work of the former Evangelical United Brethren Church that had its national headquarters in Dayton for many years. The remaining part of the grant will fund the planning and design of an online catalog with the unique feature of a Theological Resources Component. This will provide for the indexing of media, bibliographic materials, and curricular and human resources.

• The University at Albany, State University of New York,has received a $37,500 grant from the state of New York in support of the ongoing Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., Labor History Project. The funds enable the University to complete restoration of the records of several important Schenectady labor organizations, including the Schenectady Area Central Labor Council, the Schenectady Federation of Teachers, and IUE Local 301 (International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine, and Furniture Workers). These historical records date from the early decades of this century almost to the present and include meeting minutes, publications, and other files that help tell the story of American organized labor in the 20th century— union organizing, negotiations, strikes, political activism, and other activities. These records will be organized, cataloged, and microfilmed at the University for use there by researchers interested in the labor and industrial history of the “Electric City.” As part of the project, the University will survey hundreds of labor organizations in Schenectady and elsewhere in the Capital District by June 1990.

• The University of Illinois Library, Urbana-Champaign, has received a gift of more than $1 million from the estate of George F. and Edna Brown Titus of Falls Church, Virginia, to help meet the $3 million goal of the National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant. The money will provide support for the humanities collections.

• The University of North Carolina at Chapel

Hillhas received a $153,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant to preserve manuscripts in the Southern Historical Collection. The University could receive an additional $25,000 from the NEH’s Office of Preservation if it matches that amount through its own fund-raising efforts. The Southern Historical Collection, founded in 1929, holds diaries, letters, business records, photographs, oral histories, and other material documenting the South from the 18th century to the present. Its more than 11 million items make it the largest component of the Manuscripts Department, which also includes the University Archives, the Southern Folklife Collection, and general and literary manuscripts.

• The University of Southern California'sSchool of Business Administration has received a pledge of $250,000 from Albert and Lily Quon. The gift will support the construction of the school’s new state-of-the-art electronic library. The 100,000-square foot library, part of a new building estimated to cost $20 million, will function as the central learning laboratory for the School of Business Administration. The library will provide a place where students can interact with professors and trained staff to acquire hands-on knowledge of how to use today’s most advanced technology to solve business problems.

• The University of Waterloo has beenawarded a grant of $4,000 from the Waterloo Regional Heritage Foundation to translate the German language portions of the diaries of Louis Jacob Breithaupt (1855-1939). The diaries are a part of the Breithaupt Hewetson Clark Collection, donated to the library by the family of H. Spencer Clark (1903-1986) and Rosa Breithaupt Clark (1888-1981) in 1988. Louis Jacob Breithaupt was a local industrialist and former mayor of Kitchener. In his diaries written from 1867 to 1929, Breithaupt documented both his family’s social and business life and many local events: the dramatic Freidenfest of 1871 celebrating the end of the Franco- Prussian War; the transport of local troops to the Northwest Rebellion; and the extreme reactions in the German community during the tumultuous period of World War I. Since he was writing with no particular audience in mind, these diaries present a unique picture of 19thand early 20th-century life not only in the Waterloo region, but also in Ontario and Canada.

News notes

• The Association for Library and Informa- tion Science Education(ALISE), Sarasota, Florida, has announced appointment of a special committee to study the state of affairs of including ethnic and multicultural content in curricula for library and information science education. The Committee is charged with preparing a report on the following: 1) the extent of inclusion of ethnic and multicultural concerns in library and information science curriculum of ALISE member schools; 2) prepare a response to the “Report on Ethnic and Minority Concerns in Library Education” prepared by EMIERT; 3) explore the possibility of establishing a SIG for ethnic and multicultural concerns in the library and information science curriculum. Members of the ALISE Committee are: E. J. Josey, Chair, University of Pittsburgh; Benjamin Speller, North Carolina Central University; Kathleen Heim, Louisiana State University; Spencer Shaw, Retired, University of Washington; and representatives from the ALA Black Caucus, Asian/Pacific Librarians, REFORMA and EMIERT.

• The Association of Research Libraries hasadopted a set of Guidelines for Bibliographic Records for Preservation Microform Masters (Books), which balances the cost of record creation with the need for reasonable access. The guidelines are intended to provide mutually acceptable rules for record fullness and consistency. More information is available from: Association of Research Libraries, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 20036.

• The Council on Library Resources, Wash-ington, D.C., invites applications for the CLR Fellows Program of competitive research grants for librarians. The program offers financial support for professional staff members of academic, research, and public libraries who wish to undertake research, conduct analytical studies pertinent to library operations and services, or pursue other professional projects of importance. Possible research areas include: library operations, bibliographic systems, user requirements, historical subjects, and information systems. Each candidate must show evidence of institutional support for the CLR Fellowship, including provision of leave with pay for at least a portion of the fellowship period. The awards might include limited salary support (when matched by the employing institution) and direct costs of the research project. Grants may not be used for tuition in any degree’ program, for purchase of equipment, or for indirect costs. Applications are considered three times each year, with deadlines of October 1, December 1, and March 1. For more information, contact: Council on Library Resources, 1785 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Suite 313, Washington, DC, 20036; (202) 483- 7474.

• Idaho State University, Pocatello, has re-cently implemented an innovative staff professional leave program—in effect, a sabbatical for non-faculty employees. The first award has gone to Phyllis J. Brown, head of the Acquisitions Department of the Eli M. Oboler Library. She will be released from her regular duties for 25% time, January through June 1990, to develop an index to art books.

• The Modem Language Association, New York City, and Indiana University, Bloomington, have initiated a project to provide an academic home base for one section of the MLA International Bibliography. The MLA/IU Cooperative Bibliography Project in Folklore is intended to improve coverage of folklore scholarship in the MLA Bibliography, already considered one of the primary research tools in folklore, by creating a central office and team of subject specialists working within the Folklore Collection at the IU Library, the largest collection of its kind in North America. The MLA Bibliography is a subject index to books and articles published on modem languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is compiled by the staff of the Modern Language Association in New York City with the cooperation of more than two hundred contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad.

• Pace University has named its library in theCivic Center campus in Manhattan in honor of Henry Birnbaum, who has served as Pace’s chief librarian for 28 years. The four Pace University libraries house 850,000 volumes and are located in Manhattan and at Pace’s Westchester County campuses in Pleasantville/Briarcliff and White Plains. They serve more than 24,000 students and a faculty of 1,500.

• Texas Tech University Library, Lubbock,has opened The Vietnam Archive, a unit of the Special Collections area. The purpose of the Archive is to collect, house, and preserve information related to the American experience in Vietnam, with special emphasis on the experiences of people of Texas and the Southwest. Published material collected for the Archive will comprise items in all formats pertaining to the Vietnam War, including military, civilian, economic, social and domestic opposition, and including literature, music, and poetry. Non-print material collected will include diaries, letters, photographs, maps, sound recordings, film and video, oral history, scrapbooks, and albums.