ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• At an informal dedication ceremony held October 26 in the Henry and Doris Dreyfuss Study Center of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, the American Society of Interior Designers donated its complete library to augment the Coopeb-Hewitt Museum Design Library.

In accepting the gift, Lisa Taylor, director of the Cooper-Hewitt, said, “It’s fitting that this initial gift of books to the museum in its new home comes from the most important organization for the design profession. We hope this contribution will serve as an inspiration to others who might expand the invaluable resources that have already proven so helpful as a center of research and study in interior design.”

“Only through cooperative efforts with the Cooper-Hewitt will there be a national design resource that will be available to people across the country,” noted Norman DeHaan, chairman of the ASID Educational Foundation. “Our commitment to this goal is such that we will continue to support the venture with an annual grant of $6,500 to help defray the expenses of maintaining a library and to assist in preparing a national interior design bibliography.”

DeHaan reported that the foundation had explored numerous alternate possibilities of having a current bibliography and a national design library, and the ASID National Board of Directors had selected this approach as the most viable and effective.

• The papers of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1839-1937), comprising 800,000 items, have been given by his grandsons to the Rockefeller Archive Center of Rockefeller University and are now available for study by qualified scholars. They include financial records, correspondence, and scrapbooks of press clippings covering personal, business, and philanthropic

The Rockefeller Archive Center, which is located in Pocantico Hills, New York, is administered by the university. In addition to the university’s archives, it contains the archives of The Rockefeller Foundation, from 1913 to 1941; the General Education Board, from 1903 to 1955; the Bureau of Social Hygiene, from 1911 to 1939; and the papers of several related organizations.

• The library of the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies recently received a gift of more than 200 Canadian books from the government of Canada. Most of these books deal with French-Canadian literature, arts, history, and social sciences. On the occasion of the formal presentation, the Canadian vice-consul to San Francisco, Dr. François Beaulne, also presented the library with a copy of Canada’s Bicentennial gift to the United States, Between Friends/Entre Amis, a photographic essay of life along the international boundary between the United States and Canada.

• A rare first edition of Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams), one of Sigmund Freud’s major works, was presented to the Library of Congress by the Baltimore- District of Columbia Society and Institute for Psychoanalysis in ceremonies at the library on December 3, 1976.

The gift was made possible through the initiative of Dr. George W. Roark and Dr. Zelda Teplitz and the generous contributions of more than 30 other members of the Baltimore-Dis- trict of Columbia Society and Institute for Psychoanalysis. It will be presented to the library as the society’s observance of the American Bicentennial.

The acquisition of this rare book will be an important addition to LC’s distinguished holdings of Freud manuscripts, books, and volumes from his library.

The Freud collection is one of the library’s more important holdings in the behavioral sciences. Begun in 1951, the Sigmund Freud Collection now includes Freud’s papers, including the holograph manuscripts of his books and articles; his incoming and family correspondence; numerous letters from Freud to other persons (1872-1939), including series of letters to other important psychiatrists, e.g., Carl Jung; and a large collection of biographical and miscellaneous items about Freud.

• The following manuscript collections have been processed for use by Brown University Library.

Two letterpress books of John Hay, American diplomat and man of letters, have joined a similar book (1869-70) previously available. One covers the period 1865-67, when he served as secretary of the U.S. legation in Paris. The second records elements of his correspondence as ambassador to Great Britain in 1897-98, immediately before he became secretary of state. A third Hay addition consists of 73 pieces of family business correspondence (1895-1915) pertaining chiefly to real estate investments in Washington, D.C.

Approximately 150 letters by John Buchan, first baron Tweedsmuir, British author and statesman, are now available for research. Buchan’s literary and editorial career between 1907 and 1938 is reflected in this correspondence.

More than a thousand items by and to noted American chemist Walter Nickerson Hill (1846- 84) will be of interest to students of the development of modern explosives. Correspondents include Lammot du Pont, Gen. Henry L. Abbot, Levi P. Morton, Oliver W. Gibbs, John Trowbridge, and John T. Wilder.

GRANTS

• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant of $190,000 to Princeton University toward the support of a four-year program to improve user access to the collections of the university library. Descriptions of the methods used and the results obtained in the program will be shared with other research libraries.

“The Mellon Foundation’s grant to Princeton represents part of a major effort to diminish obstacles between the resources of research libraries and their users,’’ said university librarian Richard W. Boss. “The foundation is supporting the study of allied problems among various library groups as well as within the Princeton Library.” The Mellon Foundation has supplied related grants to the Association of Research Libraries, of which the Princeton University Library is a member; to the Research Libraries Group, which comprises the libraries of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia Universities and the New York Public Library; and to Stanford University, for a cooperative program with the University of California, Berkeley.

The goal of the Princeton Library project is to increase the percentage of the library collection that is readily available, on demand, to the user. Library officials plan to meet this goal through use of the library’s newly installed automated circulation system, which permits the application of modern technology to traditional library maintenance techniques.

The Mellon grant will aid, specifically, computer analysis of the library collection to determine the need for duplication of heavily used books and for removal and outside storage of those rarely used. Statistical analysis will also indicate which areas in the open-stack collection are especially subject to shelving errors; the library will then seek to introduce systematic, possibly electronic, shelf-reading of these problem areas to decrease the number of “lost”

• Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley have announced that they will join in a cooperative program of unprecedented scope. Grants of $300,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and $280,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, both of New York, will provide initial three-year funding for the cooperative effort which is expected to slow rapidly rising library costs.

Stanford and Berkeley together have 8.7 million books in their combined collections. In the past, these have doubled about every 16 years. Cost increases on books and journals have ranged from 15 to 20 percent in recent years, with some forecasts of 30 percent increases in the rest of this decade. “No single research library can acquire all the books it requires to keep up with the complex needs of graduate students and faculty it must serve,” library directors Richard M. Dougherty of Berkeley and David C. Weber of Stanford noted.

Developed jointly through faculty committee and library administrators at both institutions, the program intends to facilitate:

• Coordinated acquisitions policy for books and other materials;

• Direct borrowing privileges for faculty, graduate students, and academic personnel at both institutions;

• Reciprocal lending privileges to eligible users by all campus libraries except undergraduate libraries;

• Intercampus movement of patrons and books, with several trips originating at each campus daily; and

• Expansion of Stanford’s BALLOTS library automation system to Berkeley, with further network services to other northern California institutions.

The end result might be that one institution continues a comprehensive acquisition program in a subfield, while the other reduces its full extent of the same coverage. Stanford has exceptional strength, for example, in art history, business, and 20th-century European and Asian social sciences, where the Hoover Institution has extraordinary resources. Berkeley, on the other hand, has exceptional strength in musicology, classical publications of oriental languages, and canon law. The overall result should enable the two libraries to reallocate at least 5 percent of current annual expenditures for acquisitions at each institution in order to purchase additional titles. In selected fields, the reductions might be greater.

• Students in the University of Southern California’s LiBrary School will have an opportunity to take classes in a nontraditional setting at their own pace because of a grant from the U.S. Office of Education.

The program is called “Library School Educational Program without Walls: Independent Self-Paced Professional Educational Program.”

Under the direction of Martha Boaz, dean of the School of Library Science, library students may take courses on campus, on weekends or in the evenings, at their own rate of

The $44,900 grant from the Research Division of the U.S. Office of Education provides an independent program for those who cannot attend the daily schedule because of other obligations. The program began at USC last year with a grant of $86,000.

• Johnson C. Smith University, Charlotte, N.C., will become the 24th institution to participate in the College Library Program, jointly supported by the Council on Library Resources, Inc. (CLR) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). CLR and NEH will each contribute $25,000 toward the university’s five-year program, while the university will provide $51,160.

Under terms of the award, the university will make basic changes and improvements in its library program so that the library can become “fundamentally a teaching facility of the institution.” A staff member with training in reference work and familiarity with the university’s curricular programs will serve as orientation librarian, working chiefly with the English and history departments to improve library services to students. It is estimated that nearly three-fourths of the student body will have the opportunity to improve their library skills by the end of the program.

CLR initiated the College Library Program in 1969 and with NEH established a fund now totaling $1,600,000 from which matching grants can be made to individual colleges and universities. Copies of new guidelines for the program may be obtained from the Council on Library Resources, Inc., 1 Dupont Circle, Suite 620, Washington, DC 20036. Preliminary proposals were to be submitted to the Council by February 1 for programs to begin during the 1978-79 academic year.

• The Folger Institute of Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Studies at Amherst College has been awarded a three-year grant of $115,400 by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant will support the institute’s lectures, conferences, colloquia, and related administrative expenses through June 1979. An announcement of the award was made by Dr. Richard Ekman, assistant director for higher education projects of the endow-

John Andrews, chairman of the Folger Institute, expressed gratitude for the endowment’s award. “The NEH has provided generous funding for the institute’s activities since its inception in 1970,” observed Dr. Andrews. “We are pleased by the endowment’s continuing assistance, and we trust that this new award will offer the flexibility we need during the next three years as we endeavor to locate other sources of income to develop a more permanent base for the institute’s future.”

In this context, Dr. Andrews noted that the new NEH grant provides no direct support for the institute’s seminars or fellowships, now funded almost entirely through dues contributed by the institute’s eleven university sponsors. “One of the institute’s most urgent needs at present,” Dr. Andrews commented, “is to obtain additional funding (at least $50,000 per year) for these central components of its pro-

• The history of the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) recounted by the people involved will be recorded by the State Historical Socety of Wisconsin in an oral history project funded by a $49,112 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

In a two-year project starting January 1, the society will tape interviews with former and present leaders of the union, which was once the third largest in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

The written records of the TWUA comprise an important collection in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, one of the country’s foremost resources for the study of American labor history. The oral histories will enrich the written documentation with materials not covered in the records which span the entire 40-year period of the union’s existence.

Interviewing will be done by James A. Cavanaugh, society field representative. Barbara Kaiser, head of the Field Services Division, is the director of the project.

MEETINGS

March 11-12: Science fiction will come to the Atlantic provinces at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Weekend events will include a Friday evening speech by author-editor Judith Merril, followed by a rap session between Merril and Spider Robinson, Galaxy’s irreverent reviewer.

On Saturday, Ms. Merril will conduct an all- day workshop on “Learninc to Think S-F.” The workshop will be limited to 35 participants, so serious students of s/f will want to register early. The workshop will focus on the arts of extrapolation and question-asking.

Those not attending the workshop will be able to visit displays of science fiction materials and exchange tables and have an opportunity to meet with people who share s/f interests. Ms. Merril will be available on Saturday afternoon to talk informally with interested people.

For further information contact Professor Broderick, School of Library Service, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4H8, (902 ) 424-3656.

March 15: “Collection Building: Problems and Possibilities” is the topic of a one- day conference to be sponsored by the School of Library Science at the University of Iowa. All sessions will be held in the Iowa Memorial

The conference will feature two main speakers. At the morning session, Lolly Eggers, director of the Iowa City Public Library, will speak on “Problems and Possibilities in Building Collections;” at the afternoon session, Mike Phipps, director of the Waterloo Public Library, will speak on "Library Journal vs. Booklist vs. Kir- kus vs. Publishers Weekly vs. Choice as Selection Aids: One Person’s Opinion,” Each talk will be followed by a question-and-discussion period. Following both general sessions, there will be small group sessions focusing on specific subject areas of collection-building.

The registration fee of $14 includes all sessions, materials, luncheon, and morning and afternoon coffee; 0.5 Continuing Education Units will be given. Attendance is limited to 175.

For a program brochure and registration form, write to Ethel Bloesch, School of Library Science, The University of Iowa, 3087 Library, Iowa City, IA 52242.

March 23: Nancy Larrick, award-winning author, editor, and educator in the field of children’s literature, will be honored at Drexel University during a conference on “The Magic of Poetry,” cosponsored by Drexel’s Graduate School of Library Science and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Poet Myra Cohn Livingston will be keynote speaker. A luncheon and workshops led by poets and anthologists of poetry will round out the day’s proceedings at Creese Student Center, 32nd and Chestnut streets.

The day’s agenda will begin with registration at 8:45 a.m. and close at 3:30 p.m. Descriptive literature and registration forms are available by writing: Director, Continuing Professional Education, Drexel University, 32nd and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19104, (215) 895-2154.

March 27-30: Critical Evaluation of Quantitative Methods for Library Management. This unit will focus on evaluation of quantitative methods. Attendance at Unit I (November 19-20, 1976) is not required for participation at Unit II. Fee $65. Contact: Timothy W. Sineath, Coordinator of Continuing Education, School of Library Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115.

March 29-30: An institute on the Evaluation of On-Line Data Bases will be held at Simmons College, School of Library Science. It is intended for professionals with a basic functional understanding of on-line data bases to gain further knowledge on the evaluative aspects of these data bases. Fee: $50. Contact: Timothy W. Sineath, Coordinator of Continuing Education, School of Library Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115.

April 1-2, 15-16: A Workshop in Public Relations for Library and Information Service will introduce librarians to the principles and procedures of the management function of public relations as it is successfully practiced by corporate and nonprofit organizations. Contact: Timothy W. Sineath, Coordinator of Continuing Education, School of Library Science, Simmons College, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115.

April 15: The Indiana Library Association College and University Roundtable spring meeting will he held at Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

April 19-22: The Office of University Library Management Studies of the Association of Research Libraries is sponsoring a Library Management Skills Institute at the Breckenridge Inn at Kansas City, Missouri. The institute is designed for supervisory and managerial staff in academic libraries and will utilize a laboratory approach in which learning results from the interactions of participants among themselves, as well as with the trainers. The discussion and application process will in- cude consideration of motivational forces in the library context, problem-solving techniques, group leadership requirements, interpersonal behavior, and group dynamics.

The members of the institute staff are: Dr. William B. Eddy, professor and director of public administration at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, and Duane E. Webster, director, and Jeffrey J. Gardner, management research specialist, from the Office of University Library Management Studies. The institute fee, including all lunches, is $200. Enrollment information is available from: Duane Webster or Jeffrey Gardner, Association of Research Libraries, Office of University Library Management Studies, 1527 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20036, (202 ) 232- 8656.

May 12-13: Project LOEX, the national academic library clearinghouse located at Eastern Michigan University’s Center of Educational Resources, is planning the seventh annual Conference on Library Orientation for Academic Libraries to be held on the Eastern Michigan University campus, Ypsilanti. The program will include speakers, discussions, and working sessions and will be titled “Putting Instruction in Its Place: In the Library and in the Library School.”

Librarians, administrators, faculty, and students are invited. Registration will be limited to 150 persons. For further information, write to Carolyn Kirkendall, Director, Project LOEX, Center of Educational Resources, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.

May 17-20: Dallas, Texas, will host the National Micrographics Association’s Annual Conference and Exposition at the Dallas Convention Center. For information contact: NMA, 8728 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20910, (301) 587-8444.

June 3-4: Pulitzer Prize-winner Dr. N. Scott Momaday of Stanford University will be the keynote speaker at a symposium, “Research, the Creative Process and Children’s Literature,” at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Momaday, author of On the Way to Rainy Mountain and House Made of Dawn, will discuss transmission of cultural heritage through language.

The symposium will explore the relationship between the creative process and children’s literature and the role of research in that process. Featured on the program will be scholars from the fields of cultural anthropology, linguistics, and children’s literature, special collections librarians, and artists who create for children.

The symposium is sponsored by the University of Washington School of Librarianship, with the cooperation of the Committee on National Planning for Special Collections and the Children’s Services Division, American Library Association. Registration fee is $90.

For further information about the conference, contact the Office of Short Courses and Conferences, Lewis Hall DW-50, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, (206) 543- 5280.

June 12-17: The University of Florida at Gainesville will be the site of the twenty-second Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials.

The theme of the seminar will be “The Multifaceted Role of the Latin American Subject Specialist.” A series of workshops, panels, and round tables will examine the multiple and diverse activities engaged in by present-day subject or area specialists. These activities range from the selection of library materials in all formats through the technical procedures involved in acquiring the material and making it available to the public to the provision of reference service and classroom instruction.

See the January C&RL News for more information.

June 14-17: The 1977 annual Rare Books and Manuscripts Preconference, sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), will be held at the Park Plaza Hotel in Toronto. The preconference theme is 19th-century books, and the tentative title is “Book Selling and Book Buying: Aspects of the 19th-century British and North American Book

Speakers will include Simon Nowell-Smith, Stuart Schimmel, Robert Nikirk, Terry Belanger, Douglas Lochhead, Franklin Gilliam, Judith St. John, and Robert Stacey. Institutions that will exhibit at the preconference are the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library of the University of Toronto, Massey College, the Osborn Collection of the Toronto Public Library, and Victoria College. Additional information on the preconference will be available after March 15 from the Executive Secretary, ACRL, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.

June 27-July 20: “Copyright and the Library,” University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Speaker: Dr. William Z. Zasri, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences. Contact: Library School Office, 329 Library, University of Illinois-UC, Urbana, IL 61801.

July 3-8: The 9th Brazilian Congress of Library Science and Documentation jointly with the 5th Rio-Crandense Meeting, both sponsored by the Librarian Association of Rio Grande do Sul (ARB), will be held at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil. The central theme will be “Integration of Information Systems Viewing National Development.” Further details and application forms may be obtained from Bibliote- ca Central, UFRGS, Av. Paulo Gama, S/N, 90.000—Porto Alegre—RS, Brazil.

Aug. 29-Sept. 3: The IFLA/UNESCO Pre-Session Seminar, to be held at Antwerp University, will deal with “Resource Sharing of Libraries in Developing Countries.”

The seminar is linked to IFLA’s 50th Anniversary Meeting (Brussels, 3-10 September) and to the UNESCO Conference on Universal Bibliographical Control (starting in Paris on September 12).

Subthemes to be discussed are cooperative acquisition plans, processing centers, cooperative storage, cooperative delivery, library networking. Participants prepare a paper on the seminar theme. Each lecture is followed by a discussion. Preprints of the papers will be circulated before the seminar.

The Pre-Session Seminar will take place at the Library of the Universitaire Instelling Antwerpen (UIA). Founded in 1972, UIA is Belgium’s youngest university institution; it provides for graduate studies. Participation forms may be obtained at the following address; Antwerp University Library, c/o Pre- Session Seminar, P.B. 13, B-2610, Wilrijk, Bel-

MISCELLANY

• More than 1,000 librarians from 14 states gathered in Albuquerque, November 11-13, for the first joint conference of the Southwestern Library Association and the Mountain Plains Library Association. At the opening general session, the conference was dedicated to the late Allie Beth Martin, former president of the American Library Association and of the Southwestern Library Association^

The conference theme, “The Net Worth of Networking,” was explored in more than 20 programs and meetings. General session speakers included Alphonse Trezza, executive director, National Commission on Libraries and Information Science; Clara Jones, president, ALA; and Roderick Swartz, Washington state librarian.

Forty librarians participated in an SWLA- sponsored postconference tour of libraries in Mexico City, November 13-20.

• The Norris Medical Library on the Health Sciences Campus of the University of Southern California has joined with the USC- based Western Research Application Center of NASA (WESRAC) to expand computer-assisted search services for USC faculty, students, and staff. Services are also available to off-campus users, including hospitals, academic institutions, business, and industry. Operating at different locations but joining together as the University Computer-Assisted Search Services (UCASS), Norris and WESRAC are searching more than 50 data bases in a wide variety of subject areas. The Norris Medical Library staff has primary responsibility for searching the biological and life science data bases, while WESRAC concentrates on those for the physical sciences, engineering, and technology. For further information write to: Nelson J. Gilman, Director of Libraries, Norris Medical Library, Health Sciences Campus, University of Southern California, 2025 Zonal Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90033.

• Approximately 130 people attended a November 9 ceremony held in Auditorium II to formally dedicate the library of Point Park College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the late Dr. Helen-Jean Moore.

Dr. Moore was director of the library from the time she came to Point Park in 1962 until her death in the spring of 1976. She was also an English professor and one of the original incorporators of the Pittsburgh Regional Library Association.

Brief remarks honored Dr. Moore’s expertise as a librarian and her deep concern for students, faculty, and friends. She was credited with building the library from around 50 volumes when she arrived to more than 100,000 volumes today. It was pointed out that the Middle States Association, when reviewing the college for accreditation as a four-year college in 1966, was astounded by the library’s well-rounded collection because Point Park was such a young institution. Also recognized were Dr. Moore’s teaching achievements at various colleges in Pittsburgh and one in New Orleans. Lastly, Dr. Moore’s work as a book indexer was praised. It was noted that Dr. Moore indexed more than 15 books for the University of Pittsburgh Press.

• The Library Research Round Table of the American Library Association announces its 1977 Research Competition for two $400 awards and invites entries from all researchers. The deadline for submitting entries is April 1. The LRRT Research Development Committee is conducting and judging the Research Competition, and the decision of the committee will be announced by Gary Purcell, LRRT chairperson, prior to the 1977 Annual Conference of the ALA.

The Research Competition will be conducted in accordance with the following guidelines:

1. All research papers submitted must represent completed research not previously published.

2. All research papers must be related in at least a general way to library and information science. Any research mode is acceptable.

3. Research papers completed in the pursuit of master’s and doctoral studies (e.g., theses, seminar papers, dissertations, etc.) are not eligible for consideration. Research utilizing data which was gathered by a master’s or doctoral student is eligible unless the research report is taken directly from the paper submitted for degree requirements. Papers which are spin-offs of such research are eligible for the competi-

4. Papers generated as a result of a research grant or other sources of funding are eligible for the competition.

5. Research papers prepared by joint investigators are eligible for entry.

6. Research papers will be judged on the following points: (a) definition of the research problem; (b) application of research methods;

(c) clarity of the reporting of the research;

(d) significance of the conclusions as judged by the committee.

7. The committee reserves the right to select no winning papers if, in its judgment, none of the papers is considered satisfactory.

8. Each winner of the competition will receive a $400 award.

9. Winners of the competition will be expected to present their research papers at the LRRT Information Exchange Suite at the Annual Conference of ALA. In the event that the recipient of the award is unable to attend the conference, he may designate an alternate to make the presentation or the presentation may be delayed, with the approval of the committee, until a later conference.

10. After presentation of the report at the LRRT Information Exchange Suite, the LRRT Research Development Committee will assist in promoting the publication of the report.

To enter the 1977 LRRT Research Competition, send three (3) copies of the research report, postmarked no later than April 1, 1977, to: Leslie Morris, Chairman, LRRT Research Development Committee, Xavier University of New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA 70125, (504 ) 486-7411, ext. 317.

• The School of Library and Information Science at the State University of New York at Albany will offer ten one-day workshops in the spring 1977 semester as part of its Continuing Education Program. Two series— one on Computer-Based Bibliographic Searching and the other on the Structure of Individual Data Files—will include lectures, demonstrations, and on-line practice. These are:

Lockheed Dialog System, February 4

SDC Orbit System, February 9

BRS Stairs System, February 11

NTIS (National Technical Information Service), February 18

Sei Search and Soc Sei Search (ISI), March 4

Enviroline/Energyline, March 11

CAIN (NAL), March 18

CIS/American Statistics Index, March 25

For further information on these, contact Robert Burgess (518) 457-8864.

On April 1, Dr. Ryland Hewitt, director of the Capital Area Speech Center, will offer a workshop on improving communication skills: “Librarians as Formal/Informal Communicators.” On April 15, “Documents Librarians and the Political Process” will feature Bernadine B. Hoduski, special library assistant on the staff of the Joint Committee on Printing.

For further information, contact Lucille Whalen, School of Library and Information Science, State University of New York at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany, NY 12222, (518) 457-8575.

• The American Library Association is now funding the ALA Minority Scholarship.

The $3,000 scholarship will be awarded to a worthy student who is also a member of a principal minority group (American Indian, Asian American, Black, Hispanic). The scholarship’s purpose is to allow that student to continue or begin work at the graduate level toward a master’s degree in library science.

Funded by the Xerox Education Group, the first ALA Minority Scholarship will be presented in June 1977. The deadline date for applications is March 1, 1977.

For further information and application materials, contact Margaret Myers, OLPR, American Library Association, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611. ■■