ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Young

The University of Arizona Libraryhas received $123,672 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a two-year digital project that will create the Arizona Electronic Atlas. This Web-based interactive state atlas will be accessible to all levels of users. The project will develop a model workflow and methodology that other organizations can use to develop their own Web-based atlases and other products using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies.

The University of Michigan has beenawarded a grant for $860,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support postdoctoral fellowships focusing on the use of the university’s research collections. With the grant, and $140,000 in matching funds from the Office of the University’s Provost, a public goods program that will offer both junior and senior postdoctoral fellowships will be instituted for a four-year term. The fellowships, which are intended for scholars in the fields of the humanities and related social sciences, are expected to attract scholars to the university whose work would be derived from the collections housed on campus. Further information about the application process may be found at http://www.umich.edu/ -provost/publicgoods/.

Cornell University Library (CUL) hasreceived an $830,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to digitize the remaining records in its card catalog and add them to its online catalog. In the 1970s, CUL began converting records from card to machine- readable format, and, since 1983, all records for newly acquired materials have been added to the library’s online catalog. However, more than 276,000 bibliographic records for items in Cornell’s collections, including a large number of humanities and social science titles, exist only on paper cards filed in traditional, heavy wooden cabinets. This means that these titles also have no electronic bibliographic record in national or international databases. CUL will convert all of its card catalog records for titles classified according to the Library of Congress classification system. The project will be completed early in 2005.

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e-mail: ayoung@ala.org.

Acquisitions

Emory University has acquired thepapers of composer and choral director William Levi Dawson. Described as the “Dean of African American Choral Composers,” Dawson is world renowned for his arrangements of Negro spirituals and for his composition of the Negro Folk Symphony, premiered in 1934 by the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. The collection includes the scores and sheet music of other African American composers, with correspondence from John W. Work, William Grant Still, George Washington Carver, Leontyne Price, and Fanny and Ralph Ellison. It also includes hundreds of recordings from African American church, high school, college, and university choirs and a wide array of classical, jazz, blues, and popular music on 78- and 33-rpm phonodisc, as well as reel-to- reel, cassette, and 8-track tape. Dawson’s library included books of music theory and history (most notably a first edition of the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison) and hundreds of scores of classical music. The papers are expected to be open for research early in 2003. ■