ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News From the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The University of Notre Dame Library has acquired a significant collection of manuscripts in microfilm from Yugoslavia, according to David E. Sparks, director of university libraries.

The reproductions of medieval and renaissance manuscripts of the Franciscan Library in Dubrovnik and of the Metropolitan Cathedral Library of Zagreb were acquired for the library by Dr. Astrik L. Gabriel, director of the Frank M. Folsom Ambrosiana Microfilm and Photographic Collection.

“The collection is of important scholarly interest not only to the social and cultural history of Central Europe, but also to that of Europe in general,” Sparks noted. The Croatian materials augment microfilm manuscripts already in the Folsom Collection, which houses the entire manuscript collection of Milan’s Ambrosiana Library. Interested scholars will have access to the manuscripts through interlibrary loan.

• Carl Sandburg, the great midwestern American poet, is the subject of an extensive collection given to the California State University, Northridge Libraries by Northridge book collector Carl Haverlin. Many of the works were personally autographed to Haverlin, who was a longtime friend of the poet. Both men were collectors on the life of Abraham Lincoln, whose life is the subject of Sandburg’s two-volume epic biography, Abraham Lincoln, The Prairie Years and Abraham Lincoln, The War Years. First editions of many other Sandburg works are included in the Haverlin collection. There are probably only six copies available of one of the first editions in the collection—a copy of The Prairie Years in which a misprint occurs.

• The Miami University Library, Oxford, Ohio, has acquired more than 800 books and letters by William Dean Howells (1837-1920), a native of Ohio and American man of letters. The collections were from the private libraries of William Merriam Gibson, a noted Howells’ scholar, and Robert B. Sinclair, late Miami University professor. The collections include numerous editions of the 200 books written and edited by Howells, and more than 100 letters.

• The University of Calgary Library has just acquired the extensive personal papers, manuscripts, etc., of Brian Moore. Though Moore lives in California, he is a Canadian citizen, and his papers join those of Hugh MacLennan, Mordecai Richler, W. O. Mitchell, and others to make the unique collection on contemporary Canadian authors. Dr. Kenneth M. Glazier, chief librarian, who acquired the papers for the library, quotes the July 14 issue of Time in its review of Moore’s new novel The Great Victorian Collection: "The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne and Catholics placed Moore in the front rank of contemporary writers.”

• The Lihrary of Congress has acquired the personal papers of Alexander Graham Bell, numbering 130,000 items and including a series of laboratory notebooks describing experiments which led to development of the telephone and other products of Bell’s inventive genius. Associated with Bell’s personal papers is a unique photographic archive, largely the work of Bell’s son-in-law, Gilbert H. Grosvenor, documenting pictorially the life and activities of Bell and his descendants.

GRANTS

• The National Endowment for the Humanities and the Council on Library Resources have awarded a grant of $237,200 for fiscal year 1976 to the National Serials Data Program (NSDP) of the Lihrary of Congress to speed the development of a “National Serials Data Base in the Humanities in Machine-Readable Form.”

The goal of this project is to accelerate the availability, in machine-readable form, of the records of serial publications in the humanities as part of the CONSER (CONversion of SERials Records) project. This grant is similar to one from the National Science Foundation for a parallel effort, now in progress, which concentrates on serials in science and technology.

The grant will support an expanded staff at the Library of Congress to review, revise, and authenticate the bibliographic records of serials in the humanities already being contributed by the participants in the CONSER project. National and international standards, both formal and de facto, will be followed. Examples of these are: Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, International Standard Serial Number, and the Guidelines for the International Serials Data System.

Benefits will be derived by the library community in general; by publishers, abstracting and indexing services; and by all other members of the U.S. information communities who are involved in the processing of and providing reference services for serials.

The principal investigator of this project is Joseph W. Price, assistant chief of the Library of Congress’ Serials Record Division; associate principal investigator is Mary E. Sauer, head of the NSDP section in the same division.

• Case Western Reserve University Libraries have received a grant from the Cleveland Foundation for $27,976 for cataloging of the Ernest J. Bohn Housing and Planning Library.

The grant includes provision for a professional librarian to catalog the collection of 50,000 volumes which are presently located in the special collections area of the University Libraries. The grant will cover a two-year period.

The Bohn Library, which is increasing at the rate of 3,000 items per year, was formed and donated to the libraries by Ernest J. Bohn in connection with his own pioneering efforts in public housing and planning in the Ohio and Cleveland area.

Once organized for public use, the Bohn Library will be a major research facility to people now active in the fields of housing, planning, development, public administration, and the aged, in addition to its great historical importance.

MEETINGS

November 6-7: The Rhode Island Library Association will hold its annual conference at the Sheraton-Islander Hotel, Newport, Rhode Island.

November 9-12: Classification Systems. The University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science will hold a four-day institute at Allerton Park, the university’s conference center near Monticello, Illinois, about twentyfive miles southwest of Champaign-Urbana. The institute for 1975, the twenty-first in the series, is scheduled to be on “Major Classification Systems.”

A brochure describing the program in detail is available. Individuals interested in receiving the brochure and registration information should write to Mr. Brandt W. Pryor, Institute Supervisor, 116 Illini Hall, Champaign, IL 61820. See the June C&RL News for further details.

November 12-14: Media and Messages, a workshop planned to acquaint academic orientation/instruction librarians with techniques used in the design and production of instruction of materials: slide/tape, transparencies, and videotape, will be held at the Undergraduate Library, University of Michigan. For registration materials and program information contact: Department of Conferences and Institutes, Extension Service, University of Michigan, 350 S. Thayer St., Ann Arbor, MI 48104.

November 14: The Eastern New York Chapter of ACRL will hold a one-day conference at the State University of New York at Albany. The general theme will focus on retrenchment in higher education and its implications for libraries. For details contact Elaine Miller, University Libraries, SUNY at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12222.

November 20: The Middle East Librarians’ Association (MELA) will hold its fourth annual meeting at the Galt House Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. The program, coordinated by Vice-President Richard S. Cooper (Univ. of California—Berkeley), will be devoted to discussion and implementation of the proposals resulting from the first two sessions of the Workshop on Cooperation among Middle East Libraries in North America, which were held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 1974, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, in May 1975. Further details and the proceedings of the first two sessions are available from Martha Dukas, Secretary-Treasurer of MELA, Middle Eastern Department, Harvard College Library, Cambridge, MA 02138. For information about the MESA meeting please write to the MESA Headquarters and Secretariat, 50 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10003.

January 14-16: A U.N. Training Session for U.N. Documents will be held in New York City at U.N. Headquarters under the auspices of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the Dag Hammarskjold Library. For further information contact Mina Pease, Chairperson, IDTF Working Group on Workshops, 551 Warren Blvd., Garden City South, NY 11530.

February 16-20: OCLC Workshop. The Kent State University Library announces a fiveday intensive workshop on OCLC. Planned chiefly for middle management and systems personnel in institutions about to begin network participation, it will also be of interest to librarians and library school faculty concerned with networks and with interinstitutional bibliographic control.

Each participant will be guaranteed individualized hours working on-line. Resource people in a number of remote locations will be available as consultants and lecturers, via the university’s telelecture capabilities.

Topics will include: “The OCLC System”; “The MARC Format” (as the system’s bibliographic medium); “The OCLC Terminal” (operation, possibilities, limitations, printing attachments); “In-House Procedures” (work flow adaptations, management implications); and “Teaching Methods” (sharing this complex of information with others).

For maximum personalization, the group will be limited to thirty registrants. Special consideration will be given to individuals in libraries whose “on-line” date is imminent.

For further information contact: Anne Marie Allison, Ass’t. Prof., Library Admin., University Libraries, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242.

March 23-25: ASLIB in association with six European organizations will conduct EURIM 2, a conference on the application of research in information services and libraries at RAI International Congrescentrum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Further information is available from Conference Organiser, ASLIB, 3 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PL, England.

April 25-28: The thirteenth annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing will be conducted by the Graduate School of Library Science, University of Illinois, at the Illini Union on the Urbana campus. The theme of this clinic will be “The Economics of Library Automation.”

In an era of double-digit inflation and reduced budgets, libraries are being forced to examine automation costs very carefully. Can an automated system be less expensive than the manual system it replaces? Are there objective measures of the dollar value of improved service? When can a library justify independent

development of a computer system? Papers at the 1976 clinic will attempt to answer these questions and to describe the economics of specific library applications.

J. L. Divilbiss, associate professor of library science, is chairman of the committee planning the clinic. Further information may be obtained from Mr. Edward Kalb, 116 Illini Hall, University of Illinois, Champaign, IL 61820. The complete program of the clinic will be available by November 1975.

June 21-25: The American Theological Library Association will hold its thirtieth annual conference at the Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Further information may be secured from: The Reverend Erich R. W. Schultz, University Librarian, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 2C5.

MISCELLANY

• Representatives of a forty-member planning committee met June 24 in Arlington, Virginia and decided to form the Association of Public Data Users. The primary goal of the association will be to save members money in the acquisition and use of public data on computer tape. The basic approach will be through pooled purchases and through collective representation to funding agencies and federal data producers.

Association members will maintain a central directory of the public data on computer tape held by each member to facilitate sharing and exchange of data sets between members. Future activities will include creation of software for public data use suitable for all members’ data applications.

The association is expected to appeal to organizations in the business, academic, government, and research communities who rely on public data produced by the federal government and made available on computer tape. Max Williams, chairman of the Executive Committee, notes that “data from the 1972-73 Consumer Expenditure Survey, the Annual Current Population Survey, and the Annual Housing Survey are of special importance. In addition, there is a growing interest in small area intercensal estimates.” Williams pointed out that a pilot program carried out for use of the 1970 Census on computer tape saved participants thousands of dollars. Some saved over $100,000 in data acquisition costs alone. Association of Public Data Users membership is open to any organization. Yearly fees are as low as $200. For further information contact: Linda Morrison, Acting Secretary, Association of Public Data Users, 1815 North Fort Myer Drive, Suite 407, Arlington, VA 22209.

PUBLICATIONS

• “Library Services and the Open University” is the theme of a special issue of the Drexel Library Quarterly. The issue examines the Open University of Great Britain and the nontraditional programs of higher education that it has influenced in the United States. It identifies the impact of such programs on academic and public libraries and on library education.

Guest editors for the issue are Dorothy Bendix and John B. Hall of Drexel University. Articles include: “The Open University of Great Britain: Its Influence on Non traditional Education in the United States,” by Marjorie Amos Fletcher of the American College; “Library Access for Students in Nontraditional Degree Programs,” by Marianne Nolan of Empire State College; “Impact of the Open University on Public Libraries,” by Edwin P. Beckerman of the Free Public Library of Woodbridge, New Jersey; “Implications of the Open University for Changes in Library Education,” by Margaret E. Monroe of the University of Wisconsin. An annotated bibliography of the Open University is also included.

Copies of this special issue, volume 11, no. 2, are available for $4.00 each. ($5.00 outside the U.S. and Canada) from the Drexel Library Quarterly, Graduate School of Library Science, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104; (215) 895-2483.

• Acting Dean Henry Dubester of the College of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, announces the publication of the sixth monograph in the Student Contribution Series—Nonbook Materials: A Bibliography of Recent Publications, edited by Hans Wellisch. This annotated bibliography, compiled by students in Dr. Wellisch’s course on “Nonbook Materials,” covers areas and sources not normally accessible through conventional indexing and abstracting tools. Included are audiorecords; clippings and ephemeral materials; machine-readable data files; maps; motion pictures; pictures, printed music; realia; slides, transparencies, filmstrips; and trade literature. The citations provide reference to bibliographical sources, selection and acquisition, processing, storage and preservation, use and display, equipment, and special problems such as copyright, and others.

Nonbook Materials: A Bibliography of Recent Publications,edited by Hans Wellisch (University of Maryland, College of Library and Information Services, 1975, Student Contribution Series Number 6), is distributed by the Student Supply Store, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, at $5.00 a copy.

• A Library User’s Guide to ERIC, designed as a companion to the card catalog, has just been made available by the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information Resources.

The thirty-one-page booklet is geared for libraries and classrooms to teach readers how to use the nationwide Educational Resources Information Center services and products. Author Robert M. Simmons, librarian at Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts, arranged the booklet to include the following sections: major components of ERIC, searching by topic, searching by author or institution, suggested methods for citing ERIC materials, computerized ERIC searching, a selected bibliography of ERIC materials, and a list of ERIC Clearinghouses.

The booklet guides its reader through the steps required to find information with the ERIC tools, with emphasis on the person who is using an ERIC collection in a university library.

The 51/2-by-81/2-inch format booklet is available for 75¢/single copy, or 50¢/copy for multiple copies from: Box E, School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. Checks must be included with orders and made payable to “Box E.”

Libraries and universities may request a complimentary review copy on letterhead.

The publication also will be available in microfiche and hard copy through the ERIC Document Reproduction Service when its ED number is announced.

• The Kennedy Institute has announced the development of a new current-awareness service for librarians and individual scholars. Each month subscribers to New Titles in Bioethics will receive a list of books, government documents, pamphlets, serial titles, and audiovisual aids acquired during the previous four weeks by the Center for Bioethics Library of the Kennedy Institute.

The field of bioethics considers value questions which arise in the biomedical and behavioral fields. Specific bioethical issues which have recently received national and international attention include euthanasia, psychosurgery, human experimentation, and the allocation of scarce medical resources.

The Bioethics Library, in cooperation with the Information Retrieval Project currently in progress at the institute, seeks to secure a copy of every new document published in the field of bioethics. New Titles in Bioethics will provide a regular, up-to-date survey of the part of that literature which is most difficult to control bibliographically—books and other separate publications.

The cost of this new current-awareness service is $6.00 per year, which covers duplicating and postage. In future years, subscriptions will be on a calendar year basis. For this initial year you are invited to subscribe to New Titles in Bioethics for the last eight months of 1975 at the reduced rate of $3.50. If you wish to receive New Titles in Bioethics, please contact the Center for Bioethics—Kennedy Institute at Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057.

• A revised edition of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division: A Guide to Its Collections and Services is now available.

The forty-two-page guide describes the special collections; maps and atlases, and other materials from the discovery and exploration periods, colonial America, the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the PostRevolutionary period, and the Pre-Civil War period; and Civil War maps, Post-Civil War maps, and the United States official maps and charts. Also included are sections on foreign military; topographic, cadastral, and hydrographic surveys; and information on the division’s organizations and services.

The Guide is available for $1.15 in person from the Information Counter, west entrance of the Library of Congress Main Building, or from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402.

• Native American Library Resources is the short title of a new sixty-eight-page guide to the books, periodicals, newspapers, and New Mexico state and U.S. government documents located in the Eastern New Mexico University Library. With cover design and interior drawings by Native American art student, Harry Mondragon, the volume is unusually attractive and useful. A full listing of Library of Congress subject headings is given in the front section of the volume which is available as long as the supply lasts at $1.00 each from Pearce S. Grove, Library Director, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM 88130.

• The April 1975 issue of Library Trends has now appeared. It is devoted to “Effective Resource Allocation in Library Management,” and was edited by Dr. H. William Axford, librarian of the University of Oregon.

Single copies of this issue are $4.00 each and may be ordered from the University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL 61801.

• A slide/tape program entitled “Selected References and Periodical Sources for History” has just been completed for use in bibliographic instruction at David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee. The program, designed by Mary Grove for use with history classes, consists of 361 color slides synchronized with two cassettes and is planned for two thirty-minute presentations. The program is accompanied by a twenty-one-page annotated bibliography prepared by Josephine Buffington, circulation librarian. Copies of the script and the bibliography may be obtained for $4.00, or for $2.00 each if purchased separately. Orders may be sent to Mary Grove, Reference/Bibliographic Instruction Librarian, Crisman Memorial Library, David Lipscomb College, Nashville, TN 37203. Payment should accompany order.

• Literary Research Newsletter, a quarterly which begins publication in late fall 1975, is now receiving articles, book reviews, and scholarly notes related to methods of literary research of literature in modem languages. Manuscript information: 1,500 words maximum for articles typewritten in the MLA Style Sheet format with footnotes at the end. Send two copies of manuscript and self-addressed stamped envelope to Vincent L. Tollers, Department of English, SUNY College at Brockport, Brockport, NY 14420. Send titles and book reviews to Margaret Patterson, Department of English, 200 Anderson Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611. Send news notes and subscriptions ($4.00 per year) to M. A. O’Donnell, Department of English and World Literature, Manhattan College, Bronx, NY 10471.

• Polar and Cold Regions Library Resources: A Directory was published in May 1975 by the Northern Libraries Colloquy. It lists 153 libraries (in twenty different countries) whose collections deal with the Arctic, the Antarctic, and/or cold regions research. Some of the libraries are actually situated in the North. Complete names, addresses, telephone, and telex numbers are given, as well as a short history and description of the libraries and their resources. Entries run from a few lines to several pages, depending on the size of the library. Three indexes are included: (1) name of library, including translations, acronyms, and former names; (2) personal names; and (3) subject. The directory, compiled and edited by Nora T. Corley, for many years librarian of the Arctic Institute of North America in Montreal, Canada, is available from: Polar Libraries Directory, c/o Mrs. G. A. Cooke, Librarian, Boreal Institute for Northern Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, at a cost of Can. $5.00, including handling and postage (book rate). If first class or air mail is requested, there will be an extra charge for the postage. Checks, money orders, etc., should be made payable to “Polar Libraries Directory, c/o Mrs. G. A. Cooke.”

• The Office of University Library Management Studies of the Association of Research Libraries has issued vol. 3, no. 1, of the ARL Management Supplement. Entitled, “Performance Appraisal in Academic and Research Libraries,” this issue is authored by Larry N. Yarbrough, reference librarian at Northwestern University. It is based on research which was supported by a Council on Library Resources, Inc. Fellowship and carried out during the summer and fall of 1974. Mr. Yarbrough worked with the Office of University Library Management Studies in developing and carrying out his project.

The Supplement discusses various types of performance appraisals, with special emphasis on peer review and appraisal based on performance goals. It traces the history of performance appraisal in academic libraries and indicates apparent trends.

Requests for copies of this Supplement should be sent to the Office of University Library Management Studies, Association of Research Libraries, 1527 New Hampshire Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036. The cost of each Supplement is $2.00, prepaid.

• The California State University, Northridge Libraries has recently published a book entitled, Lynton R. Kistler, Printer-Lithographer. The book contains a description of the books that Kistler has printed during the years from 1927 through 1974.

A limited edition of 150 copies will be available. The book may be purchased at $24.00, in advance, from Norman E. Tanis, Director of University Libraries, California State University, Northridge, 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge, CA 91324. ■ ■