ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The Amherst College Library has obtained a major addition to its theater collection from M. Abbott Van Nostrand, a member of the Amherst College Class of 1934, who founded the collection. The additions to the collection include a complete bound run of Lacy’s Acting Editions; a set of various series (amounting to more than 500 items) published by Samuel French, Inc., the play publisher; more than 2,000 plays published by other British publishing firms that were taken over by French; nineteenth- and twentieth- century playscripts; and photographs, operetta scores, playbills, theater account books, and other research material.

• The Johns Hopkins University’s Milton S. Eisenhower Library is the recipient of a major collection of Byron works. The new collection, made possible through the generosity of the Friends of the Library, complements the existing collection of Byron material accumulated by Thomas Dickey in the last century. It contains 457 titles brought together by C. Kohler and represents an effort to obtain an in-depth collection of Byron materials for scholars.

The Dickey collection, housed in the library’s special collections and consisting of approximately 200 volumes, focuses on first editions of works by Byron. The Kohler collection will be an excellent supplement, adding depth to the existing collection and making the Eisenhower Library the location of one of the foremost Byron collections in the world.

The Friends of the Library will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in early 1981; this gift marks its golden anniversary in a truly significant way.—Susan K. Martin.

• Rice University’sFondren Library has acquired a large body of the papers of the late Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975). The collection, about seventy cubic feet in size and spanning three-quarters of a century, includes manuscripts and typescripts of Huxley’s published and unpublished works; diaries and travel notebooks; sketches, slides, and photographs; pamphlets; periodicals, reviews, and clippings; and more than 25,000 pieces of correspondence.

GRANTS

• Catholic University’sGraduate Department of Library and Information Science has been awarded a two-year $269,348 contract by the National Science Foundation to offer a shortterm, nondegree training program to strengthen the skills of Egyptian scientific and technical information specialists.

• Dalhousie University,Halifax, Nova Scotia, is the recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant of $35,000 that will be used to augment the Killam Library’s African Studies collection. The library will use the grant to acquire additional newspaper and periodical back files and to fill in government document holdings for English-speaking African nations.

• Harvard Universityreceived a $1 million pledge from Roy E. Larsen, prior to his death last fall, to endow the position of the librarian of Harvard College. When the position is funded, Y. T. Feng will become the first Roy E. Larsen Librarian of Harvard College. Harvard has also received an anonymous gift of $1,554,000 for the renovation of the exterior of Widener Library.

• Radcliffe Collegeis the recipient of a $7,500 grant from the Blanchard Foundation of Boston for the support of the Black Women Oral History Project at the Schlesinger Library. The oral history project, which began in 1976, has recorded on tape interviews with more than seventy American black women, almost all of whom are seventy years of age or older. The grant will support the transcription and processing of the interviews so that they can be made available to students and scholars at the Schlesinger Library and at nearly twenty other college and university libraries and oral history offices nationwide.

• Sarah Lawrence College’sEsther Raushen- bush Library has received a grant from the Gannett Foundation to purchase back runs of newspapers on microfilm. The estate of William Seely, former editor of the Mt. Vernon Argus and husband of Elizabeth Caven Seely, librarian at Sarah Lawrence College from 1964-74, has also notified the college of a bequest to the library. This bequest, coupled with the Gannett grant, will be used to build a strong collection of back newspaper files.

NEWS NOTES

• Governors State UniversityLibrary, Park Forest, Illinois, has installed the Library Computer System, an on-line circulation system with a capacity to support on-line, known-item searching of shelflist information. First developed at Ohio State and modified further before it became operational at the University of Illinois, the Library Computer System is now being tested as a prototype system for a statewide computer-based resource sharing network in Illinois. As the first phase of the project the Library Computer System is being installed in fourteen academic libraries in Illinois, including the Governor’s State University Library. A telecommunications system will link the fourteen libraries into a network.

• The Library of Congress has decided not to adopt the pinyin system of Chinese language romanization in January, 1981. The library had announced in June 1979 a tentative decision to switch from the Wade-Giles system to pinyin, but strong opposition to the change emerged in the research library community.

• The Northwestern University Library has begun a full-scale test of its new on-line catalog. The library expects the on-line catalog to be fully operational for public use in 1980 and anticipates that the existing manual card catalog will be closed in 1981. Patrons will be able to consult the computer catalog by means of cathode ray tube terminals located in the library building and possibly at other points on campus.

Northwestern’s on-line catalog will build on a data base of nearly 400,000 records accumulated in the ten years of operation of the Northwestern automated cataloging system, NOTIS.

• OCLC, INC.,citing the uncertainty of current national economic conditions, has decided to end talks with Geac Computer Corporation of Toronto about the possibility that OCLC would become the sole U.S. distributor of Geac’s automated circulation system. “Because of record- high interest rates,” says OCLC s treasurer, Jack Vincent, “OCLC could not resell or remotely install these circulation systems to the financial benefit of OCLC or its users. The decision to discontinue discussions with Geac was not, according to OCLC, in any way related to the quality or cost-effectiveness of the Geac system.

• The Research Libraries Group (RLG) now has seventeen members and expects to be self- sufficient by 1985. New York University was the sixteenth major research institution to join RLG, and Northwestern University was the seventeenth. Northwestern will make available to RLIN, RLG s network arm, a data base of nearly 400,000 records accumulated in the ten years of operation of the Northwestern automated cataloging system, NOTIS.

• The San Antonio College Library for the second year in a row has conducted the Air Force Library Technology Program. Thirty-nine library technicians from Air Force bases around the world went to San Antonio for a week’s crash course in library technology. Six members of the San Antonio College Library stall, led by J. O. Wallace, plus two staff members from the San

Antonio Public Library, participated in the instruction.

• The State University of New York has awarded Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Librarianship to six librarians. Receiving awards were Dorothy E. Christiansen, association librarian, University Center at Albany; Meredith A. Butler, head of public services, College at Brockport; B. Anne Commerton, librarian, College at Oswego; Elizabeth Elkins, associate librarian, College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse; and Sylvia J. Moran, assistant professor/librarian, Erie Community College, Williamsville.

• Union Theological SeminaryLibrary will undertake a full-scale renovation of its physical plant during 1980-81. The renovation is funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Construction is due to begin in May 1980 and is expected to be completed by September 1981. Although the library intends to remain in service during this period, access to certain collections will be disrupted, some services may have to be curtailed, and reading space will be limited. Researchers expecting to make use of the library during this period should write or call in advance regarding the availability of particular materials, services, and study facilities. Inquiries should be addressed to Richard D. Spoor, director, Union Theological Seminary Librarv, 3041 Broadwav at Reinhold Niebuhr Place, New York, NY 10027; (212) 662-7100.

• The University of Kansas, Lawrence’s Watson Library is undergoing a $6.2 million renovation. ■■

EVAN FARBER NAMED ACADEMIC LIBRARIAN OF THE YEAR

One of the nation’s leading college librarians, Evan Ira Farber, has been awarded the 1980 Academic Librarian of the Year Award by ACRL and the Baker & Taylor

Company. The award was formally presented to Mr. Farber on July 1 at the ACRL reception during the ALA Annual Conference. At the pre- sentation ceremony Farber received a cita- tion and a check for $2,000.

The citation lauded Farber, who is librarian at Earlham College in

Richmond, Indiana, for his work in improving library service and library instruction. “By the methods of quiet persuasion that are characteristic of his approach to life, ’’ the citation said, “Farber was able to bring together faculty members and librarians to make library instruction an integral part of the educational program at Earlham. By the same methods of precept and example, he has helped to disseminate the ideals of bibliographic instruction in ever-widening circles beyond the gates of the college. ”

Farber was also cited for his contributions to librarianship as a consultant, writer, speaker, and spokesperson for the profession. He is the author of the fourth and fifth editions of the Classified List of Periodicals for the College Library, and its monthly supplement, “Periodicals for College Libraries, ’ published in Choice magazine since September 1974. A past president of ACRL (1978-79), he currently serves as the ACRL representative to the ALA Council.

Farber began his library career in 1951 as an assistant in the Documents Department at the University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill. From 1953 to 1955 he was librarian of the State Teachers College in Livingston, Alabama. In 1955 he moved to the Emory University Library in Atlanta, Georgia, where he served as chief of the Serials and Binding Division until his appointment as librarian of Earlham in 1962. He earned A.B. and M.A. degrees in political science and a B.S. degree in library science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. ■■