ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Galloway

The Eugenio María de Hostos CommunityCollege Library/CUNY in the South Bronx has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop a seminal collection of works by and about writer Eugenio Maria de Hostos. The collection will support the development of new curricular offerings that will advance the multidisciplinary study of the humanities on the life and works of this giant in Latin American and Caribbean studies and political thought of the 19th century.

Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscriptand Special Collections Library received a $10,000 grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to preserve nine reels of local films taken by H. Lee Waters, who made movies in 117 towns in North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Virginia in the mid-1950s to early 1940s. The preservation work, which will be completed in July 2004, entails cleaning and repairing the films, as well as the creation of a negative and a new motion picture print from the original camera film. In addition, digital broadcast quality and VHS videotapes will be made.

Libraries for the Future was awarded athree-year, $1.05 million challenge grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create EqualAccess Libraries networks in ten states by 2005. EqualAccess Libraries is a curriculum developed by Libraries for the Future that strengthens the capacity of librarians through professional development training and a host of community programs that foster the literacy and communications skills of all library patrons. The state-by-state launch of the program will begin in Pennsylvania, where 61 libraries will benefit, 15 of which will be implemented in 2003.

Fisk University has received a $67,934grant from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission to process, preserve, and make available for research five manuscript and archival collections in the John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library. The five collections help to document Fisk’s historical ties to the African American experience in Tennessee and beyond. Materials to be processed are the Jubilee Singers Collection, the Charles S. Johnson Collection, die Thomas Elsa Jones Collection, the Adam K. Spence Family Collection, and the Alrutheus A. Taylor Collection. The grant will also enable the library to prepare electronic finding aids to these collections and to report data on the newly processed materials to national-level databases.

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) has received more than $265,300 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to ensure access to more than 152 endangered journals (approximately 1,520 volumes) exploring the African American church through preservation microfilming and through the creation and dissemination of bibliographic records of these journal titles. Titles will be provided by 21 ATLA member libraries and 53 non-ATLA libraries, many holding just one of the titles included in the project.

The New York University Division of Libraries has been awarded a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to assist in the preservation of unique video materials held in its Downtown Collection. The Downtown Collection documents the explosion of artistic experimentation that took place in SoHo and the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s. The NEA grant supports a project that will evaluate, catalog, and preserve videotapes from a collection of 1,240 videos of dance, theater, artists’ interviews, poetry and fiction readings, and performance art in New York City’s downtown scene.

Acquisitions

More than 800 volumes on the MexicanRevolution (1910–1919) have been acquired by the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, a division of the Texas A&M University Libraries. The collection comes from the estate of Donald C. Turpen, a noted Albuquerque attorney and book collector who worked in Mexico during the 1950s. Turpen’s collection covers nearly every aspect of the Mexican Revolution, according to David Chapman, University Archivist and curator for the Cushing Library’s Texas and the Borderlands Collection. Biographies of notables such as Poncho Villa, Venustiano Cananza, Fransico I. Madero, and Emiliano Zapata are part of the collection, as well as biographies of lesser-known participants who played pivotal roles in the revolution. The music of the revolution, living conditions of the poor, and the roles of women are special topics included in the collection, which contains general histories, political and military histories, and sociological and economic studies.

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e-mail: agalloway@ala.org.

The papers of Chet Huntely, former broadcast journalist and TV news coanchor of NBC’s Fluntely-Brinkley evening news have been arranged and described by the University of Montana’s K. Ross Toole Archives. The reprocessed collection includes nearly 30 boxes of materials by and about Huntley: biographical information, personal and professional correspondence; scripts written for his radio and television projects, speaking engagements, and news commentary projects; press clippings primarily spanning his years with NBC; obituaries published in diverse outlets; an extensive photographic collection; a small sampling of news and documentary broadcasts; some three-dimensional memorabilia; and scripts for Huntley’s radio and television broadcasts with his original annotations and changes, which he sometimes added just before broadcast. The collection also includes extensive information regarding Huntley’s role with the Big Sky Resort in Montana.

A 10,000-item collection of materials fromthe Speculation Land Company (SLC) has been donated to the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University. The records, dating from 1775 to 1930, form the largest collection of original documents tracking the development of more than 500,000 acres in western North Carolina. They will help historians answer questions about land ownership, distribution, and the impact of absentee ownership in the development of an 11-county region. Among the materials cataloged is a variety of business and personal correspondence, which sheds light on everyday life in the region. One letter, written in 1907 by former slave Hanna Thompson to the Rev. Baylis Justice, sought help locating her grown children who had, as children, remained in North Carolina when she was sold out of state.

A collection of 33,799 compact discs fromMP3.com has been acquired by the Music Department at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD). The collection amounts to more than 30 years’ worth of normal compart disc acquisition. It is estimated that it would take more than three-and-a-half years of nonstop 24-hour listening to hear the entire collection, which ranges from classical to jazz to today’s top hits. The gift from MP3.com’s compact disc vault came to UCSD in an effort to enhance the library’s existing recording collection, largely comprised of post-1950 art music. The new additions will also support the expansion of the library’s Digital Audio Reserves Program (DARP), a research and learning tool that streams audio curriculum over the UCSD Intranet so students may do their homework assignments and study for music exams from any campus-networked computer.

The library of Ted Hughes, the late poetlaureate of Great Britain, has been acquired by Emory University. At the time of his death in 1998, Hughes was among Britain’s leading literary figures and the author of dozens of critically acclaimed collections of poems, including The Hawk in the Rain, Lupercal, Wodwo, and Crow. His 1998 collection, Birthday Letters, chronicled his relationship with his first wife, poet Sylvia Plath, and was an international bestseller as well as recipient of the Whitbread Book of the Year award. During the course of his life, he also published many books for children, translations, a critical study of Shakespeare, and other works. The library, which numbers more than 6,000 volumes, offers students and scholars a detailed map of Hughes’ creative and intellectual development. The earliest books in the Hughes library date from his school days, including a pocket edition of Shakespeare’s Hemy IV as well as editions of Wordsworth and Keats, which he read as a school boy. The library includes many works devoted to natural history, folklore, mysticism, religion, and esoteric knowledge. A number of the earliest books in the Hughes library contain sketches and notes in Hughes’ hand. ■