ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Young

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library of JohnsHopkins University received an $8,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create a Spanish-language version of Calipr, a widely used preservation assessment software package. To date there is no such assessment tool available to Spanish-language institutions.

The Frick Art Reference Library of the FrickCollection has received a $140,000 award from the Eugene V. & Clare E. Thaw Charitable Trust to cover a two-year project (1998-99) for the retrospective conversion of 70,000 auction sale catalog records into SCIPIO, the international database for shared holdings of sale catalogs. The project will support the library’s efforts to make documentation about its collection of auction sale catalogs more widely accessible to the international community of researchers and scholars.

The University of North Carolina at ChapelHill’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) received a second estate gift from professor Lester E. Asheim for $137,000. Asheim was William Rand Kenan Jr. professor at SILS from 1975 until his retirement in 1984. In 1990 he established the Lester Asheim Scholarship Fund with a $30,000 endowment. Scholarships have since been awarded yearly from that fund to doctoral students with potential for making a positive professional contribution to the advancement of information and library services and research.

Syracuse University (SU) Library's BelferAudio Laboratory and Archive received a $270,000 grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to catalog and provide Web access to its 180,000 pre-LP disc records (dating from 1895-1950) and 22,000 cylinders (1895-1929). Eventually test pressings, broadcast acetates, private recordings, and other one-of-a-kind materials will be included in the Belfer database, which is designed to dovetail with recording cataloging efforts also underway at the U.S. Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada. The catalog of Belfer’s recordings will reside in SUMMIT, the SU Library’s public access catalog.

Washington University Libraries received a$150,000 gift from Hellen Ingram Plummer in memory of her son, poet James Merrill. The gift will fund a three-year project that will allow the libraries to catalog, preserve, and microfilm Merrill’s papers, which form a cornerstone of the libraries’ renowned Modern Literature Collection. Merrill, who died in 1995, was the author of 14 books of poetry, including the posthumously published A Scattering of Salts, and he was the recipient of two National Book Awards, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and the Rebekah Johnson Bobbit Prize for Poetry.

Acquisitions

The Radio History Society (RHS) has joinedforces with the George Washington University (GWU) to create a permanent archive and exhibit on the history of broadcasting for use by students, scholars, hobbyists, and the public. With the signing of a “Memorandum of Intent,” GWU and RHS have established the framework for the relationship, which will include the transfer to GWU of RHS’s extensive collection of library-related research material. Ultimately, the university will also provide exhibit space for the RHS’s vast collection of artifacts including radio and television sets, microphones, and other broadcast equipment.

Texas Tech University's Athletics Collection dating from 1925 to the present is now available to patrons of the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University. The collection primarily consists of files from Texas Tech’s Sports Information Office and highlights the athletic department’s key research materials and publications. The holdings are divided according to game programs, media guides, and sports information files. Within the collection, 32 boxes contain new releases, correspondence, statistics, and memorabilia. One box is devoted entirely to printed materials, while two others contain record books. An additional 11 boxes offer programs and seven boxes hold media guides.

The Asante Collective Biography Project(ACBP) Archives were donated to Northwestern University. The purpose of ACBP, donated by Professor Emeritus Ivor Wilks, is to provide a readily accessible source of information for the student of the Asante past and to lay foundations for a future Dictionary of Ghanaian National Biography. The core of the collection is some 12,000 cards that document items of biographical information drawn from a wide range of published, archival, and oral sources and include material in English translation from Akan, Arabic, Danish, Dutch, French, German, and Hausa texts.

U.S. Army General George S. Patton's(1885-1945) papers documenting his World War I career have been acquired by the University of North Dakota’s Chester Fritz Library. The collection includes diaries, letters, reports, maps, photographs, general orders, and related printed ephemera from the war. The collection, appraised at $1,400,000, was preserved and brought together by Sereno Elmer Brett (1891-1952), who was Patton’s second-in-command in World War I.

The William Emil Suida/BertinaSuidad Manning library was purchased by Emory University Library. Suida was an eminent art historian and one of the founders of the Viennese art historical school. Though he died in 1959, his library was expanded by his art historian daughter, Bertina Suidad Manning, and his son-in-law—Robert Manning, who was in charge of the distribution of the Kress Collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings to dozens of American museums. The Suida collection consists of approximately 15,000 volumes and is largely devoted to the history of European art from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century. The library also has a substantial complement of Northern European material covering the same period.

The papers of the late W. D. "Dub" Rogers,former Lubbock, Texas mayor, are now available at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University. Rogers, who died in 1993 at the age of 72, was elected mayor of Lubbock in 1966 on a writein candidacy and served two terms. The collection contains 71 boxes of materials highlighting his mayoral career including city council meetings, files on special services, photographs of city activities, and visits from dignitaries.

Harry Levinson, management scholar andconsultant, has donated his extensive management library of more than 300 volumes to Bentley College. A pioneer in combining theories of psychology and management, Levinson is chairman of the Levinson Institute and has held academic positions at the Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical School, the Sloan School at MIT, and other universities. He is the author of several books on the practice of management, organizational diagnosis, and leadership.

Harry Levinson (right) shares a laugh with Bentley Professor of Management Aaron Nurick.