ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Acquisitions

•Amherst College’s Robert Frost Library, Mas- sachusetts, has acquired, with the assistance of the Julia A. Whitney Foundation, the personal papers and library of the late poet, critic, and professor of Russian literature, Yuri Pavlovich Ivask. The archive consists of approximately 5,000 letters, manuscripts, unpublished works, translations, photographs, family memorabilia, and other items. There are also 250 books of Russian emigre poetry published in small editions in Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and Latin America.

•The Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries have acquired a major collection of documentary materials on the Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (1852-1926) and his circle. The gift is a personal collection compiled by George R. Collins, professor of art history at Columbia University from 1946 to 1986, the leading Gaudí scholar in America. Gaudí, a contemporary of Chicago’s Louis Sullivan, is best known for the Church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, begun in 1883 and still in progress. The Collins Archive contains published books, periodicals, photographs, clippings and ephemera, and specially commissioned measured drawings of Gaudí’s works. The contents of the collection to 1973 were published as A Bibliography of Antonio Gaudí and the Catalan Movement 1870-1930.

The libraries at the Institute have also acquired a major collection of platinum photographs of the World’s Columbian Exposition taken by Charles Dudley Arnold (1844-1927), the official exposition photographer. The 703 photographs document in great detail the construction and final appearance of Chicago’s “White City” of 1893. More than half of the photographs provide a chronological record of the construction of the fair’s buildings from clearing the site to opening day, while others focus on the creation of sculptures and architectural ornaments, views of the finished buildings, and views of the fair after it opened on May 1,1893. The photographs are in mint condition.

•Boston University, Massachusetts, has ac-quired the papers of noted educator, author, and civic leader Marianna W. Davis. The papers relate to Davis’ book, Contributions of Black Women to America, a 10-volume series focusing on black women in America from 1776 to 1976. Also included are some papers relating to Davis’ community and education activities.

•The Harvard College Library recently re- ceived a large collection of Israeli memorial publications from Arie Ben-Gurion of the Arkhiyon Hagim Ben-Kibutsi (Interkibbutz Festivals Archive) in Kibbutz Bet Ha-Shitah, Israel. The collection of some 900 items consists chiefly of booklets published in kibbutzim throughout Israel in memory of deceased members. The publications are extremely scarce, since few of them are available through regular trade channels.

•The State University of New York at Albany has acquired the records of the New York State Conservative Party, including extensive subject files, with correspondence and other organizational records kept for the chairmen. The records document the creation, ideological interests, organization, and political campaigns of the party, including those of U.S. Senator James Buckley and his brother William F. Buckley. The collection was donated by the Party itself.

•The University of Texas at Austin has acquired a massive archive covering the 50-year writing career of L. Sprague de Camp, one of the major American authors of modern science fiction and fantasy, and of his wife and frequent collaborator, Catherine Crook de Camp. The collection of archival, manuscript, and printed items covering more than 100 linear feet, contains notes, drafts, various states of originals and carbons with numerous corrections, correspondence, family records, photographs, research and business files, and copies of published works from 1929 to 1980. Among the manuscripts included are those for dozens of stories and numerous books, including The Incomplete Enchanter, Lovecraft: A Biography, and Lest Darkness Fall. The correspondence files include hundreds of letters from authors and editors like Asimov, Campbell, Heinlein, Blish, Bradbury, and Clarke.

•The University of Toledo’s Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections has acquired some 200 feet of archival records from the Libbey- Owens-Ford Corporation of Toledo, Ohio. LOF, now owned by the Pilkington Group of England, was among the largest glass manufacturers in the world and has been instrumental in the development of various glass products for the automobile and construction industries. The archive contains corporate minute books dating back to the 1890s, advertising, scrapbooks, glass memorabilia, and several thousand photographs documenting glass manufacturing processes and architecture using LOF’s products.

•The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has ac- quired a major collection of books by and about American author Willa Cather, including over a hundred first and early editions of Cather’s books as well as a smaller number of first appearances in anthologies. The collection contains a number of issues of the two books for which Cather is perhaps best known: My Antonia (1918) and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Also present is a copy in a very rare dust jacket of Alexander’s Bridge (1912). The collection is the gift of Mary Herron of Idabel, Oklahoma.

Grants

•Albion College, Michigan, has received a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to computerize all facets of its library operations. Albion and seven other private liberal arts colleges are the first recipients of nearly $2 million in grants in a new Excellence in Undergraduate Education program established by the foundation. The library plans to computerize its card catalog, circulation, serials, and book purchasing operations.

•Auburn University, Montgomery, Alabama, has received a $112,577 U.S. Office of Education Title II-C grant to support cataloging of 6,188 titles published in the Confederacy during the Civil War, and 7,000 works published in France during the French Revolution, making these documents more accessible to researchers statewide. The Confederate Imprints include books, religious tracts, published sermons, patriotic sheet music, and Confederate state legislative records. The French Revolutionary Pamphlets, which AU has been subcontracted to catalog, include political, religious, cultural, and financial publications.

•Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, has been awarded a $700,000 NEH challenge grant to support the college’s endowment for library acquisitions to strengthen its collections and programs in the humanities. The grant challenges BC to generate four dollars for each NEH dollar, which will result in $2.8 million in matching funds, and $3.5 million total for the BC library system. A portion of the money will be used to create a Humanities Scholar-in-Residence program for the Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections. The program will feature public lectures and meetings on a regular basis, and will be administered in cooperation with BC’s Irish Studies Program.

•The Carnegie-Mellon University Libraries, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have received a $1.2 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia for a three-year project to develop a state-of-the-art automated library system. The current Library Information System used by CMU provides automated access to the library catalog, the Academic American Encyclopedia, the American Heritage Dictionary, bibliographic databases produced by the Information Access Company, and several local databases. The grant will support the development of LIS II, which will offer several improvements including an expansion of resources and reference materials, the capacity to store and display the full text of a document, a user interface to incorporate the power of personal computers and the campus “Andrew” computer network, better integration with word processors, and the use of cost-saving server computers instead of a central mainframe.

•Columbia University’s Conservation Educa- tion Programs of the School of Library Service have received a $350,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The award provides matching funds for a 1987 NEH grant which aids program operations and student support. It also funds a new faculty position in preservation administration.

•The Health Sciences Libraries Consortium, Philadelphia, has received a $5.5 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts to link the automated systems of sixteen health sciences libraries located throughout Pennsylvania. The project, now in the third year of its five-year plan, represents the largest-scale cooperative venture of this kind ever undertaken and will bring state-of-theart information technology to the desktops of practicing physicians and health research professionals throughout the region. The information resources of the participating libraries will, for the first time, be connected via computer, providing a single comprehensive source of information for medical researchers and health practitioners in the areas of research, education, and clinical practice. The shared systems will support many additional functions including cooperative collection development, joint storage of materials, electronic delivery of full-text information, computer-assisted instruction, and database retrieval.

•The Hispanic Society of America, New York, New York, Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books has been awarded a $24,982 grant from the 1989-90 New York Discretionary Grant Program for Conservation and Preservation of Library Research Materials. The funds will be used for construction of drop-boxes for fifteen manuscript atlases containing 81 portolan charts on vellum, and for cleaning and repair of 12 wall charts, including the 1526 “Map of the World” by Juan Vespucci. The wall charts will then be placed in customdesigned cases that can be used for both storage and display.

•The Louisiana State University Libraries, Ba- ton Rouge, have received a $66,140 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to underwrite part of the cost of the University Records Survey project. The funds will pay salary for two years for a university archivist who will survey the existing records of the university and prepare a record group and series structure for them. The archivist will also devise retention and disposition schedules for university records and prepare a records management manual for the campus.

•The Northwest Regional Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies has received a $325,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for library support at the University of Oregon and the University of Washington. The grant will finance a four-year program to develop special library resources for Southeast Asian studies at the two institutions. UO will use its portion of the grant, $45,000, to purchase library materials and to support faculty and graduate student research. UW will use its share, $280,000, to purchase library materials and equipment, to hire more library staff, and to support faculty and graduate student research. The Consortium is a cooperative venture launched two years ago by UO, UW, and the University of British Columbia. Resources provided through the grant will be shared by other Northwest colleges and, through listings of library materials in national computerized library reference networks, the materials also will be made available to universities across the nation.

•Syracuse University, New York, and the Mu- seum Computer Network, an independent professional membership organization housed in the university, have jointly received a $20,000 grant from the Council on Library Resources to examine the feasibility of using the MARC format for the cataloging of art objects in museums and collections.

•The University of Idah Library, Moscow, has received a $100,000 grant L m West One Bank to help in the creation of autoi. Ted information services. The automated system will allow faculty and students, on and off campus, access to library resources through their computer, making it possible to search and retrieve information before going to the library. Eventually, with greater computer accessibility, branch campuses will be able to use the system.

•The University of Michigan Library, Ann Ar- bor, has received a total of $420,000 in two separate grants from the Henry Luce Foundation to enhance its collection of Southeast Asian materials. The first grant, totaling $100,000 and focusing on Vietnamese holdings, will permit UM to develop a database incorporating the holdings of an eightmember consortium. The database will be used by public and private libraries across the country and will eventually, it is hoped, network with libraries in Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and France. The second grant of $320,000 has been awarded to support UM’s extensive Southeast Asian collection, and will cover staff recruitment, preservation of Thai and Philippine materials, acquisition of materials pertaining to overseas Chinese and Theravada Buddhism, and the acquisition of business, economic, and microfilm collections relating to mainland Southeast Asia as well as a variety of audiovisual collections.

•The University of Southern California, Los Angeles, School of Dentistry has received a donation of $4.4 million, to be divided between the school’s library learning center and its unrestricted funds, from John B. Wilson, a retired San Marino orthodontist, and his wife, Helen L. Wilson. In recognition of their gift, the library learning center will be named in their honor. The Wilson’s gift is the largest single contribution ever made to the School of Dentistry. It will count toward the Campaign for USC, the University’s program to raise $557 million by 1990.

News notes

•The Clemson University Libraries, South Car- olina, announce that the papers of Strom Thurmond, current U.S. senator from South Carolina and former governor of the state, are now open for research. The papers, presently comprising over 2,000 cubic feet of material, document the politician’s life and are an excellent resource for historians. Seven series are currently available for research, along with scrapbooks, photographs, cartoons, and certificates. More series are in the process of being opened.

•The LIBRAS membership, a group of 16 lib- eral arts college libraries in the greater Chicago area, has entered into an agreement with the Suburban Audio Visual Service of LaGrange Park, Illinois, whereby the LIBRAS libraries’ collectively owned videotape and other audio-visual materials will be deposited with SAVS for distribution to other libraries in Illinois. The first materials purchased for deposit at SAVS are the 37 titles in the BBC-produced Shakespeare play series. SAVS will enter each title into its online database. In exchange for the privilege of housing and distributing the LIBRAS materials, SAVS has allowed LIBRAS colleges direct access to its collections.

•The University of Northern Colorado (UNC), Greeley, entered into an agreement in 1988 with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to bring a qualified ethnic minority faculty member to UNC through a scholarship. The guidelines drawn up were that the applicant must be an ethnic minority in the second year of a two-year library science master’s degree program, to be completed before beginning work at UNC, and must be willing to relocate and work in the UNC library system for one year. In return, UNC would grant a scholarship to the student in an amount based on costs of the second year of the two-year degree program. The student chosen for the first scholarship, Jan Squire of Columbia, South Carolina, went to work at UNC in July of 1988 as an assistant professor and has been delighted with her experience. Working half-time in both reference and serials, she is learning much about each, including the Colorado Alliance for Research Libraries online system. Library personnel at UNC are also delighted with the plan’s success and hope to repeat the scholarship in the future.

•The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. signed a Resolution of Cooperation in April that commits the two institutions to sharing the information resources of their libraries. By the terms of the agreement, faculty and researchers at UTK and MMES will have access to the collections of each institution through reciprocal borrowing privileges. Other cooperative projects outlined by the resolution include investigation of delivery systems, exchange of staff expertise, staff development programs, and collection development planning.

•The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has honored Egypt’s first lady, Susan Mubarak, with the University Award for her outstanding leadership in the promotion of libraries and library services for children in Egypt. The award was presented in April in New York City. Mubarak is the founder of the Integrated Care Society for Primary School Children, begun in 1977, which is involved in several aspects of education, health, and social services in more than 17 primary schools. In the area of education, the Society promotes the establishment of school libraries. Another important project under Mubarak’s leadership is the building of the new Bibliotheca Alexandria, to be completed in 1995. The aim of the project is to establish a seat of learning in Alexandria with a public research library as its core.