ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Acquisitions

•The Concordia Historical Institute, St. Louis, has received a large private collection of books and manuscripts illustrating the era of the Lutheran Reformation. Most of the books were brought to the United States by Pastor Ottomar Fuerbringer, a founding professor of Concordia Seminary, in 1839. Included in the collection are numerous first editions of tracts and pamphlets written by Martin Luther, a 1580 Latin edition of the Book of Concord, and some untranslated 16th century manuscripts.

•Texas Christian University Library, Fort Worth, has received an important collection of 160 first and early editions, along with biographical and critical works, of British novelist Anthony Trollope (1815-1882). The collection includes an almost complete set of first editions of the Barsetshire and Palliser novels, many in the original cloth. The collection was a gift from the Friends of the TCU Libraries.

•The University of Kansas Music Library, Lawrence, has received a collection of over 500 recordings of military and concert bands from Paul E. Bierley, of Columbus, Ohio, author of John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon. This collection of 78-rpm recordings covers the first three decades of the 20th century, including a unique 1902 test pressing of a Sousa Band recording manufactured in Montreal.

•The University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, has acquired a collection of Thai imprints originally developed by Thai linguist William J. Gedney. The collection consists of approximately 7,000 monographs, 316 serial titles, and 73 manuscripts. The Gedney Collection spans the period 1837-1980 and focuses on the critical periods of transition in Thai society from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and from the Japanese occupation to the status of pre-War state. Included are many literary and biographical works printed upon the occasion of cremation ceremonies.

•The University of Pennsylvania Music Library, Philadelphia, has been given a large wooden cabinet once owned by the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The cabinet was dedicated in a ceremony on April 29 as part of the music library’s new quarters. Beethoven’s cabinet, a tall wardrobe, was part of the furnishings in his Vienna home until his death in 1828. It was donated by Cecilia Drinker Saltonstall, of Stratham, New Hampshire.

•The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has acquired the papers of Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939), the author of a series of popular detective novels featuring the urbane detective Philo Vance. The main body of the papers, which includes 1,563 items covering the years 1899-1978, is composed of correspondence between Wright, his first wife, daughter, and mother; also included are manuscripts, printed material, articles about Wright, legal and financial papers, and photographs.

•The Whaling Museum Library of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford, Massachusetts, has completed cataloging of the Cory Family papers, 1762-1929, a project funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. The collection documents four generations of a Westport Point, Massachusetts, family involved in shipping, ship-building, whaling, weaving, and merchandising.

Grants

•The Music Library Association has been awarded a grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the feasibility of a major cooperative bibliographical program covering the music published in the United States since the 1820s. Key elements of the project involve: establishing a working definition of the scope of material to be covered; the feasibility of an inter-related program for photocopying materials; prospects for cost-sharing contributions or other tangible forms of support from those institutions that might participate in a cooperative program; and the range, definition, and level of authoritv work for the data involved. The Association will prepare a final report this summer.

•The University of California, Los Angeles, received a grant of $9,700 from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission to purchase library materials on Japan-U.S. business relations. Half the funds were from the Commission and the other half were matched by the UCLA Graduate School of Management’s Pacific Basin Economic Study Center. Currently published materials will be collected on a more comprehensive basis and retrospective titles will also be identified and added.

•The University of Kansas Libraries’ Kansas Collection, Lawrence, has been awarded a grant of $36,800 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve and catalog the Joseph J. Pennell collection of 32,000 glass negatives taken by the Junction City, Kansas, photographer between 1888 and 1922. The significance of the collection lies in the completeness with which it documents daily life in a midwestern town and a nearby Army post (Fort Riley) during a period of change and growth.

The Kansas Collection has also been awarded a National Historical Publications and Records Commission supplemental grant of $8,000 to continue microfilming a selected portion of the J.B. Watkins papers. Watkins was a 19th-century Lawrence business entrepreneur who operated a land mortgage company.

•York University Law Library, Downsview, Ontario, has received a grant of $8,000 from Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to assist in the collection of English nominative law reports. These original 18th-century reports will strengthen the library’s collection of British primary source material.