ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

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News from the field

Acquisitions

•George Washington University, Washington, D.C., has acquired a number of manuscript and archival collections to support research on the past and contemporary history of the city of Washington. One collection is the papers of Polly Shackleton, who served on the D.C. Council for 16 years; the collection includes information on planning, zoning, and human services. The Library has also acquired the records of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, a private citizens’ organization overseeing major city planning issues. Organized in 1923, the Committee has been active in areas such as conservation, historic preservation, and land use planning. Other acquisitions of note include the archives of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, consisting of 200 linear feet of records dating from 1889 to 1980; the archives of the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington; and a group of papers on the history of the Metrorail system, including plans, memoranda, reports, and oral histories.

•Idaho State University, Pocatello, has received the entire library of Glenn E. Tyler, late chairman of the History Department and an ISU faculty member from 1955 to 1975. The approximately 22,000 books and manuscripts cover a variety of topics, with noteworthy collections on the history of science and the Reformation period, especially Calvinism and Puritanism. More than a hundred rare volumes include the collected sermons of John Calvin on the Book of Job, printed in 1584. Other notable items are a second edition of Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (1702), Isaac Newton’s Observations upon the Prophesies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of John (1733), Doumergue’s seven-volume biography of Calvin, and a group of works on English and American Puritanism. In accordance with Tyler’s wish, all of the books except those requiring special care and attention will become part of the regular circulating collection. They will be identified by a specially designed bookplate.

•Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, has been chosen as the repository for the archives of the Association of American Universities. The records consist of correspondence, committee minutes and reports, annual conference materials, and office files. Founded in 1900, the AAU now includes 54 American and 2 Canadian universities. Johns Hopkins University was a founding member.

•The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., has acquired 44 volumes that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the gift of Mary Gresham Machen, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Machen Jr. and Mr. and Mrs. C. Harvey Palmer Jr. The books are part of the collection Jefferson formed after he sold his library to Congress in 1815 to replace books burned by British soldiers during the War of 1812. That library became the foundation of the Library of Congress. In his later years, Jefferson’s literary interests focused on the classics, in their original languages as well as in English. In the collection is an eight–volume set of the Works of Tacitus, Jefferson’s favorite Roman author, and a 12- volume collection of Cicero’s Letters. Both contain marginal corrections of grammatical errors in Jefferson’s hand. Jefferson’s copy of Plato’s Republic—a work he disliked—and works by Aristophanes, Horace and Homer are also included. The collection was first purchased in 1829 by Lewis Henry Machen, later principal clerk of the Senate, at an auction following Jefferson’s death, and passed through successive generations of his family.

•Portland State University, Oregon, has received the Italian history research library developed by George A. Carbone, professor emeritus of history. Consisting of more than 1,300 volumes, the collection includes books and pamphlets on 19th- and 20th-century Italy and the diplomatic history of Europe, particularly since World War II. Of principal importance are materials related to the unification effort of 1848-1849 led by Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). Included are many unusual items such as a copy of La Proprieta Fondiaria e La Popolazioni Agricole in Lombardi: Studi Economici by Conte Stefano Jacini (Milan, 1854), the monumental Storia del Risorgimento (eight volumes, 1933-1965), and the writings of historians such as Carlo Cattaneo (Scritti in 20 volumes), Benedetto Croce, Antonio Monti and Carlo Tivaroni. There are also a considerable number of volumes on the Fascist movement of 1922-1943 by its leaders; among them are works by Luigi Villari, Count Carlo Sforza, and General Francesco Rossi.

•Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, has purchased a substantial portion of the library of noted anthropologist Eleanor Burke Leacock. Leacock chaired the Department of Anthropology at City College/CUNY from 1972 until her death last April, and is considered a leading figure in the emergence of feminist anthropology. Leacock’s historical and comparative scholarship dealt with issues of class, gender, and racial oppression; among her best-known work was her 1972 edition of Friedrich Engels’ classic, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

•The University of California, Los Angeles, has acquired the papers of famed Japanese-American journalist Yoneo Sakai (1900-1978) from his family. As foreign correspondent for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Sakai traveled to Spain, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia during the 1930s, later covering hostilities in China and Manchuria as a war correspondent. In 1938 he was sent to the United States, where he was interned briefly during World War II before being commissioned to teach the Japanese language at the University of Colorado. Following the war he developed a weekly radio news program, “Amerika Dayori,” for the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation. Included among his papers are writings such as Amerika Tsushin (Letters from America), nos. 1-4; Vagabondo Tsushin (Letters From a Vagabond); Zoku Vagabondo Tsushin (Sequel to Letters from a Vagabond); Amerika Zakkicho (A Notebook from America); Nikkei Shimin Yuki (A Japanese-American Citizen, Yuki); and Sakai Yoneo Shishu (A Collection of Poems by Yoneo Sakai). Also included are notes and manuscripts from “Amerika Dayori”; documents, correspondence, and newspaper clippings regarding the major interviews he had with important political and literary figures of Japan and the United States; photographs he took as a traveling correspondent; and many unpublished notes and manuscripts from his later years in Washington, D.C.

•The University of Missouri-Kansas City recently established the Marr Sound Archives, a collection of American popular music and spoken- word recordings. The archives are named for Gaylord Marr, associate professor of communication studies, who has been collecting sound recordings for 35 years. Marr serves as curator of the archives, which contain 80,000 recordings in a variety of formats including Edison cylinders, music box discs, grand roller organ rolls, 78’s, LP’s, tapes, and 16- inch radio transcription discs. There is also an assemblage of vintage playback equipment.

•The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, has established the Eugene Ormandy Memorial, which will include a new listening facility and an archive documenting his life and work. Ormandy (1899-1985) was conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra for more than 40 years and was considered a master of the Romantic repertory. Ormandy’s music collection, correspondence, and memorabilia have been donated by his widow. The Philadelphia Orchestra and WFLN have contributed the complete file of Orchestra broadcast tapes from 1960 through 1981. The listening center will allow students to study performances on digitally remastered tapes as well as on conventional LP and tape formats. A grant of $25,000 from the Presser Foundation of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, will help support the listening center.

•Wheaton College, Illinois, has received a collection of archival material from the Voice of Calvary Ministries, a black evangelical organization headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi. Founded in 1970, the VOCM operates a health clinic, a thrift store, and a housing redevelopment corporation as well as a church, and has organized boycotts of local businesses, managed outlet stores, and sponsored educational workshops. The VOCM records include administrative correspondence, annual reports and audits, promotional materials, publications, curriculum materials from its International Study Center, articles by organization leaders, news and prayer letters, Development Department records, interview transcripts for articles, summer volunteer files, Health Center education curricula and leadership development curricula, and records of its housing redevlopment corporation. Taped oral history interviews with organizational leaders recalling the civil rights unrest of the 1960s are also included.

Grants

•Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, has received a Title II-C grant of $210,000 to convert monographic holdings in the John Hay Library to machine–readable form. The grant will fund the first year of a three-year project. The majority of the 70,000 records to be converted the first year will be from the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, the largest of its kind in the world. Holdings from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection and other special collections will also be made available, on RLIN and OCLC.

•The Denver Public Library, Colorado, recently received a $5,000 LSCA grant to expand its collection of Vietnamese materials. Last fall, a “focus group” of community leaders expressed the desire for books in Vietnamese. Approximately 5,000 people of Vietnamese origin live in the Denver metropolitan area and many live or work near the Ross-Barnum branch of the Library. Popular books in the new collection include romances, martial arts novels, books on Vietnamese traditions and folklore, and books on citizenship and English language instruction. Musical scores are also very popular, as well as books on self-improvement and personal success.

•George Washington University’s Special Collections Department, Washington, D.C., has been awarded a Title II–C grant of $71,836 for a project entitled “Collections: D.C.” By planning and executing a MARC-based institutional survey, project staff will build a multi-institutional bibliographic database of research resources in the greater Washington area pertaining to the study of the District of Columbia and the metropolitan region. The database is meant to facilitate research and aid in developing recommendations for ongoing, multi- institutional coordination of bibliographic control and collection processing. Participants in the survey will include, among others, the District of Columbia Public Library and the Columbia Historical Society.

•Indiana University’s Music Library, Bloomington, has been awarded two Title II-C grants, one for the cataloging of operatic materials and the other received indirectly, as part of a cooperative project being coordinated at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester. The opera grant, for more than $103,000, will fund the cataloging of 5,000 sound recordings from the second part of the Alvin M. Ehret Vocal Recording Collection. The collection consists of some 24,000 long-playing records donated to the Library. Indiana has also received $54,000 as part of a project initiated by the Associated Music Libraries Group to convert its remaining music holdings to machine-readable form. A pilot project concluded in December 1986 involved Indiana, UC-Berkeley, and Eastman.

•Kent State University, Ohio, has received a gift of $10,000 from an anonymous donor which will be used to establish an endowment for materials on the history of printing and publishing. Kent State presently owns the World Publishing Company History of Printing and Publishing Collection of about 3,000 books on the history of bookmaking and the publishing trades, as well as a variety of trade periodicals, incunabula, and original works by early printers. The present endowment will be administered through the Special Collections Department.

•Michigan State University, East Lansing, and Wayne State University, Detroit, are among five Michigan research libraries awarded a total of more than $4.7 million by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek. The funds will be used to develop an interactive database of their combined holdings. Michigan State has received $900,000, which it will use to convert some 700,000 remaining records from its card catalog. Wayne State will convert a half-million remaining records with its grant of $790,500. The Library of Michigan in Lansing, the Detroit Public Library, and the University of Michigan are also participants in the project, scheduled for completion in 1989. The five institutions have combined holdings in excess of 12 million.

•The New York State Library, Albany, has received a grant of $50,575 under the Higher Education Act for strengthening research library collections. The Manuscripts and Special Collections Division will use the funds to make its holdings available on RLIN.

•The State University of New York at Buffalo has been awarded a $155,000 Title II–C grant to create 5,500 catalog records on RLIN for the microform set Latin American Documents, issued by General Microfilm. The collection consists primarily of 19th- and 20th-century publications in the public domain on a wide variety of topics. Grant funds will also be used to acquire additional RLIN terminals. The project is expected to run through the end of 1988.

•Texas Tech University, Lubbock, is a recipient of ALA’s H.W. Wilson Staff Development Grant for implementing team management among the employees of its libraries. The $2,500 company- sponsored award was presented at the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco. Texas Tech’s team management program, which encourages employees’ understanding of the Libraries’ mission by involving them in various levels of the decisionmaking process, was begun in November 1986.

•The University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Special Collections, will receive a $1 million endowment from the J. Paul Getty Trust for the purchase of European manuscripts and books, primarily Italian, made before 1600 A.D. The grant is the largest endowment fund overseen by the Department. It will be paid in two installments, the first half this year and the remainder after July 1, 1988.

•The University of Illinois at Chicago’s University Library has been awarded $69,000 by the Council on Library Resources for a cooperative program with the UIC Institute for the Humanities. Under the project, “A Look to the Future: Planning Issues for the Research Library,” Fellows of the Institute will join faculty of the Library to investigate the process of scholarly communication and help to plan the Library’s role in that process. Participants will discuss the changing ways in which scholars are conducting and disseminating research and suggest ways in which research libraries might change in response to these patterns.

•The University of Texas at Arlington has been awarded a second year of funding by the UT Board of Regents under the “Library Enhancement Program.” The UTA Libraries will receive $289,000 in FY 1987-88 to complete a five-year automation program begun after an initial award last year. The NOTIS system is being installed, with investigation of local area network applications and mass storage optical peripherals underway. In addition, the Libraries will receive $1 million to improve library collections in support of graduate and research programs as part of a four-year, multimillion dollar plan. The UT Regents have also approved $26,500 for the Special Collections Division to acquire the Franklin Madis Collection. In two parts, the collection consists of various legal documents from 1722 to 1877 and the papers of Jesus de la Garza, an officer in the Mexican army in the 1830s and 1840s, and his family.

•The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has received a $1.5 million matching grant from University Microfilms International of Ann Arbor, Michigan, to expand its microform holdings and acquire new equipment. Tulsa is one of five research institutions to which UMI extended the offer. The Library plans to order complete sets of many titles now partially held as well as runs of some 250 new titles and additional viewing equipment.

Hospitality database launched

A Consortium of Hospitality Research Information Services called C.H.R.I.S., has been formed to develop both printed and electronic bibliographic database access to hotel, motel, restaurant, travel, convention, and related hospitality publications. Charter consortial members are Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration Library, Purdue University’s Consumer and Family Sciences Library, University of Wisconsin-Stout’s Library Learning Center, and the Hospitality Lodging & Travel Research Foundation, an affiliate of the American Hotel & Motel Association, New York City. Currently C.H.R.I.S. is indexing forty-three hospitality periodicals and will begin abstracting in 1989.

Online access to the database is available through the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration Library, (607) 255-9992, and the American Hotel & Motel Association Information Center, (212) 265-4506. Database users will find major trade and research publications in the hospitality field, most of which have not been previously indexed or abstracted. Anticipated users of the C. H. R. I. S. database will be hospitality employees, academic faculty, librarians, students, researchers, or anyone interested in the hospitality industry.

For information and a brochure regarding the availability of a printed index, contact the Restaurant, Hotel, and Institutional Management Institute, 101 Young Graduate House, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907. For general information about the C.H.R.I.S database contact: John J. Jax, C.H.R.I.S. Chairperson, Library Learning Center, University of Wisconsin-Stout, Menomonie, WI 54751. ■ ■

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•The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, has received a $41,340 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to make its social sciences data files accessible to other institutions in the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. Established in 1962, the ICPSR collection includes more than 1,300 tapes on topics ranging from elections to geographic mobility of workers. A code book describes the contents of each file. With the grant, Utah plans to purchase all ICPSR code books, collect existing OCLC catalog entries, identifying data files for which no catalog record exists and creating records for them.

News note

•Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, hosted six representatives of the Japan Library Association on October 12 as part of their nationwide study tour. The Japanese librarians were in the United States as guests of the U.S. Information Agency in order to study advanced library computer network systems and services. The NIU visitors included Masaharu Itoga, from the School of Library and Information Science at Keio University; Hajime Mori, director of the Yamagata Prefectural Library; Hajime Nishio, chief of the Acquisition and Processing Section of the Tottori Prefectural Civic Library; Toshihiko Ogawa, deputy secretary general of the Japan Library Association; Akira Toda, chief of the Computer Planning Office at the Seta- gaya Ward Library in Tokyo; and Shinji Tomie, associate professor at Tsukuba University. ■ ■