ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The Bowling Green State University Library, Bowling Green, Ohio, recently acquired an extensive collection of materials relating to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s life and times. The collection includes books, periodicals, pamphlets, letters, photographs, and press releases, and was assembled by a private collector, Eugene Ockuly, a physician in Toledo, over a period of more than thirty years.

• The Manuscript Department of Duke University Library, Durham, North Carolina, recently acquired the personal papers of Chris Costner Sizemore, who is widely known as the subject of the book and movie, The Three Faces of Eve. Sizemore, who publicly identified herself as Eve in 1975, underwent therapy for multiple personality disorder in the 1950s. Since then she has integrated her personalities and spoken widely on behalf of local and national mental health associations. The papers include poems and other writings, diaries, drawings, photographs, tapes of interviews, and some printed material. Additional items will be added to the collection when Sizemore and her cousin, Elen Pittillo, complete a new biography.

• The Library of Congress celebrated the acquisition of the Vernon Duke Collection with a special coniert on October 14 devoted to his music. Duke is known for his theater and popular songs, art songs, and chamber music, some of which he composed under his Russian name, Vladimir Dukelsky. The collection includes Duke’s musical manuscripts dating from 1919, before his departure from Russia, as well as his major works which he composed in Paris and the United States.

• The Libraries of Loyola University, Chicago, have announced the formation of a Paul Claudel Collection. This collection of the French Catholic author’s works will combine the 150 volumes currently held by Loyola with many new donations and purchases. Some recent acquisitions include 116 volumes from the Claudel Archives at the University of Zürich, and 30 volumes from the Société Paul Claudel in Paris.

• The Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, have received for their Urban Archives Collection 150 oral history interviews of individuals prominently associated with the Philadelphia Renaissance era from the 1940s to the early 1970s. The interviews wêre conducted by Walter M. Phillips, Sr., a retired civic leader and one of the original members of the Greater Philadelphia Movement in 1947. The interviews are still in progress and so far include two governors, three mayors, and numerous other political figures as well as bankers, lawyers, educators, and judges.

• The University of Utah’s Marriott Library, Salt Lake City, has obtained the original drawings and personal papers of John Hudson, a gold rush Forty Niner who helped chart the Great Salt Lake with Captain Howard Stansbury. The maps and letters were purchased for the library by the Friends of the Library organization.

GRANTS

• The Bibliographic Center for Research, Denver, Colorado, has been awarded a $57,125 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education. The grant will improve the teaching of online bibliographic searching through the use of computer-assisted instruction. According to BCR, the effectiveness and costs of computer-assisted instruction will be compared with those of traditional workshop training for teaching librarians and other information specialists how to conduct online literature searches. If the methods prove cost-effective they will be incorporated into the ongoing training activities at the Center.

• The Librarv of PRESBYTERIAN COLLEGE, Clinton, South Carolina, has received a $500,000 gift from retired South Carolina businessman James H. Thomason and his wife, Sarah Dunlap Thomason. The grant will provide salary supplements for the library staff and will ensure the upkeep of the James H. Thomason Library, the result of a $750,000 donation made eleven years ago. The 120,000 volume librarv is well known for its emphasis on bibliographic instruction.

• The University of Oklahoma Libraries, Norman, have been awarded a $6 million endowment fund for acquisitions. According to Sul H. Lee, dean of the university libraries, this endowment is part of the continuing commitment by the university to strengthen its library. The university has already provided $12 million for building expansion and $700,000 in permanent enrichment funds to the libraries’ budget base.

• Wheaton College, Norton, Massachusetts, has received a $50,000 grant from the Pew Memorial Trust. The award will be used to replace the present library card catalog with a more flexible and efficient computerized system. Wheaton has just completed a $4.3 million library building expansion and renovation program, and has embarked on an intensive collection development program.

NEWS NOTES

• Harvard University has completed remodeling of its Museum of Comparative Zoology Library. The reconstruction of the library’s public and working areas was one part of the three-year reorganization proposal submitted by librarian Eva Jonas in 1978 and approved by museum director A. W. Crompton and the faculty. The largest stack room of the old library is now a reference reading room. New lighting, air conditioning, a circular circulation and reference desk, and furnishings which include prized treasures from the museum itself have enhanced the atmosphere. The limited-access rare book room has been restored in its original Victorian style and now provides an appropriate setting for the historic collection.

• Both Miami University Library, Oxford, Ohio, and Northern Illinois University Libraries, DeKalb, have recently celebrated the acquisition of their one-millionth volume. Miami’s monograph, Report of the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations (1772), was a response to Thomas Walpole and Benjamin Franklin on their proposal to create a new crown colony in the Ohio River region. The book was presented at a meeting of the Friends of the Library Society on October 23.

Northern Illinois volume, Bvron’s Poems on Various Occasions (Newark, 1807), was celebrated in September. A 22-page pamphlet commemorating the occasion is available free of charge from the Rare Book Department, Northern Illinois University Libraries, DeKalb, IL 60115.

• Sangamon State University Library, Springfield, Illinois, became the fourteenth Illinois academic library to utilize the Library Computer System (LCS) for circulation of materials under the auspices of the LCS Network Project. This project is an attempt to develop an online library resource sharing network based upon the circulation and bibliographic searching capabilities of the University of Illinois Library Computer System. Public terminals allow patrons at participating libraries to search the combined 4.5 million titles in the database to locate materials they need. When a particular title is located it can be ordered by the library circulation staff on another terminal which will generate a paging slip at the library owning the item.

Other Illinois academic libraries which have joined the system recently are: Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago; Catholic Theological Union, Chicago; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb; St. Xavier College, Chicago; Lake Forest College, Lake Forest; and Illinois State University, Normal.

• The State University of New York College at Brockport’s Drake Memorial Library has collaborated with the college’s Educational Communications Center to produce a library instruction program for freshmen which began this fall. The program is required of all incoming freshmen as part of their year-long general education communication skills course. During the fall semester freshmen view videotapes on library orientation, basic reference materials, the card catalog, and periodical indexes, and complete workbook exercises in the library to supplement information presented in the tapes. At a future date a full description of the program will be available from ERIC.

GALLAUDET TOUR PLANNED

A tour of the new Learning Center of Gallaudet College, the only liberal arts college in the world designed exclusively for hearing-impaired students, will be offered free of charge to ALA Midwinter Conference participants on Monday afternoon, February 2.

Transportation will be provided by Gallaudet College and will leave the Sheraton Washington every 30 minutes from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. Tours will take approximately 21/2 hours, including the round trip.

The Learning Center opened on January 5, 1981, and integrates the resources and services of the Gallaudet College Library and parts of College Educational Resources (television, instructional development, and photography).

For information and reservations, contact: Judy Cox, Administrative Support Librarian, Gallaudet College Library, 7th and Florida Avenues, N.E., Washington, DC 20002; phone (202) 651-5566.