ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Grants and Acquisitions

Pam Spiegel

The Eden-Webster Library at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis has received a grant of $96,000 from the Henry Luce Foundation to catalog more than 6,0 00 rare theology books. The heart of the collection to be cataloged is the James I. Good Collection built by Good, who was a professor of reformed church history and liturgics at Central Theological Seminary from 1907 to 1924. Good made 52 trans-Atlantic steamship crossings to purchase monographs in Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The funds will be used to make the collection available worldwide via OCLC.

Southern Methodist University (SMU)has received a gift of $1.5 million from Fondren Foundation of Houston to fund construction of a new building to link Fondren Library and the Science and Engineering Library. The new building, to be known as the Gallery at Fondren Library, will unite the resources and services of the university’s two principal libraries. The two-story structure will feature first floor exhibition space and a second floor mezzanine surrounding the building’s open center. The mezzanine will have study tables and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining the walls.

SMU’s Central University Libraries has also received a $60,000 endowment from Lucent Technologies for its Digital Commons and Electronic Resource Centers, which are part of the Libraries’ Center for Media and Instructional Technologies. The Commons has been set up with the latest technology to support the curricula and the libraries.

The University of California-Santa Cruz(UCSC) has received $10,000 from romance novelist Jayne Ann Krentz—a 1970 alumna—to establish the Castle Humanities Fund. Interest from the fund will make it possible for the library to acquire books in the humanities that it would not be able to purchase otherwise. Krentz said, “I valued learning in a climate in which the humanities were well respected. I hope my gift helps engender in future students the same love of humanities I gained at UCSC.”

The Graduate School ofLibrary and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has established the Lucile Huntington Wilkinson Memorial Endowment. Established by J. Henry Wilkinson to honor his late wife Lucy, the fund will be the beneficiary of an estate gift estimated at $500,000, income from which will be divided equally between fellowships within GSLIS and general support of the school. Lucy Wilkinson earned her MLS from the University of Illinois in 1938.

The University of Pittsburgh’s (UP) EastAsian Library was awarded approximately $12,000 from the Japan Foundation through its Library Support Program for 1996–97 to purchase books on Japanese apprenticeship. Sixty-four titles in 83 volumes and ten CDs were acquired through the funding, along with funding provided by the UP Library System.

Acquisitions

The papers of Ted Hughes, poet laureate of England, have been acquired by the Woodruff Library of Emory University. This extensive archive, dating from the late 1950s to the present, includes many drafts of poems from each of Hughes’s published collections as well as literary correspondence, photos, and related materials. Hughes bibliographer Keith Sagar said that this “must be the most important such archive in the whole field of poetry in English of the second half of the 20th century….”

The archive of actress Lillian Gish hasbeen acquired by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The archive consists of 10,000 unpublished letters from friends, colleagues, and business associates; production photos from many plays and films in which Gish appeared; family photos; medical records; appointment ledgers; scripts; and books. “Lillian Gish Remembered,” a series scheduled to run at the library until June 2, will feature readings and reminiscences by friends and colleagues of Gish and screenings of her films. The archive will be available this fall.

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

A collection of rareBibles valued at more than $1.5 million has been given to Bridwell Library at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Donated by Charles and Elizabeth Perkins Prothro of Wichita Falls, Texas, the Prothro Bible Collection was begun in 1963 and contains significant monuments of Bible production, including a 13th-century manuscript of the Vulgate, a vellum leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, the first edition of Luther’s translation of the Pentateuch (1523–24), the proof copy of John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), and a Bible designed and illustrated by Salvador Dali (1967).

The papers of Emmy Award-winningproducer Marian Rees have been donated to the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa (UI) Libraries. The materials include scripts, publicity, contracts, correspondence, reviews, photographs, posters, and videotapes of Rees’s 22 made-for-television movies. A 1951 UI graduate, Rees received 11 Emmy Awards and 36 Emmy nominations, two Golden Globe Awards, and has been nominated for many other distinguished prizes. Her films represent social issues such as civil rights and child and substance abuse.

A number of papers of Ernest L. Boyer,the noted educator who headed the Carnegie Institute for Teaching, have been donated to Messiah College in Pennsylvania.

Valerie Hotchkiss, director of Bridwell Library, and former director Decherd Turner display some of the Bibles that were donated to SMU.

A rare, complete, and extremely valuable collection of Henry David Thoreau’s works has been given to the University of Rochester by Raymond R. Borst, a member of the class of 1933. The collection of some 1.0 000 items includes first editions of all of Thoreau’s writings and a wide range of rare 19th-century magazines and pamphlets with articles by Thoreau. The collection even includes a piece of wood from the naturalist’s cabin at Walden.

A collection of more than12,000 Latvian books and 200 serials has been given to the University of Washington. Donated by the Latvian Studies Center associated with Western Michigan University, which is closing, the publications include the majority of Latvian materials published outside of Latvia since World War II, as well as publications from Latvia. The Center is also donating parts of the collection to other institutions.

The archive of the bilingual German/English literary magazine Dimension, edited for 26 years by professor A. Leslie Willson of the University of Texas at Austin, has been acquired by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The archive, which includes manuscripts, correspondence, graphic art, as well as audioand videotapes, came as a gift from Willson, who has also donated his working library of more than 3,000 titles. In more than 80 issues, Dimension has published the work of hundreds of German-language authors, including poems, plays, essays, short stories, radio plays, and excerpts from novels. ■