ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Ann-Christe Galloway

The University of Pittsburgh has beenawarded a $242,157 National Leadership Grant by IMLS for a library/museum collaborative project. In this two-year project, the University of Pittsburgh’s Digital Research Library—in collaboration with the university’s Archives Service Center, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania—will create a Web portal for increasing access to the collections of visual images documenting Pittsburgh held in local repositories. “Historic Pittsburgh” will serve as the gateway to the multi-institutional visual collections and related descriptive information.

The Ringling School of Art and Designhas received $500,000 for its endowment from the Ringling School Library Association for student scholarships and library acquisitions. Founded in 1975, the association has donated $2 million to the college.

Johns Hopkins University's GeorgePeabody Libraiy has received a $325,000 Save America’s Treasures grant to improve the library’s ability to preserve its research collection. The university will upgrade and modernize the heating and air conditioning system in the library, which opened in 1878.

The Research Library of the New YorkState Historical Association (NYSHA) has received a $5,000 grant from the Baird Foundation in Buffalo, New York, for a pilot project to develop a Web-based visual database of NYSHA’s photographic archive of the Smith and Telfer Studio. Photographers Washington G. Smith and Arthur J. Telfer, from Cooperstown, New York, took these images that document life in small town America from 1853 to 1953.

Acauisitions

The papers of Elizabeth David (1913-92), the foremost British food writer of her day and author of nine definitive books, have been acquired by the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. The collection of David’s correspondence, diaries, travel journals, handwritten recipe files, and photographs is expected to be available later in the year. The approximately 100 boxes of materials that make up the Elizabeth David papers contain voluminous correspondence with over 500 well-known authors, editors, chefs and others in the food industry, including Julia Child, James Beard, Jeremiah Tower, and Alice Waters. The collection also contains eight cartons of David’s handwritten recipe files, photographs of David taken by fashion photographer Cecil Beaton, records documenting the history of her books, and her diaries and travel journals.

The corporate archives of Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., have been donated to the special collections division of the University of Nevada Libraries in Las Vegas. Harrah’s was the creation of the late William F. Harrah, who parlayed a single bingo parlor in Reno into one of the largest gaming and hotel corporations in the world, with major properties in Las Vegas, Reno, Lake Taho, Atlantic City, and Laughlin. The collection, consciously developed as a corporate archives by Harrah’s, includes extensive promotional, entertainment and financial publications and files, photographs, clippings, film, videotape, and a large assortment of promotional items and mementos. The donation also contains William Harrah’s significant personal collection of historic playing cards and artifacts and documents from his antique automobile collection. ■

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