ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

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News from the field

Acquisitions

•Texas Tech University, Lubbock, has received an archive of Turkish oral narrative and other materials from Warren S. Walker, professor in the English Department, and his wife. The archive includes more than 3,000 Turkish-language folktales collected throughout the country over a 26-year period by the Walkers and their collaborator, Prof. Ahmet E. Uysal. Contained on more than 800 seven-inch reels of magnetic tape, the collection is believed to be the largest of its kind anywhere in the world, including Turkey. Also included are reference works and specialized studies on Turkish folklore, folk music, geography, history, economics, art, architecture, drama, religion, sociology, politics, weaving, crafts, costume, cuisine, and travel. The Turkish-language daily newspaper, Hurriyet, the English-language Turkish newspaper, New- Spot, various Turkish and Middle East journal series, and a range of Turkish cultural periodicals supplement the archive, along with filmstrips, slides, videocassettes, and recorded music.

•Texas Wesleyan College, Fort Worth, has acquired an extensive collection of the works of book designer and printer Carl Hertzog. Consisting of 250 items, the collection spans the career of the noted “Printer at the Pass,” and includes correspondence and archival materials collected by the late Henry Ingram.

•The University of Delaware, Newark, has acquired a group of rare and important draft typescripts of early work by novelist Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), which reveal the method of composition by which he achieved his spare, understated writing style. Many of the drafts reflect substantial differences from the published texts. T. Otto Bruce, Hemingway’s companion, driver, and handyman, obtained the materials from Mary Hemingway, the author’s widow, when she was sorting out papers Hemingway had left at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida. Included are more than 80 typewritten pages of The Green Hills of Africa (1935), with interlinear and marginal corrections on 47 pages, many in the hand of Pauline Hemingway, the author’s second wife and the “P.O.M.,” or Poor Old Mama, of the novel. The pages correspond to the missing portion of the typescript contained in the John F. Kennedy Library, believed to be the only one extant. Also included is a unique typescript of Hemingway’s realistic play The Fifth Column, produced by the Theatre Guild, Inc., in New York in 1940. The typescript is entitled “A Play,” and is typed, mostly by the author, on at least two different kinds of paper, with a note at the end reading, “Finished writing Madrid Nov. Finished typeing Nov 23rd 1937.” There are many major differences between this and the version first published in the volume entitled The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938). An early, 28-page draft of one of these stories, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” entitled “The Happy Ending,” contains sentences both deleted and added in the published version. The names of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Malcolm Cowley, and several obscenities, were omitted from the printed text. Also acquired is an early nine-page draft of the autobiographical story “Fathers and Sons,” and the only recorded copies of a draft of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” both included in the collection Winner Take Nothing (1940).

Delaware has also acquired the archives of noted New York editor and publisher Seymour Laurence relating to author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The files cover the period of their working relationship, 1966-1976, and includes fact sheets, contract information sheets, royalty statements, and foreign publication and reprint and movie rights for the titles Laurence controlled. There are also a considerable number of photographs by Vonnegut’s wife, photographer Jill Krementz, and a number of manuscripts, clipping files from a news service, and other ephemera. Vonnegut, author of a number of novels including Slaughterhouse Five (1969), was signed by Laurence to a five-book contract in 1965 while still a relatively unknown writer despite his popularity on college and university campuses.

A third acquisition at Delaware is the archive of contemporary American author Mark Harris, best known for his 1956 baseball novel Bang the Drum Slowly, the second of a trilogy. The corrected manuscript of the novel, together with drafts and production notes and other materials relating to the 1973 film version starring Robert De Niro, are included. Among Harris’ non-fiction works, his controversial biography, Saul Bellow: Drumlin Woodchuck (1980), is represented in typescripts, journal entries containing descriptions of meetings with Bellow, and a series of letters from Bellow to Harris. Other correspondents include Jack Conroy, Richard Ellman, William and Margaret Gibson, Elizabeth Janeway, Harris’ editor A1 Hart, his agent Ad Schulberg (mother of author Budd Schulberg), and many individuals affiliated with the worlds of publishing, theater, and cinema. Contracts for Harris’s 20 books are also included.

• The University of Houston, Texas, has acquiredthe first and second typewritten, corrected drafts of Larry McMurtry’s latest novel, Texasville, together with various essays, introductions, and scripts, as well as a synopsis of his Pulitzer Prizewinning Lonesome Dove, written for a television mini-series.

•The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, hasacquired a collection of popular sheet music, including 4,500 compositions by black musicians and another 1,400 which reflect attitudes toward blacks in America. The collection totals some 22,000 items dating from the period 1900-1950, and includes much material from the Harlem Renaissance era of the 1920s. Included are a vintage edition of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer,” as well as first editions of music by Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Lillian Hardin Armstrong, Fats Waller and Eubie Blake. Also represented are Bert Williams, a star of the Ziegfeld Follies and an accomplished composer, and the brothers James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, who wrote “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the song commonly referred to as the “Negro National Anthem.” The collection also includes multiple editions of George M. Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” revealing that its original title, “You’re a Grand Old Rag,” was quickly changed in a second edition because of public outrage at Cohan’s irreverent word choice. 270 songs by Irving Berlin and more than 100 by George Gershwin are also represented, including a copy of “Swanee” autographed by A1 Jolson. The collection was purchased from Michael Montgomery, a Michigan alumnus and a ragtime and jazz pianist who has collected sheet music for more than 30 years.

•The University of Oregon Library’s SpecialCollections Department, Eugene, has acquired a number of manuscripts of popular western novels by the late Ernest Haycox (1899-1950) from the estate of his widow, Jill Marie. Included are first- draft copies of 24 novels and more than 200 short stories written in the 1930s and 40s. Haycox, whose first stories appeared in pulp magazines of the 1920s, later published in major magazines including the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, and was noted for his strict attention to historically accurate detail. His novel Trouble Shooter became the motion picture “Union Pacific,” and a 1937 short story, Stage to Lordsburg, won critical acclaim as “Stagecoach,” under the direction of John Ford. The recent gift joins Hay cox’s extensive library, donated by his widow more than 20 years ago.

•The University of Rochester, New York, hasacquired the personal and professional papers of author, historian, and educator Jerre Mangione. Mangione, now professor of American literature emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was national coordinating editor of the Federal Writers’ Project of 1937-1939, whose employees included Saul Bellow, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, and Ralph Ellison. He is part of the prominent Rochester family whose members include his nephews, the well-known musicians Chuck and Gap Mangione. Housed in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, the papers include notes, drafts, manuscripts, and pre-publication materials for most of the author’s published works, several file drawers of manuscripts and printed materials relating to the Federal Writers’ Project, correspondence with many well-known writers and other public figures, tapes, photographs, and other memorabilia. Among the correspondents represented are Conrad Aiken, Louise Bogan, Kay Boyle, Kenneth Burke, Frederick Exley, Philip Roth, May Sarton, and many others. The manuscript of Mangione’s best-known work, Mount Allegro (1943), donated years ago to the Rochester Public Library, has been generously transferred to the University in the interest of unifying the collection.

•Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book andManuscript Library has acquired the archive of the The Dial, which, under the direction of its coowner, Scofield Thayer, became one of the most distinguished American literary journals of the 1920s. The Dial papers were originally deposited at Yale in two installments beginning in 1950 by agents for Thayer, whose failing health prevented him from managing his own affairs. Thayer died in 1982, and his heirs had planned to sell the archive at auction in June 1987, upon which Yale agreed to purchase it outright. Edited by Conrad Aiken, Van Wyck Brooks, Randolph Bourne, and Marianne Moore, The Dial became a legendary forum for modernist poetry, art, and writing. Its contributors included almost all the leading literary and artistic figures of the day, including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Sherwood Anderson, Kenneth Burke, e. e. cummings, D. H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell, Bertrand Russell, William Carlos Williams, and W. B. Yeats. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land first appeared in print in the pages of The Dial in 1922. The archive contains original manuscripts and typescripts of articles that appeared in the magazine, including long series of columns and special features by Moore, Pound, Thayer, and Eliot. Of note are poems and essays by Eliot, poems and stories by Lawrence, some of Pound’s early Cantos, poems by Williams, and poems and memoirs by Yeats. Djuna Barnes, John Dewey, E. M. Forster, Maxim Gorki, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Carl Sandburg are represented by shorter files of manuscripts. There are also thousands of letters between the editors and contributors. Additional correspondents represented include Padraic Colum, Charles Demuth, Ernest Hemingway, Gaston Lachaise, Archibald MacLeish, Thornton Wilder, Hermann Hesse, Alfred Stieglitz, and others. The archive also contains financial records and six large scrapbooks of advertising matter, clippings, and other ephemera. It has been augmented by additional materials discovered in Thayer’s hometown of Worcester, Massachusetts, including a substantial file of Pound’s letters, correspondence with Moore, and drawings by cummings. The library plans a major exhibit of the Dial materials this fall.

Grants

•Columbia University’s School of Library Service, New York City, has been awarded three Title II–B fellowships by the U.S. Department of Education. Priority for all three awards will go to members of under-represented groups who are interested in increased opportunities for professional advancement which would otherwise be unavailable to them. The Certificate in Information Management is intended to provide advanced opportunities for study and training for persons who do not not necessarily wish to pursue a research degree. Emphasis in the program will be on attaining a fundamental understanding of the principles of bibliographic control, how it is and will be influenced by new information technology, and the importance of policy as a guiding force. Fellows in the Certificate program will receive full tuition and a stipend of $6,000 for 12 months.

•Dalhousie University’s School of Library and Information Studies, Halifax, Nova Scotia, has been awarded a $42,000 development grant from the university for the strengthening of its facilities and course offerings in the areas of information and computer technology. Funding will be spread over a three-year period. The School plans to purchase several microcomputers and a range of library- specific software, as well as facilities for desktop publishing. Several thesauri, searching manuals for commerical databases, and related publications will be added to the School’s collection. A portion of the grant will also be allocated as “seed” money for an interdisciplinary program in information management within the Faculty of Management Studies and with other relevant university departments.

•Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been awarded $40,000 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., to support cataloging and conservation of the papers of journalist and author Theodore H. White. White, a summa cum laude graduate of 1938, served on the Board of Overseers from 1968 to 1974 and donated his archives to the University last year. He was the China bureau chief of Time magazine from 1939 to 1945, and served later on the staffs of the New Republic, The Reporter, and Colliers. White is probably best known as the author of the widely-read “Making of the President” volumes, the notes for which are included in the archive. The 300 cubic feet of papers will be of interest to researchers in such diverse topics as China during World War II, the postwar reconstruction of Europe, and the development of American television. The archive also includes several boxes of tape-recorded interviews with major political figures of the last two decades.

•Roger Williams College, Bristol, Rhode Island, has received an enhancement grant of $7,163 from the Rhode Island Department of Library Services to acquire the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and produce and distribute an index to selected Rhode Island academic libraries to encourage referral and interlibrary access to this resource.

News notes

•New York University, New York City, has made available a catalog of the titles represented in the Tamiment Institute Library’s “Video Collection on the History of the Labor Movement and Radical Politics in the United States.” The guide, which provides an alphabetical listing and detailed description of the 65 videotapes in the collection, will be a useful tool for researchers and students in the fields of American labor history, radicalism, political science and cinema studies. Tapes include Eugene Debs and the American Movement, Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, Union Maids, and Wobblies. The Library plans to add to its film and video holdings on these subjects in the future.

•The Chinese Rare Book Union Catalog Project, first proposed by Premier Chou Enlai in 1975 in the aftermath of the Great Cultural Revolution, is now in its tenth vear. Under the direction of famed bibliophile Ku T’ing–lung, Director of the Shanghai Library (the country’s second largest after the National Library of China in Beijing), collection of catalog cards commenced in 1980, with more than 40 experts now involved in final authentication and compilation. The definition of a Chinese rare book in the project is set as: “A published work before 1795. All books of Sung (960-1280), Yuan (1280-1368), and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties are automatically considered as rare books. Early Ch’ing dynasty (1644-1911) books from 1644 to 1795 are on a selective basis. Manuscripts or books now existing only in hand-copied volumes are also perceived as rare.” The search for Chinese rare books covers the whole of mainland China. Sources encompass public libraries, university and college libraries, academic institutions, museums, archives, private collections, temples, etc. 782 locales across the nation have made contributions to the catalog, with approximately 20,000 titles and more than 130,000 cards collected. The multivolume catalog will be in five parts: Ching (The Classics), Shih (The Histories), Tzu (The Philosophers), Chi (The Belles-lettres), and Ts’ung (The Collectanea). The catalog, however, will not encompass the large number of rare books brought to Taiwan by the Nationalist government in 1949, nor books in minority languages such as Manchu, Mongol, and Tibetan. In Taiwan, the National Central Library has already produced its catalog of Chinese rare books, with all titles microfilmed and entered into an automated database. ■ ■