ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Young

California State University, Fresnohas received a gift of $1 million from the estate of Arne Nixon, a member of the faculty of the School of Education and Human Development. The largest gift ever recorded for the Henry Madden Library, the money will be used to fund the Endowment for the Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. Nixon’s bequest will be used to hire a curator for the collection, to process and catalogue his collection, and to purchase new books. Two years ago, Nixon gave the library his personal collection of children’s literature, which contains many signed first editions of award-winning children’s books, correspondence from authors, original artwork from illustrators, and hundreds of Newbery and Caldecott award-winning books. The collection has been appraised at $250,000 and contains 20,000 volumes. The Nixon collection is believed to be one of the largest personal collections in the country and one of the finest special collections of children’s literature west of the Mississippi.

The University of Minnesota Librarieshas received a $70,000 U.S. Department of Education grant to offer a week-long institute (July 12-July 18, 1998) for 25 participants in affirmative action library science internship and residency programs in the United States. Participants will be trained in new telecommunication and multimedia technologies and leadership skills, while gaining a community of peers with whom they will develop a support network that will continue through their professional careers. Contact Peggy Johnson, Assistant University Librarian, University of Minnesota Libraries, 499 Wilson Library, 309 19th Ave. So., Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455; phone: (612) 624-2312; e-mail: m-john@tc.umn.edu.

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale(SIUC) Library Affairs has been awarded a $100,000 Illinois Board of Higher Education HECA grant to enhance and expand the Regional Center for Distance Learning and Multimedia Development. The Regional Center is a cooperative activity of Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market and Southwestern Illinois Higher Education Consortium located in the SIUC Morris Library.

State Historical Society of Wisconsin(SHSW) received a more than $403,000 donation from Scott M. Cutlip, former SHSW president and pioneer in the field of public relations. The donation will be used to create an endowment to benefit the SHSW, which is the largest single library in the nation with collections dedicated exclusively to North American history, where Cutlip conducted much of his research on three volumes of public relations history.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, and a variety of community agencies to fund a project entitled “Community-Wide Networking: Building Equity and Participation.” Over the course of the next two years, more than 1,000 low-income households in four targeted neighborhoods will receive free computer equipment (much of which will be donated by local organizations), free computer support, and low-cost or free membership in Prairienet—a community computer network based in Champaign. While the project has several practical and research aspects, its centerpiece is the program that will train 100 low-income teens to repair and distribute donated computers to households in their neighborhoods—and to support the new computer users.

The University of Michigan has beenawarded $250,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop an electronic Middle English Compendium. The project will involve developing three major and interconnected electronic resources, including a computerized version of the print Middle English Dictionary (MED), a HyperBibliography (or electronic bibliography) of the MED, and an associated network of computer-based medieval resources, including a large collection of Middle English texts.

SOLINET received $1 million in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to support a fourth cooperative preservation microfilming project. Planned in conjunction with the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (1890s land-grant institutions), the one-year project will preserve 10,500 deteriorated volumes. Through SOLINET’s Preservation Microfilm Service, 16 libraries and archives will film brittle monograph and serial collections covering aspects of the history and culture of the United States, Brazil, Great Britain, Ireland, Africa, and the West Indies.

The New School for Social Research wasawarded a two-year grant totalling $30,000 by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. This grant will enable the Harry Scherman Library at the Mannes College of Music, a division of the New School located in New York City, to catalog, preserve, and make accessible a large collection of chamber music scores and individual instrumental parts.

Acquisitions

John Buschen has donated nearly1,200 books from his private collection to the University of Wisconsin (UW)-River Falls Chalmer Davee Library. The collection consists of beautifully illustrated books on art history, European history, and the humanities. Buschen has taught histoiy at UW-River Falls since 1966 and art history since 1974.

Several collections from James Michenerwill become the James A. Michener Archives at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). Michener, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1948 and is one of the world’s bestselling authors, earned a master’s degree in education in 1937 from UNC (then known as the Colorado State College of Education) and taught at the university and its Laboratory School from 1936-41. Michener also donated $500,000 for the maintenance of the archives, which will include a Web site and a room with research materials. Some of the materials will come from other institutions as well. Included in the archives will be Michener’s personal papers, music collection, and three unpublished manuscripts; drafts, research materials, and original manuscripts from his novels; and the complete collection of materials (1,600 items) from Michener scholar David Groseclose, author of James A. Michener: A Bibliography. Michener died October 16, 1997.

James A. Michener, 90, at his home in Austin, Texas, last April.

Photo by Bob Daemmrich

Ruth M. Batson, community and civilrights activist, has donated her papers to the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Radcliffe College. Batson has been prominent in the battle against racism, having served as commissioner of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and as founder and director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, a voluntary desegregation program exchanging students between urban and suburban schools. She was also the first female president of the New England Regional Conference of the NAACP. The papers contain photographs, correspondence, speeches, and clippings. ■