ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• Alfred University,Alfred, New York, has been presented with an extensive private library of modem British literature and social history by a longtime benefactor, Evelyn Tennyson Openhym of Wellsville, New York. The collection, rich in rare signed editions and valued at more than a quarter of a million dollars, was acquired by the donor between 1924 and 1978. Several hundred authors are represented including Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, John Masefield, John Galsworthy, Siegfried Sassoon, Walter de la Mare, and Rupert Brooke.

•The University of South Florida Library, St. Petersburg, has received the public and partially private papers of the late Nelson Poynter, chairman of the board of Times Publishing Company. Among other publications, the company has issued the Congressional Quarterly Almanac and the Si. Petersburg Times newspaper. The Poynter Collection contains political correspondence, an extensive portfolio of photographs, and Pulitzer Prize commendation records.

•The University of Southern Mississippi Library, Hattiesburg, has acquired for the Lena Y. de Grummond Collection of Children’s Literature the Robert L. Dartt Collection of over 1,800 books for boys from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A major segment of the collection features over 500 volumes authored by George A. Henty (1832-1902). Other prominent authors represented are Horatio Alger, F.S. Brereton, Harry Castlemon, G. Manville Fenn, William H.G. Kingston, Oliver Optic, and Edward Stratemeyer.

GRANTS

• Mount Allison University,Sackville, New Brunswick, has received a major grant of $35,000 from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The grant will be used for the enrichment of special collections for the Aired Whitehead Memorial Music Library through the purchase of the collected works of 21 major composers.

•The Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, has been awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission up to $65,330 in partial support of a project to microfilm for preservation and research selected historically valuable records series from each of Ohio’s counties.

• Wheaton College,Norton, Massachusetts, has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Booth Ferris Foundation of New York to enrich its library collection. The foundation provides financial support to colleges and universities with high academic standards and effective leadership. The new collections will be housed in the space provided by a $4.3 million expansion project which was completed last year and which has increased library space by 50 per cent.

NEWS NOTES

• The Library Company of Philadelphia hosted a “Quarter of a Millenium” international symposium October 14-16 to commemorate its 250th anniversary this year. Scholars from six different countries presented papers on “The Intellectual World of 1731. ” A special feature of the celebration was an exhibition of over 250 items from the Library Company’s collections, ranging from a tenth century Greek manuscript to the First Continental Congress’ address to King George III, and from the earliest known painting of Philadelphia to a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The exhibition will be open in Philadelphia through March, 1982, and will then travel to the Grolier Club in New York for two months.

•The library of the State University of New ÏORK.at Buffalo commemorated the acquisition of its two millionth volume on September 17. The book, Rerum Polonicarum, was written in 1584 by Alexandra Guagnino, a knighted Polish soldier turned author. The program featured keynote speaker Oscar Handlin, director of the University Library at Harvard, a panel discussion on "The Book Collector, Rare Book Collection, and the University Library,” and a formal opening of the Rare/Special Materials Collection of the Law Library.

•The University of California. Irvine library hosted a colloquium on academic libraries on October 21 to mark the addition of its millionth volume, the Latin treatise De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii by Martianus Capella in its first printed edition (Vicenza, 1499). The colloquium featured speakers Millicent D. Abell, university librarian at the University of California, San Diego; Richard M. Daugherty, director of the University of Michigan Library; and Stuart Forth, dean of university libraries at Pennsylvania State University. The colloquium was followed by an evening ceremony featuring historian and educator Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.