ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

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News from the field

Acquisitions

•Bennington College, Vermont, has received more than 2,000 works on theater, including plays, historical studies, critical works, and other texts, from the estate of the late Edward T. Kirby. Kirby, who died in 1985, was a noted playwright and the author of Ur-drama: The Origins of Theater. The collection includes works on Greek and Roman theater; medieval drama; Tudor drama; Chinese, Siamese and Indian drama; and rare volumes on the Japanese Noh theater. There are also a number of important works by important Russian directors, playwrights and drama theorists as well as authoritative histories and reference works. Among notable foreign works is Les voies de la creation theatrale, a survey of plays, theatrical essays and photographs edited by Denis Bablet.

•The University of Illinois at Chicago has receivedthe archives of the annual International Design Conference at Aspen (IDCA). The brainchild of Walter Paepcke, head of Container Corporation of America, IDCA was inagurated to Provide a forum for designers to engage in discussions of the quality of design and the relationship design has with business and to exchange ideas with their peers from around the world. The IDCA archive preserves the papers and presentations of a large number of internationally known designers and businessmen including Ivan Chermayeff, Charles Eames, R. Buckminster Fuller, Gyorgy Kepes, and Frank Stanton. Over the years, Chicago designers, including Robert Hunter Middleton, Bruce Beck, Jay Doblin, Morton Goldsholl, Albert Kner, John Massey, Herbert Pinzke and DeForest Sackett, have had major involvement. Among the materials in the archive are the official records of each conference, from the first in 1951 on “Design as a Function of Management” through the most recent in 1987 on “Success and Failure.” In the collection are copies of papers presented, transcribed conference records, tape recordings of meetings, correspondence, and a wide range of graphic materials produced in conjunction with the conference.

Grants

•The Association of Research Libraries, Washington, D.C., has received a $45,000 grant from the Council on Library Resources to conduct a third Institute on Research Libraries for Library and Information Science Faculty. The institute will be held in the summer of 1988, with 12 faculty participating. Previous institutes were held in 1984 and 1986, at which librarians and library and university administrators joined library educators in studying the forces that influence the current and future conditions of research libraries. The 1988 institute will concentrate on the library school curriculum as it relates to research libraries.

•Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Acadia University, Wolfville, have each received a $30,000 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to support their specialized research collections in strategic studies. The funds have been provided to purchase microform collections of documents and reports in the fields of diplomatic history, international relations, military affairs and arms control. Dalhousie’s major acquisitions will be of post- World War II records of U.S. government agencies involved in military and diplomatic planning, such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the departments of Defense and State. Acadia’s acquisitions will be of a similar nature but will concentrate on the pre- World War II period.

•Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York,has received $3,000 from the New York State Discretionary Grant Program for the Conservation/ Preservation of Library Research Materials. The grant will be used for the deacidification, restoration, encapsulation, microfilming and cataloging of the holdings of the Macready/Meyer Theatrical Collection, a combination of books, handbills, playbills, manuscripts, and correspondence relating to the career of British Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready (1793-1873). Among the items are those which concern the infamous Astor Place Riots of 1849, sparked by the rivalry between Macready’s fans and those of his American counterpart, Edwin Forrest.

•Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolishas received a three-year grant by the new Indiana University Center on Philanthropy to provide for a librarian and for the purchase of materials to support research and teaching. The funding comes as part of a $4 million grant from the Lilly Endowment to the Center, which will be located on the IUPUI campus. A significant portion of the grant has been allocated to the University Library, housing the Center’s collection.

•Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, has been awarded a grant of $11,718 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to microfilm the Mary Lyon papers and a collection of letters from leading educators in 19th-century New England, including Catharine Beecher, Emma Willard, Joseph Emerson, Amos Eaton and Edward Hitchcock. The materials demonstrate the influence of Lyon and Zilpah Grant Banister, Lyon’s mentor and founder of Ipswich Female Seminary, on the development of women’s higher education around the world.

•The New York State Conservation/PreservationCoordinated Preservation Projects Program, Albany, has awarded grants totaling $350,000 to various research institutions around the state. The University of Rochester, Columbia University, Cornell University, the State University of New- York at Albany, and SUNY/Buffalo will share a grant of $61,157 to preserve New York State atlases. Cornell University, SUNY/Binghamton, Syracuse University, and the University of Rochester will share a grant of $43,668 to sponsor a regional conservation training facility. The Research Libraries of the New York Public Library and the New York State Library will share a grant of $69,552 to microfilm New York State newspapers. Syracuse University, Cornell University, the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library, New York University, and the University of Rochester will share a grant of $175,623 to preserve acetate-based audio materials.

•The Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, Seattle, Washington, has received a $34,000 NPIPRC grant for a two-year project to preserve the Joe Williamson photograph collection. The photographs depict the maritime history of the Pacific Northwest from the 1880s to the 1950s, including a wide variety of ships, many coastal towns and industries, and the Alaska gold rush.

•Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, has received a $250,000 gift from the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc., to establish the Carol K. Pforzheimer Student Fellowships at the college’s Schlesinger Library. Five or more fellowships will be awarded annually to Harvard- Radcliffe undergraduates for research in such areas as the history of community service and volunteer work, the culinary arts, women and health, and work and the family. The first fellowships will be awarded in the spring of 1988.

•The St. Louis Mercantile Library Association,Missouri, has received a $71,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to make much of its manuscript and archival collection available to the public. Members of the staff will use the funds to locate, inventory, arrange, preserve and describe holdings, collected by the library since its founding in 1846, in accordance with accepted archival procedure. Among significant documents are letters of George Washington and Association correspondence from figures such as Henry Ward Beecher, William Tecumseh Sherman, Horace Greeley, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thomas Hart Benton.

•The University of Georgia, Athens, has receiveda $417,441 NEH grant to catalog and microfilm newspapers in Georgia as part of the United States Newspaper Program. The grant is for a three-year period and includes $50,000 in matching funds. The new funding continues work begun last year under an NEH planning grant, which allowed for a survey of newspaper repositories in Georgia and the identification of primary holding locations. Preliminary research has also provided a count of both in-state and out-of-state newspaper titles and a checklist of in-state newspapers. More than 2.5 million newspaper pages will be filmed and 3,900 titles cataloged as part of the present project.

•The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, has received a $117,000 matching grant from the Council on Library Resources to investigate the behavioral, technological, organizational, financial, and political factors that need to be addressed in the design and management of academic information centers. The outcome of the year-long project will be a model information center for the Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs, based on the findings of the investigation. The center will provide a set of integrated information delivery systems and services. Five related research programs will be conducted as part of the investigation.

•The University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire has been awarded a Japan Foundation Library Support Program Grant of approximately 300,000 yen ($3,000) to acquire reference and history publications about Japan.

•The Utah Museum of Natural History at theUniversity of Utah, Salt Lake City, has been awarded a $5,570 NHPRC grant to preserve photographic negatives of archeological excavations in the Great Basin and Northern Colorado Plateau. The photographs document early American cultures, as exemplified by the culture of the Anasazi people.

•Washington University’s Olin Library System, St. Louis, Missouri, has received a three-year, $200,000 grant from the Burlington Northern Foundation to support preservation efforts. Funds have been earmarked for preventive preservation, restoration, replacement of original materials in original or alternative formats, staff development for preservation and general patron/staff awareness of proper care and handling procedures, and equipment and supplies for use with alternative media and education in preservation. Basic preservation efforts have been underway in the central library system since 1983.

•Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, has been awarded a grant of $112,500 by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in cooperation with the Southern Education Foundation of Atlanta, Georgia. The grant, which will be awarded over a three-year period, is intended to improve the library’s holdings in the humanities. With current holdings of approximately 100,000 volumes, Xavier is the only predominantly Black Catholic institution of higher education in the United States. It is expected that the library will be able to increase its collection by three to five thousand volumes.

•York University, Ontario, has received two Specialized Research Collection Program grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The first, for $15,000, will assist in the purchase of the British titles and American editions of British titles in the Nineteenth- Century Legal Treatises microfiche collection. A second grant of $20,000 will support purchases of ethnomusicological materials, including recordings, books, films and videotapes on the music of Africa Asia, and Latin America, and of various contemporary musical forms in North America.

News notes

•Cleveland State University Libraries, Ohio,began implementation of a new organizational structure on August 18 to address major changes caused by new automation technology. The new structure features a collaborative environment based on team management and blending of responsibilities. Members of the new management team are: George Lupone, deputy director; Philip Tramdack, head of Automation Services; Carol Patrick, head of Document Delivery Services; Edward Santa Vicca, head of Collection Management Services; Richard Swain, head of Information Services; and the head of Bibliographic Services (to be filled). Also noteworthy is a new library Research Office run by Janet Mongan, library research officer. For details and organizational charts, contact Hannelore B. Rader, Director, Cleveland State University Library, 1860 East 22nd Street, Cleveland, OH 44115-2403.

•The University of Rochester, New York, celebrated the opening of the Rossell Hope Robbins Library for Medieval Studies at a September 16 ceremony attended by scholars from Europe, Canada, Australia, India, China and Japan. The library is named in honor of its curator and donor, whose core collection reflects his intellectual interests during a distinguished scholarly career of more than 50 years. The Robbins bequest includes holdings in all aspects of Middle English literature, with supplemental materials in the fields of Old English, Anglo-Norman and French literatures, medieval history, philosophy, theology, and manuscript studies. Appraised at $700,000, the library contains at present about 10,000 volumes and subscribes to 40 specialized periodicals. The collection also contains some 5,000 offprints. In addition to donating the collection, Robbins and his wife have made provisions for new acquisitions and have established a trust of $160,000 for a fellowship program. The annual Helen Ann Mins Robbins Fellowship, to be inagurated in two years, will support a female pre-doctoral student for a year’s research in medieval studies at the University. The recipient will be chosen from an international competition. Robbins, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, holds a doctorate from Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He has published a dozen books and more than 200 articles and is an international authority in Middle English studies and a specialist in the history of witchcraft. ■ ■

Tenth anniversary tribute to the ACRL Bibliographic Instruction Section and the ALA Library Instruction Round Table

At a general membership meeting at ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco this summer, ALA members adopted the following resolution:

WHEREAS, 1987 marks the 10th anniversary of the organization of both the Bibliographic Instruction Section (BIS) of ACRL and the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT); and

WHEREAS, the activities of both groups are in direct support of the American Library Association’s Priority Area A (Access to Information); and

WHEREAS, conference programs by BIS and LIRT on such topics as learning theory, lifelong learning, the research process, and library literacy have benefitted the general membership in pursuit of ALA priorities; and

WHEREAS, the excellence of the efforts of both groups has been honored through the World Book- ALA Goals Award program; and

WHEREAS, service in BIS and LIRT has proven to be an excellent training ground for current and future leaders of the American Library Association; NOW THEREFORE BE IT

RESOLVED, that the members of the American Library Association assembled at the 1987 San Francisco Annual Conference join with the ALA Instruction in the Use of Libraries Committee in recognizing the important and on-going contributions of BIS and LIRT; AND BE IT FURTHER

RESOLVED, that the American Library Association offer its congratulations to the three thousand members of BIS and the twelve hundred members of LIRT as they celebrate this tenth anniversary year.

Moved by: Karen S. Seibert, Chair, on behalf of the Members of the ALA Instruction in the Use of Libraries Committee. ■ ■