ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Acquisitions

• Iowa State University’s Archives of American Agriculture, Ames, has received the papers of Roswell Garst, a friend of Henry A. Wallace and an ardent advocate of hybrid corn. Garst spent considerable time in Russia at the invitation of Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev and encouraged improved trade relations with Eastern Europe. The Archives, recently established by Iowa State’s Parks Library and located in Special Collections, offers many agriculture-oriented manuscript collections for scholarly use, especially the papers of individuals prominent in American agriculture.

• Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing, has received a collection of rare cookery books assembled by the late Beatrice V. Grant, professor of foods and nutrition at MSU. Included are about 50 works on cookery and related subjects. Most were published in the 18th and 19th centuries, but a number of 17th-century works and a few from the 20th century, including bibliographic tools, are included. Of particular interest is a French work on candy making, La Cannameliste Française, ou nouvelle instructions por ceux qui désirent d’apprendre I’office…, published at Nancy in 1751. Its plates offer splendid depictions of 18th-century tableware. Among American works in the collection, the most interesting is an early work by an American black author, The Hotel Keeper’s, Head-Waiter’s and Housekeeper’s Guide, written by Tunis Campbell and published in Boston in 1848.

• The University of Toronto Library held a ceremony October 5 to mark the official deposit of the Millenium Collection of 21 Old Ukrainian books. Purchase of this invaluable collection of 17th and 18th-century Ukrainian titles from the estate of Paul Fekula, a leading North American book collector, was made possible through funds obtained by the Chair of Ukrainian Studies Foundation. Edward Keenan, Harvard University professor, and Edward Kasinec, chief of the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library, were featured speakers at the presentation. An illustrated catalogue is available from the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, Paul Magocsi, at the University of Toronto.

• Williams College’s Chapin Library of Rare Books, Williamstown, Massachusetts, has received a William Saroyan collection begun in 1934 with the appearance of the author’s first book, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. The collection is especially thorough in materials from 1930 through 1942. Included are more than 100 reviews and clippings about Saroyan’s early reception and first successful plays (My Heart’s in the Highlands and The Time of Your Life), and some 50 issues of the Boston Armenian newspaper Hairenik and little magazines of the 1930s and 1940s, each with a Saroyan story or essay. The collection is a gift from the family of Raymond C. Washburne.

Grants

• The Academy of Natural Sciences Library, Philadelphia, has received an HE A Title II-C grant for the cataloging and conservation of its photographic collection, including motion pictures, lantern slides, stereographs, albums, and portraits of 19th and 20th century figures in natural history. Their goal is to catalog some 20,000 images at the item level. The wealth of access points available on the project’s microcomputer will make information accessible in detail never before accessible. Project director is head librarian Sylva Baker, with Carol Spawn as project manager.

• Aurora College, Illinois, has received a gift of $3,000 from the estate of the late Jeannie Lowdon, professor emerita of English at Aurora. The bequest is to purchase books relating to Scottish and English literature.

• Clemson University Library, South Carolina, received a grant of $49,960 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to help develop its university archives and records management program. The two-year project begins this month. The grant provides for the hiring of a records manager to develop a program of records administration and provide guidance to departments on records retention. During the second year a university archivist will be hired to arrange and describe the archives. Clemson University will permanently fund both positions after the grant program is completed.

• Gonzaga University Library, Spokane, Washington, has received a $56,800 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to enable the Oregon Province Archives of the Society of Jesus to complete the microfilming of its unique Indian mission collections. Indexing, repairing of documents, and the actual microfilming will proceed during the 1985/86 academic year with a scheduled completion date of September 1, 1986. Similar NHPRC grants enabled the microfilming of the Oregon Archives Indian Language Collection in 1976 and the Alaska Mission Collection in 1980.

• Northern Illinois University Libraries, DeKalb, have been awarded an HEA Title II-C grant in the amount of $93,480 to provide support for improved bibliographic access to NIU’s Southeast Asia Collection. Part of the program will be a computerized Thai vernacular and romanized cataloging pilot project in which software will be developed for control of Thai language bibliographic records. An international directory of social science data sources relating to Thailand will be prepared, edited, and made available at a future date.

• Northwestern University’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies has received an HEA Title II-C grant of $172,193 to provide information about its holdings to a wider audience. An inventory of about 10,000 individual publications, maintained online and updated continually, is scheduled for completion by December 31,1985, and will be distributed to other major Africana collections on magnetic tape. Information on publications from African governments, political parties, trade unions, companies, and universities will be included.

• The University of Kentucky Library, Lexington, has received a grant of $142,136 from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a three-year project to identify and locate holdings of Kentucky newspapers and to enter that information into the CONSER database. The grant is part of the United States Newspaper Program.

• The University of Toronto Library has received two grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Program of Support for Specialized Research Collections: $20,000 in support of its Brazilian Collection, in particular to fill gaps in the holdings of pre-1966 monographs; to purchase backfiles of serials and government documents in microform by way of the Latin American Microform Project; and to strengthen the collection of town plans and topographic maps. The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library also received $20,000 to strengthen its Natural History Collection from the Renaissance period to the 19th century.

News notes

• The Library of Congress Copyright Office has returned a reel of microfilm submitted for copyright by the International Star Registry of Northfield, Illinois, and closed the file on the firm’s application. The microfilm contains a list of names of individuals who paid a fee to the company to register a star in their name. Since the company was founded in June 1979, an estimated 100,000 people have paid $25-$35 each with the understanding that a star in their name “will be listed in a book which will be copyrighted at a later date in the Library of Congress,” according to the firm’s recent promotional literature. LC has repeatedly emphasized that it has no connection in any way with any star registry. The Science and Technology Division of the Library has stated that the only official organization that gives designations to astronomical bodies or planetary features is the International Astronomical Union.

The Registry’s application file was closed because of the company’s failure to respond to a request for clarification of authorship of the list of names it submitted for copyright. However, a copyright registration would not guarantee the authenticity of information contained in a work, nor would it protect the association of a proper name with any star or planetary feature. Theoretically, the same star could be “sold” to two different individuals by two different star registration systems (many others are in existence) without any copyright violation.

• The New York Public Library’s Public Catalog Room and Main Reading Room closed on January 18 for the first time since the Central Research Library opened its doors in 1911. The closing launched a 9-12 month project which entails major restoration of the room and its conversion from an obsolete card catalog system to a contemporary bibliographic computer system. Service resumed on January 19 in the Main Reading Room, the North Hall of which will serve as an interim catalog room through the duration of the project. Public users can enter through the Local History Division.

This major project, enabled by grants from the Kresge Foundation, the Pew Memorial Trust, and other foundations, will take two important steps: the 8,000-drawer card catalog will be replaced by the library’s 800-volume Dictionary Catalog, recently completed for materials cataloged before 1972; and 50 computer terminals will be installed to serve as the catalog for materials cataloged more recently. This new Catalog of The New York Public Library (CATNYP) was developed by Carlyle Systems of Berkeley, California.

The restoration of the Public Catalog Room will include cleaning and repairing of the bronze chandeliers, the bronze gallery railing, reading lamps, and the museum-quality oak reading tables. A new ceiling mural will be painted, and temperature and humidity controls will provide a better environment for both books and patrons.