ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

• The Elmo Neale Pickerill Collection has been given to the BROADCAST PIONEERS LlRRARY by Pickerill’s cousin, Eugene M. Baker.

Pickerill studied radio with Guglielmo Marconi and learned to fly from the Wright brothers. In 1905, he helped build a ten-station wireless telegraphy network in Colorado for American inventor Lee De Forest, and three years later, he constructed a radio station atop New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. “Pick” was the first man to pioneer in air-to-ground communication (1910); to perpetuate a sea rescue via radio (1910); to present professional talent on radio (Geraldine Farrar, 1907); to receive a first-class radio license from the U.S. government (1911); and he was chief radio operator aboard the first toll paying ship (S.S. Kroonland) to pass through the Panama Canal (February 2, 1915).

After World War I duty in the Army Air Service, Pick joined RCA, where in 1929, he became head of its aeronautical department. One of the many experiments he conducted there was testing the use of television as a pilot aid. He retired in 1950 and died, at age 82, in 1968.

The gift to the Broadcast Pioneers Library documents Pickerill’s career through his correspondence with De Forest, Marconi, Sarnoff, Clarence D. Tuska, and others. It contains books, catalogs, photos, and memorabilia that represent a cross-section of electronic advancements made during this century.

The Broadcast Pioneers Library is located in the NAB Building, 1771 W Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20036.

• The Gloria Grace Griffen Western American Collection was dedicated November 10, 1977, at the University of Nevada-Reno Library.

The collection—one of the largest ever donated to the university—contains more than 3,600 books dealing with the trans-Mississippi West and 180 Indian artifacts that are good examples of American Indian culture and craftsmanship.

The artifacts, representative primarily of the Plains Indians, include clothing, tack equipment, baskets, pottery, toys, and weapons.

The collection was a gift from Robert and Grace Griffen of Reno in honor of their daughter, Gloria, a distinguished history professor and researcher of the West. The Griffens have actively supported the library for many years; Robert was the first president of the Friends of the University of Nevada library when the group was founded in the 1950s.

Griffen was an adopted son of the Blackfoot tribe of Montana, and many of the artifacts were gifts to his family from the tribe. The pieces date from the late nineteenth century to the 1950s.

• The Milne Library of the STATE UNIVERSITY of New York College at Geneseo has received a valuable addition to its collection of Wadsworth family papers through a gift from the Honorable James T. Wadsworth of Geneseo, New York, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Wadsworth has presented to the library approximately 3,500 papers relating to the land office and other business and personal activities of General James S. Wadsworth (1807-64) and his descendants, dating from the 1830s through the early decades of this century (1952). This grouping of papers complements the large collection (C&RL News, December, 1976) donated in 1976 by William P. Wadsworth, also of Geneseo.

The Wadsworth estate was divided between General Wadsworth and his brother William Wolcott Wadsworth (1810-52) in the 1840s after the death of their father James (1768-1844), an original settler and land agent in western New York’s Genesee Valley. The receipt of these records brings back together the accounts for lands in western New York, Ohio, and Michigan that were divided between the two sons at that time. For over 100 years they have been housed separately in the land offices at the Homestead and at Number 1, Main Street, Geneseo.

Of particular importance to future research in the geography and history of western New York will be the reunited collection of manuscript maps of the towns and settlements in the Phelps and Gorham s Purchase and the Pulteney estates west of the Genesee River. The maps show in great detail early landmarks and the names of early landowners from the 1790s through the 1850s. Although some duplicates and fragments of these maps are to be found in other collections such as the Ontario County Historical Society in Canandaigua, this is probably the most complete collection for the area in one repository.

• The University of North Carolina AT Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) has received a collection of books, photographs, recordings, and manuscripts from noted folklorist Annabel Morris Buchanan of Paducah, Kentucky.

The collection, assembled during Buchanan’s long career as a writer, performer, music teacher, composer, and student of the American folksong, was a gift from her and her children—Eleanor Crounse, Annabel Stainback, John P. Buchanan, and Patrick C. Buchanan. The family chose UNC-CH to house her collection because of the reputation and interests of Daniel Patterson, UNC-CH folklorist and professor of English, with whom she had corresponded.

The collection’s disc and tape recordings and tunebooks will be housed in the music department library and the manuscripts and photographs in the Southern Historical Collection of Wilson Library.

Buchanan, bom in Groesbeck, Texas, and wife of John Preston Buchanan of Marion, Virginia, was active in artistic circles in Virginia in the 1920s and 1930s. She published stories and verse in magazines such as The Southern Literary Messenger and The Lyric and wrote articles on gardening for national magazines.

The Annabel Morris Buchanan Collection includes forty-four nineteenth-century American religious tunebooks, some of which are rare Southern shape-note songsters. The manuscripts include scores of her own choral compositions (many of which were never published), unpublished transcriptions of folksongs she collected, and three unpublished book-length studies of folksong.

Also in the collection are papers and photographs relating to the White Top Fold Festival; manuscripts relating to her work with the National Federation of Music Clubs; and correspondence with publishers, musicians, and folklorists.

Other major folklore collections housed at UNC-CH include the Arthur Palmer Hudson Collection, Maude Minish Sutton Collection, Lamar Stringfield Collection, and John C. Campbell Collection.

• The Barnard College Library has acquired the personal library of Gabriela Mistral, who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1945 and was the first Latin American so honored. At present, the collection includes about 1,000 books, most of which are annotated by the poet or inscribed by literary friends. Barnard received the collection as a gift from Doris Dana, literary executrix for Mistral and alumna of Barnard College, where Mistral taught in 1930. Mistral’s first book, Desolación (1922), was published by the Hispanic Institute of Columbia University through the initiative of Federico de Onís.

Gabriela Mistral was not only an important poet but also an educator in Chile and Mexico. She served as consul for Chile in European posts as well as New York City, and as Chilean representative to the U N. Commission on the Status of Women. Her lifelong interest in and work for children and their welfare made her a “godmother” of UNICEF.

A book catalog of this collection will be published in early April by Barnard College Library. The catalog will cost $3.50 and will be available from Amy Brodt, Barnard College Library, Broadway at 117th St., New York, NY 10027. Books from the collection, manuscripts, and memorabilia will be displayed during the Gabriela Mistral symposium at Barnard April 7-8.

• The University of Arizona Library has acquired a large collection of manuscript and published materials relating to the life and writings of Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, who was a member of the 1871—72 expedition down the Colorado River, directed by John Wesley Powell. Dellenbaugh was the expedition’s artist and cartographer. In addition, he assisted the expedition’s photographer, Jack Hillers. He subsequently became nationally and internationally known for his books, such as A Canyon Voyage and Romance of the Colorado River, recalling the trip. He also published historical, biographical, and ethnological books, such as North Americans of Yesterday, Breaking the Wilderness, Fremont and '49, and, finally, The Life of General George Armstrong Custer.

Altogether, the collection contains more than 3,000 pages of original letters and manuscript notes, twenty original Dellenbaugh drawings of Southwestern subjects, copies of his books with his own manuscript notes, and nearly 11,500 pages of his personal diaries covering nearly thirty years of his life.

GRANTS

• Two libraries are among the beneficiaries of a $1,025,000 grant recently awarded HARVARD UNIVERSITY by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) under its Challenge Grant Program. They are the Harvard-Yenching Library of the College Library, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which has received $235,477, and the Frances Loeb Library of the Graduate School of Design, which has received $120,355. For their part, in accordance with the rules of the program, the two libraries must match their respective allotments at a ratio of three to one with nonfederal funding over the next three years.

The Harvard-Yenching Library will use its grant money for general library support and to attract additional funds for the maintenance and expansion of its role as an international resource for East Asian studies. Funds already raised by the library toward its three-to-one matching mark include $200,000 from the Japan Institute at Harvard, $175,000 from the Harvard Club of the Republic of China, $50,000 from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and $5,000 from the Chinn Ho Foundation of Honolulu. This is the final year, too, of an earlier NEH grant awarded the Harvard-Yenching Library to support the cataloging of Chinese rare books and the preservation microfilming of fragile East Asian materials.

The Frances Loeb Library plans on using its share to meet growing demands for current acquisitions, applying donations from the public sector toward a permanent endowment for acquisitions. The major part of matching funds thus far raised has been in the form of large private gifts from a small group of donors, as well as an increase—both in size and in number—of contributions by Friends of the library.

Harvard’s award of $1,025,000 represents the sum approved from a total university grant request of $3,264,650. Other departments of the university to draw on the Harvard grant are the Fogg Art Museum, the Busch-Reisinger Museum, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the East Asian Research Center, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Center for the Study of Oral Literature.

• Cornell University has received a $34,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to prepare the publication of an eight-volume listing of its library’s holdings on China.

Cornell has the most extensively cataloged collection in the world of books in Western languages on China and on the Chinese in other parts of the world. In addition, the collection, known as the Wason Collection, includes large holdings in the Chinese language, the fifth largest in the country.

The collection at Cornell is unique in that its books in Western languages, Chinese, and other Asian languages on the subject of China are in a single integrated catalog. This characteristic makes the collection of particular value to scholars, according to Paul Cheng, East Asia librarian and head of the project to publish the catalog.

The catalog is expected to be prepared for publication within a year and a half. It will be published by the Center for Chinese Research Material of the Association of Research Libraries. Copies of the eight-volume set will be available at all the leading libraries in the world and through the center.

The collection contains vast resources of Western knowledge of China as well as the documentation of the relations between China and the West. There are more than 38,000 volumes, especially in the humanities and social sciences. The serials collection numbers 2,400 titles, 600 of which are received currently. In addition to archival and newspaper collections in microform, the collection includes a number of copies of manuscripts from other important collections.

Integrated with the Western language collection is the Chinese collection, which has more than 200,000 volumes. This collection is the fifth largest in the country and both complements and supplements the other collections. There is a balance between humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences; and, although there is an emphasis on modem China, there are substantial holdings supporting classical Chinese studies. The collection contains more than 4,200 serial titles, representing the learned journals of the early Republican period as well as the literary journals, newspapers, and major periodicals of modern China.

A special strength of the Chinese collections is the completeness of the many series of Chinese classics that were reprinted after World War II. These collections (ts’ung shu) have been cataloged item by item, thus presenting an almost unique bibliographical record of more than 6,000 individual titles.

Another aspect of interest in the collection is the good representation of materials by and about Chinese in other parts of the world. There is also a significant number of Japanese books and periodicals dealing with China in the collection.

The collection at Cornell was started from a private library of 9,000 volumes donated by Charles William Wason to Cornell in 1918. The Wason Collection has grown into a library of more than 360,000 volumes, with about 260,000 volumes related to China in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages. Support for much of the growth in Chinese material since 1961 has come from money provided by the Ford and Mellon foundations.

MEETING SUMMARIES

• The New England Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries held a workshop on Graphics IN Lirraries at the Monroe

C. Gutman Library, Harvard University, on October 28, 1977. The meeting focused on ways in which librarians can develop more sophisticated approaches to all forms of graphic design.

James Robison, director of media for the Newton (Mass.) Public Schools, delivered the keynote address on “Principles of Good Graphics.” Robison used slides to demonstrate such basic elements as linear relations, placement of space, and organization of symbols. He noted that signs tend to be overloaded with print. Discipline is needed in filling space. Using the principles of contrast, repetition, and harmony, one can achieve a balance between letters and graphic symbols.

Katherine Selfridge, head of the printing and graphics department at the Architects Collaborative, discussed “Signage: Planning and Producing Effective Signs and Signage Systems.” Sign systems should embody graphic and functional relationships. They require planning and cohesive implementation. A good system should explain the organization s functioning clearly and attractively. Sign information must be organized into priorities with the importance given a piece of information reflected in the size of the sign. Large signs identify major services and departments while medium-sized signs indicate specific areas within departments. Signs giving procedures and rules should be smaller and pleasantly stated. All sign systems need clarity of message, noticeability, maintainability, consistency of format, and adaptability for future needs.

In a session on “Practical Newslettering,” Norm Sperling, assistant editor of Sky and Telescope magazine, stressed the importance of eyecatching and timely formats to convey the necessary information to readers. Illustrating his presentation with the worst newsletters available, he outlined the basic features of newsletters and the effective arrangement of type and blank space to create an attractive layout.

In the afternoon a “Graphic Aids Seminar” was conducted by Steve Banis, regional manager of Letraset USA, Inc., to show the wide variety of commercial media available to aid libraries in designing and producing their own graphics.

The program concluded with a series of demonstrations: (1) “Home-grown Graphics,” by Janet Freedman, Salem State College, and David Kelley and Al Lee, Fitchburg State College; (2) “Lettering and Sign-Making Devices,” by Arline Willar and George Robinson, Northeastern University; and (3) “Visuals to be Photographed,” by Chris Bowman, Harvard University.

Malcolm C. Hamilton, the program chairman, and his committee—Helen Aiello, Sherrie Bergman, Janet Freedman, Eva Jonas, David Kelley, Ellen Levin, Adeline Oakley, Guest Perry, and Arline Willar—successfully produced a workshop that instructed the 165 participants in graphics through excellent professional presentations and through the sophisticated use of graphics in the program materials themselves.— Kathleen Gunning, Reference Librarian, Brown University Library.

• During the week of October 9-14, 1977, forty librarians from twenty-six states and the District of Columbia met on the campus of the State University of New York at Albany to learn about and discuss problems of Library SERVICE to the Adult Handicapped in Public and Academic Lirraries.

Funded under Title IIB of the Higher Education Act as a library training institute, the program was planned and directed by Lucille Whalen, associate dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Albany, and Joan Miller, associate, Resources for the Handicapped, New York State Education Department.

The keynote speech, “The Handicapped in Today’s Society,” was given by Keith Wright, dean of the College of Library and Information Services at the University of Maryland. During the week the historical and attitudinal aspects of the topic were covered by Genevieve Casey, professor of library science at Wayne State University; Ruth Velleman, director of the Human Resources Center at Albertson, New York; and Dr. Maxine Mays of the Ohio Department of Mental Health.

Architecture and problems of physical access were presented by June Shapiro, assistant director of the Division of Library Development in Connecticut, and Stanley Tigerman, Chicago architect who designed the Chicago Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.

Two handicapped nonlibrarians represented the library users’ point of view: Hannan Selvin, a blind sociology professor from SUNY Stony Brook, and Sally Donnan, principal personnel examiner for New York State Civil Service.

Sharon Hammer, librarian at the Washington Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, described outreach services in Seattle, Washington. Network services supporting such programs were described by Ellen Hahn, assistant chief for network development, Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped at the Library of Congress.

One session was devoted to information systems, clearinghouses, and data bases, with a demonstration of appropriate on-line retrieval systems. In another session, Keith Wright described and demonstrated various aids and equipment designed for the handicapped. Some of the equipment had been seen by the participants the previous day during field trips to facilities for the handicapped in the area, such as the New York State Regional Division for the Blind and Physically Handicapped and the O. D. Heck Developmental Center. A panel on Thursday afternoon presented ongoing programs in public and academic libraries.

The final session was devoted to two specialized topics: bibliotherapy, presented by Grace Lyons, chief of special services at the D. C. Public Library; and the role of the governor’s conferences in serving the handicapped by Bettina Wolff, administrative officer at the New York State Library.

Each participant is expected to go back to his or her own library or system and present a similar institute or workshop on the same topic. The fact that over twice as many applied for the institute as could be accepted attests to the fact that there is great need for further information on improving services to the handicapped. The proceedings for this institute are being prepared and should be available within a few months. For further information, contact: Dr. Lucille Whalen, School of Library and Information Science, State University of New York, Albany, NY 12222; (518) 457-8575!

• One of the largest gatherings of librarians and media and information specialists ever held in Virginia met at the first joint conference of the Virginia Library Association and the Virginia Educational Media Association.

With a theme of TECHNOLOGY, INFORMATION, AND SOCIETY, the joint conference combining the annual meetings of both organizations took place November 17-19, 1977, at the mountaintop resort, the Homestead, a national historic landmark in Hot Springs.

Keynote speaker Donald P. Ely told the 750 conferees that media services in education have reached a peak of technological development and that what is needed now is not new methods but better quality. Ely said the decline of scholastic aptitude scores has stimulated a back-to-basics attitude toward education, but he warned that an either/or attitude toward educational TV and reading and writing skills is a trap.

"We must become pioneers in the technological jungle of media, and with boldness and originality educate people how to use TV, film, and computers rightly,” he said. Television has infinite potential for education, according to Ely, but information specialists must master use of TV and other modem communications techniques. Ely is professor of communications at Syracuse University and director of the Center for Study of Information and Education.

Eric Moon, president of the American Library Association, told the conferees that librarians have done little to influence formulation of a national information policy. He urged action before business and industry “exploit this energy source as they have coal and oil,” with little concern for the public good. Moon is also president of Scarecrow Press and former Library Journal editor.

Alphonse F. Trezza, executive director of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, also addressed the question of national information policy. He told convention delegates to prepare now for the first White House Conference on Libraries and Information Science to be held in 1979. Trezza said the conference is designed to produce action, but librarians must first determine at local and state levels what Americans want included in a national information policy.

American Librarieseditor Art Plotnik startled and entertained the conventioneers with satiric songs, sermons, and imitations punctuated by sound effects. Speaking on American library behavior, Plotnik said librarians have a “schizoid compulsion” to form special interest groups and consequently the profession is “in danger of losing all coherence." He also said librarians argue minor questions too seriously and “count everything—except what counts.”

Other prominent speakers included Daniel Gore, library director at Macalester College; Johnnie Givens, executive director of the Southeastern Library Association; Carol C. Henderson, assistant director of the ALA Washington office; Frank Norwood, executive director of the Joint Council on Educational Telecommunications; and Howard Hitchens, executive director of the Association for Educational Technology.

• Quantifying Quality—a workshop on performance measures in libraries and networks, was sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the American Society for Information Science September 8—9, 1977.

The theme was provocative, although some of the speakers seemed to stray from paying strict attention to the apparent paradox of the title. Kjell Samuelson, chairman of the informatics program of the Royal Institute of Technology and University of Stockholm, keynote speaker of the workshop, described vast celestial spaces filled with satellites that are going 90 percent unused, hanging there idle when they could be available for the transmission of digital information if we could reach an international technological commitment to such a project.

James Dolby, a mathematician from San Jose State University, described performance measurement as first trying to find out what the system does and how people use it, and he cautioned that change should come very carefully and only after listening to the user. He suggested going to the reference desk before trying to redesign the library.

Another mathematician, Howard Resnikoff of the University of California, Irvine, Department of Mathematics, discussed the need to measure performance to be able to quantify quality. If the data base is very small, he said, there is probably no need to measure its quality. But large-scale systems need to have quantifiable measures to test their usefulness. The link between badly designed archive systems and the measurement of their usefulness has not been clearly recognized.

Libraries are the largest organized structures in civilization. The desire to attempt to provide coherent access to library collections suggests that we are indeed very interested in their organization, but, when discussing other forms of handling, storing, and accessing these materials, we should realize that nothing we have compares in complexity with our large archives. Therefore, we cannot look to others for guidelines, because no one has attempted anything like this before.

He gave some rather stunning figures on the number of characters in an article, a book, the UCI Library, and the Library of Congress, relating these to the various storage capacities of existing types of hardware and pointing out that mass storage systems, as they increase in capacity, are also decreasing in cost. One video disc, for example, could store the equivalent of 1,600 books. Annual world production could be stored on twenty discs per year in digitally coded form.

One concluded, after the various remarks, that quantifying quality is not a contradiction in terms or a paradox but a very difficult series of jobs that must be done to insure that our information needs are met—and met in a useful, productive manner.—University of California, Irvine, Library Items.

MEETINGS & WORKSHOPS

February 22-23: Online: Phase II is the name of a seminar-workshop to be held in Austin, Texas. The program, sponsored by the Texas chapters of the Special Libraries Association and the American Society for Information Science, is aimed at users of on-line systems who have had a year or more experience. Although the emphasis is to be on the practical aspects of on-line use, some theoretical issues will also be discussed. A special feature will be a two-hour session on online cataloging.

Registration fee: $20 for members who preregister; $30 for nonmembers and for members registering at the meeting, and $10 for students. To register, contact Nancy Tissing, Texas Medical Association Library, 1810 North Lamar, Austin, TX 78701; (512) 477-6074.

March 10: On-Line Literature Searching is the theme of a workshop to be presented by the Graduate School of Library Science, Drexel University. For further information, contact Director, Continuing Professional Education, Drexel University, 32nd and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

March 16-17: The Southeastern Conference on Approaches to Bibliographic Instruction will be hosted by the Robert Scott Small Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina. The conference, intended for academic librarians presently involved in instructional programs as well as those who are initiating such programs, will address itself to several areas of concern in bibliographic instruction: objectives for bibliographic instruction; instructional evaluation; faculty-librarian communication techniques; bibliographic instruction in the Southeast; grants available for bibliographic instruction programs; and a panel on “Reaching the Student through Bibliographic Instruction: Which Method Works?,” which will feature presentations focusing on different approaches in the philosophy and application of bibliographic instruction programs. Registration will be limited to 150 persons.

For further information, contact Cerise Oberman-Soroka, Robert Scott Small Library, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC 29401.

March 20: Current Developments in Government Documents is the theme of a workshop to be sponsored by the New England Library Network (NELINET) Government Documents Task Group. It will be held at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. For further information, contact Mrs. Jan Swanbeck, Baptist Library, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167.

MARCH 30-APRIL 2: Illinois State University (ISU), in cooperation with the Illinois State Library, will conduct a PERSONNEL EVALUATION Institute for Librarians with a grant of $15,000 from the Library Services and Construction Act.

Cosponsors of the institute are the Department of Information Sciences and the College of Continuing Education and Public Service at ISU.

The institute will focus on information and skills needed to evaluate the performance of library staff. The format will include large-group sessions, small-group workshops and one-to-one conversation.

Participation is limited to 105 public, academic, special, and school librarians. Those who attended the first such institute two years ago in Charleston will be given preference to attend the one at ISU.

Forrest G. Wisely, assistant professor of information sciences at ISU, is the institute coordinator. More information is available from him at ISU.

APRIL 7: The School of Library and Information Science, State University of New York at Albany, will offer a workshop entitled ANGLO- American Cataloging Rules, Second EDITION: A Preview. For further information, see the December issue of C&RL News.

APRIL 20-21: The Archives-Libraries Committee of the African Studies Association will hold its Spring 1978 meeting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition the Cooperative Africana Microform Project (CAMP) will meet April 21. Meetings are always open to interested colleagues. For more information, contact Ms. Yvette Scheven, Chairperson, Archives-Libraries Committee, 220A University Library, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, or see Africana Libraries Newsletter, no. 16 (March 1978).

May 4-5: Project LOEX (Library Orientation/ Instructional Exchange), the national clearinghouse for academic library instruction located on the campus of Eastern Michigan University, is planning the EIGHTH Annual CONFERENCE On Library Orientation/Instruction For Academic Libraries. The conference will be held on the Eastern Michigan University campus, Ypsilanti, Michigan.

For further information, see the January issue of C&RL News.

May 7-19: The College of Library and Information Services, University of Maryland, is planning the Twelth Annual Library Administrators Development Program. For further information, see the January issue of C&RL News.

May 22-24: The 1978 Mid-Year Meeting of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) will be held at Rice University, Houston, Texas. The conference theme is “Management of Information Systems.”

The program includes: (1) sessions planned by several ASIS Special Interest Groups: (2) a panel session on user education for on-line systems; (3) a session on sociological aspects of information handling in bureaucratic institutions; (4) an in-depth workshop on decision-making/problemsolving; and (5) a preconference workshop on forecasting, modeling, and simulation.

For further information on the seventh ASIS Mid-Year Meeting, contact Stephanie Normann, School of Public Health Library, University of Texas at Houston, Box 20186, Houston, TX 77025. For registration details, contact ASIS Headquarters, 1155 Sixteenth St., N.W., Washington, DC 20036.

July 24-August 18. The Twelfth Annual Archives Institute of the Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, will include general instruction in basic concepts and practices of archival administration, experience in research use, and management of traditional and modem documentary materials. The program focuses upon an integrated archives/records management approach to records keeping and features lectures, seminars, and supervised laboratory work. Instructors are experienced archivists and records managers from a variety of institutions. Emphasis is on appraisal, arrangement, and description of both governmental and private records. Other topics include records control and scheduling, reference services, preservation techniques, and archival administration. Enrollment is limited to eighteen participants. Fee: $225 for noncredit participants; $576 for six quarter hours’ graduate credit from Emory University. A certificate is awarded to those who successfully complete the institute course. Housing is available at a modest rate. Application deadline: May 15, 1978. For further information, write to Training Officer, Archives Institute, Georgia Department of Archives and History, 330 Capitol Ave., Atlanta, GA 30334.

MISCELLANY

• The University Libraries at the UNIVERSITY of Southern California have reported significant increases in the library budget for 1977- 78. The library was recognized as first priority in the university budget.

The prime emphasis was given to the books and serials budget, which was increased by 53.4 percent in a combination of regular and supplemental funds. Increased allocations were given to the funds so that the library will spend the same amount on monographs as it does for serials.

A salary pool was created for the library faculty to be applied, based on merit. It was recognized that the librarians’ salaries were lower than their peers in comparable institutions. The subsequent salary increases for all professional ranks averaged 12.3 percent. In addition, the budget for student wages support has been increased by 16.4 percent.

USC began the year with the installation of a security system in its Doheny Research Library, OCLC in the catalog department, a six-month evaluation of Bro-Dart’s automated Instant Response Order System in the acquisitions department, and, in cooperation with the library school, a conversion of the library science library shelflist to create a COM catalog in the fall. Outside funding is being sought for an automated circulation system, with the goal of installation in 1978.

• Stanford University has announced the appointment of associate provost Edward E. Shaw as interim director of the BALLOTS Center (BALLOTS = Bibliographic Automation of Library Operations using the Time-sharing System). Shaw replaces Hank Epstein, who is forming Information Transform Industries, a consulting company in the area of library automation and computer systems.

The appointment of Shaw, a senior university officer, to the interim directorship reflects Stanford’s basic commitment for the development of BALLOTS. Hereafter, BALLOTS will report directly to the provost’s office rather than the Stanford Center for Information Processing (SCIP). This transfer reflects the importance BALLOTS has to the university and the university’s commitment to guide the BALLOTS Center to independent, nonprofit status.

The university’s goals are two-fold. First, the university desires that BALLOTS evolve into a national library automation network focusing upon the unique needs of academic and research libraries and their universities more generally. Second, because Stanford has close ties with libraries in the western United States, BALLOTS should be made available to all types of libraries in California and adjacent states.

Additionally, Stanford announces the appointment of John Schroeder as associate director for technical services for BALLOTS. Schroeder has been manager of Interactive and Database Systems of SCIP and brings a strong technical and managerial complement to BALLOTS.

• At the request of the Library of Congress, the Council on Library Resources, Inc. (CLR), has undertaken the preparation of a detailed implementation plan for a national periodicals center. The plan will contain the technical requirements necessary to operate such a center, including location and design of a facility, equipment, personnel, services, collection, management, data processing support systems, schedules, prices, and costs. The study will require approximately eight months to complete.

Creation of a national periodicals center was the central recommendation of a report commissioned and, earlier this year, endorsed by the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The report proposes that the Library of Congress (LC) be the responsible agent in the implementation of the center, which would contain a comprehensive, dedicated collection of periodicals to supplement local resources.

LC will form an advisory group to consider the implications of the technical plan and other matters related to a national periodicals center. If the Library of Congress and the committee confirm the recommendation that an LC-administered center is the most appropriate route to effective sharing of periodicals and if the necessary funds are available, LC will undertake to establish and operate the proposed lending facility. It is anticipated that the technical plan resulting from the study will be usable by another agency should LC find it infeasible to assume management responsibility.

• The library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will take a big step into the electronic age late this summer with a computerized circulation system.

Students will know something has changed when they find typewriter-size computer terminals placed throughout the library and in all thirty-five departmental libraries. Gone will be the yellow, notched cards they had to fill out— one for each book.

Instead, library users will turn to the keyboard in search of a book. They—or a librarian—will type out only the first five letters of a book’s title and the first four letters of the author's name, or the book’s call number.

The terminal screen will answer immediately, telling if the book is in, at which library or libraries it is located, or, if it is out, when it is due back and if anyone has reserved it. If it is in, a punch of the proper buttons will bring it to the checkout desk.

“Just not having to fill out those cards ought to make everybody happy,” said Hugh Atkinson, university librarian. A student will have to provide only his or her ID number and the book number to check out a text.

• Increased student enrollments in the nation’s colleges are placing added strains on hard-pressed public libraries. In recent years, the number of enrollees in publicly supported four-year colleges has tripled, while those in two-year institutions jumped five times. The bulk of these students regularly utilize public libraries to do their homework and research projects.

According to a fact sheet on library users released by the National Citizens Emergency Committee to Save Our Public Libraries, part of the reason for heavy student use of public libraries is that many academic libraries are understaffed, lack adequate collections, and operate on short hours. Students are forced to go where they can find the books they need when they need them, usually their public library.

The phenomenal recent growth of commuting colleges, where students live at home and travel to classes, has made community public libraries more convenient places for students to work, particularly in urban areas, thereby adding to budgetary pressures.

In addition to traditional college-age student library users, the U.S. has a growing number of part-time adult learners enrolled in higher education. For the first time in U.S. history, a majority of students above the high school level today are adults who are getting their education on a part-time basis. This growing number of older, working students is adding to the pressures on public library resources.

• Nine years after it officially began and fifteen years after Earl Warren gave his approval and the search for funding began, the Regional Oral History Office (ROHO) of the University of

California, Berkeley, announces the completion of the Earl Warren Era Oral History Project.

Focusing on the years 1925-53, 146 persons prominent in the areas of politics, governmental administration, and criminal justice were interviewed about their experiences during the Warren era in California. The resulting fifty-three bound volumes of single-spaced transcriptions are now available for deposit in manuscript libraries for research.

Funding for the extensive project, indicates Willa Baum, Regional Oral History Office director, was a first for ROHO in variety of sources. A matching grant offer from National Endowment for the Humanities, renewed several times, was the impetus for donations from friends and colleagues of the chief justice or specific interviewees, historical groups, the Friends of the Bancroft Library, Law Clerks of Earl Warren, and several California foundations. The last year of the project was funded by the California Heritage Preservation Commission.

Warren Project Director Amelia Fry and her staff of four interviewers have now moved on to the next political period in California, the Goodwin Knight-Pat Brown era. The project will take three years to complete.

• Development of a structural framework and definitions for collecting and reporting library statistics has progressed rapidly with the assistance of representatives of the AMERICAN Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and the National Center for Educational Statistics.

Measurement categories have been established for organizational characteristics, revenues, personnel, facilities, assets, activity levels, user groups, and performance. These categories can be allocated over the programmatic functions of administrative services, user services, technical/ collection services, instructional services, and support services. Three levels of detail have been described to provide options for the “fineness” of data to be collected by an individual library, depending upon its size and complexity. The structure and definitions were pilot-tested by five volunteer institutions in the Pennsylvania State College System.

Outcome measures, as expected, have proved to be the most difficult statistics to establish. While various measures of activity can be employed, it would be useful to be able to evaluate the impact of the activity on a library’s effectiveness. A spring meeting of several researchers and practicing library managers concerned with measuring library effectiveness was most helpful in bringing the state of the art to bear on this aspect of the statistical data base.

The project ended this summer with the publication of a description of the recommended library statistical data base structure and definitions for formats and data elements. Copies may be ordered from the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS), P.O. Drawer P, Boulder, CO 80302. Apply for price.

• As the general economy looks forward to solid, if not spectacular, growth during the next five years, book price inflation is expected to abate to rates averaging from 51/2 to 9 percent, according to a comprehensive new study of publishing industry trends and prospects.

As a result, the study predicts, publishers’ unit sales will recover somewhat, with a projected 4.2 percent increase between 1976 and 1981, although they will still be running well behind dollar sales, which are expected to increase by an additional 44.2 percent during this period.

These are among numerous conclusions drawn by Book Industry Trends—1977 ($275; $150 to libraries), a research report which for the first time provides economic analyses and marketing forecasts for the entire book field. Written by John P. Dessauer, Paul D. Doebler, and E. Wayne Nordberg, the volume was published on November 1 by the Book Industry Study Group, Inc., a not-for-profit organization devoted to objective research into basic book industry situations and problems.

The first section of the report, written by Paul D. Doebler, industry consultant and contributing editor of Publishers Weekly, reviews major industry trends, their history and likely future course. Certain industry segments, Doebler notes, such as book manufacturing, have passed through cycles well ahead of other sectors, such as publishing and retailing—providing significant clues regarding the future course of these sectors.

In retailing, Doebler foresees the formation of smaller chains of stores but predicts the likelihood of business failures by firms that have tried to grow too rapidly. He forecasts the growing focus of marketing efforts around subject themes in books, leading to ultimate specialization among bookstores, which will emphasize unique areas in which they can provide superior service over their competitors.

In the library area, Doebler suggests that the primary need will be, not so much technology or new services, but, as in other industry segments, better-quality professional management to cope with the financial challenges facing these institutions.

Hardbound and paperback books—but in particular paperbacks—will continue to gain favor with general consumers, according to Dessauer. Dollar sales of retailers and direct mail marketers will continue to rise at annual rates ranging between 8 and 12 percent.

Declining school and college enrollments and a fiscally conservative national mood will continue to affect the hard-hit educational and library markets, Dessauer observes, with little hope for sufficient federal largesse to bail them out.

The Book Industry Study Group, Inc., was founded in December 1975 as a not-for-profit corporation supported by its members who are publishers, book manufacturers, paper manufacturers, retailers, wholesalers, librarians, and others associated with the book industry. The group has thus far published three studies: on book industry information needs, on paper availability, and on future library acquisitions. Two major research projects are currently in progress: on consumer demographics and attitudes and on the relationship of manufacturing capacity to publishers’ demands for printing.

For further information, contact: John P. Dessauer, Book Industry Study Group, P.O. Box 1174, Darien, CT 06820.

• Public libraries in the U.S.—both large and small—have extensive and high quality holdings in the humanities. The finding was reported by Herbert Goldhor, director of the Graduate School of Library Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, at the conclusion of a study conducted by the school’s Library Research Center for the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“We used a sample of nineteen libraries, large and small, scattered over the U.S.,” Goldhor said. “One of our major conclusions is that books in the humanities constitute about 11 percent of all books in these libraries, 15 percent of all adult books, and 22 percent of all adult nonfiction.

“We also attempted to evaluate the quality of these holdings by checking a sample of 6,400 titles against seven different lists of recommended books. Fifty-two percent of all the books appeared in three or more of these lists, 32 percent in one or two, and only 16 percent in none. This is a better record in terms of quality than we have found in any other subject area we’ve looked at,” he said.

“We looked at four size groups, ranging from small libraries serving less than 25,000 to large libraries over 500,000. The most surprising thing to me is that the very small libraries have proportionately as many books in the humanities as larger libraries and their quality is at least as good, maybe a little better,” Goldhor said.