ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

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News from the field

Acquisitions

•Bowling Green State University’s Popular Culture Library, Ohio, has acquired the Jeffrey J. Gailiun collection of more than 1,800 vintage paperback books. The collection represents a cross section of mass-market paperback genres and includes Tauchnitz Editions from the 1920s and Pocket Books from the 1930s. The Library has also received 370 numbers of the travel magazine Where and a nearly complete run of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

•California State University, Long Beach, has received the donation of two original Ansel Adams photographs, “Boards and Thistles, San Francisco, California, 1950,” and “Cemetery Statue and Oil Derricks, Signal Hill, California, 1939.” Both are 16" x 20" prints from Adams’ Portfolio VII. The University is located about three miles from Signal Hill, where Adams made the latter photograph at the height of the Long Beach oil boom. The library now holds 24 Adams prints.

•The Cincinnati Historical Society, Ohio, has made available for use by scholars and the general public the Daniel J. Ransohoff Photographic Collection of 28,638 black and white negatives, including positive microfiche copies of each. The organization of the collection and the microfiche reference set were funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dating from 1934 to 1981, the images reflect Ransohoff s lifelong commitment to communicating social problems through still photography. The Cincinnati native and social worker documented such subjects as Appalachian assimilation, urban housing conditions, and the work of local agencies including United Appeal and Community Chest. Ransohoff’s photographs were selected by the United Way of America for use in its national campaign publicity materials in 1964, 1967 and 1969. In 1955 photographer Edward Steichen selected a Ransohoff photograph for use in his “Family of Man” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

•Columbia University, New York City, has re- ceived the papers of the late political columnist Joseph Kraft (1924-1986), an alumnus. Among the 9,600 items donated by Kraft’s widow, Polly Winton Kraft, are letters from Joseph Alsop, Warren E. Burger, Gerald R. Ford, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Caspar W. Weinberger. Also included are manuscripts of newspaper and magazine articles, speeches, diaries, cassettes and videotapes of interviews, photographs, and an unpublished history of the investment firm Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb, Inc. The materials date from the beginning of Kraft’s career in 1950 until his death last year. During that time he wrote for magazines and newspapers around the world, including the New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. At the time of his death Kraft’s column for the Los Angeles Times was syndicated in 200 newspapers. The collection is housed in Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

•Harvard University’s Houghton Library, Cambridge, has acquired three important manuscript collections: the archives and manuscripts of Rudolph Kolisch, the papers of William Empson, and the papers through 1983 of John Ashbery.

Violinist Kolisch (1896-1978) was one of the most influential performers of 20th-century music. The Kolisch Quartet, founded in Vienna in 1922, and the Pro Arte Quartet which he led from 1945 on, after emigrating to the United States, both systematically presented the works of modern composers. An innovator in performance style, Kolisch formed close friendships with many of the leading musicians, artists and intellectuals of the period, and had a lifelong association with composer Arnold Schoenberg, to whose sister he was married. The Kolisch papers include the the full scores used by the quartets—which offer a record of the evolving techniques of modern performance—and letters from many well-known figures including Béla Bartók, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Max Reger, Roger Sessions, Karlheinz Stockhausen, George Grosz, and Theodore Adorno. In the manuscript portion of the papers are proofs of several of Schoenberg’s major works corrected by him, autograph works by avant-garde composer Luigi Nono, and letters from Schoenberg and Alban Berg.

The papers of William Empson (1906-1984) are of interest to students of poetry and modern literary criticism. Empson’s texts Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), The Structure of Complex Words (1951), and Milton’s God (1961) have each suggested new and controversial ways of reading literature. An important but unprolific poet (his Collected Poems fill only one small volume), Empson’s style is marked by ambiguity and complex analogies. The papers acquired by Houghton include correspondence, drafts of unpublished poems, and proofs and type-scripts of his last book, to be published posthumously.

The papers through 1983 of poet John Ashbery include poems and correspondence. Ashbery, distinguished professor at the Brooklyn College campus of the City University of New York, is considered by many to be the greatest living American poet. He has published some 20 volumes of poetry (most recently Selected Poems, 1985), and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship. Ashbery is also a noted art critic whose work is often compared to the works of the painters of the New York School with whom he is associated.

Harvard’s Frances Loeb Library has received the personal and professional papers of Eleanor Raymond, a 1917 graduate of the Cambridge School of Architecture and a noted architect. The collection comprises a complete record of her work from 1929, when she opened her own office in Boston after some years in partnership with a former teacher, Henry Atherton Frost. Included are approximately 1,500 architectural plans, drawings for some 300 projects, extensive client correspondence, project photographs, and diaries. Raymond specialized in the design of houses, and her projects included one of the first New England houses in the International Style (Rachel Raymond House, 1931); the acclaimed Sculptor’s Studio for Amelia Peabody (1933); an experimental plywood house (1940); an early example of upscale cluster housing (Hammond Compound, 1941); and one of the first successful solar buildings in the northeast (Peabody Sun House, 1948).

•Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, hasacquired the remainder of the senate and personal papers of Senator Russell B. Long. The latest gift of some 225,000 items brings the total number of items to nearly one million. Selected correspondence, speeches, photographs, and legislative and committee files will be made available to researchers in the next several years.

•Oberlin College, Ohio, has acquired the HerbertK. Goodkind collection of materials relating to the playing, making and teaching of stringed instruments. Purchased jointly by Oberlin and the Violin Society of America, the collection comprises more than 2,000 books and auction catalogs from the 17th through the 20th centuries, 2,500 periodical issues from the 19th and 20th centuries, and various other materials including correspondence. Several of the earliest items are quite rare and are not listed in Edward Heron-Allen’s exhaustive 1894 bibliography of the violin. Highlights of the collection include the first edition of Leopold Mozart’s treatise on violin playing, published in 1756, the same year his son Wolfgang Amadeus was born; an album of 60 original albumen photographs of pianist and composer Franz Liszt, eight of them with Lizst’s signature; an extremely rare 1747 treatise on the physics of violin tone production; an early 18th- century volume entitled The Art of Playing on the Violin, published in London and attributed to violinist/composer Francesco Geminiani, thought to be the first work of its kind; a 1687 French treatise on the violin, described as one of the oldest works on the theory of bowed instruments; 40 books on composer and legendary violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini, including works published during his lifetime; and 24 books published since 1776 having to do with varnish. The establishment of the collection at Oberlin marks the beginning of a continuing relationship between the College, with its conservatory, and the Society.

•The St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, Missouri, has acquired the photo archive and corporate records of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the 134-year-old newspaper that ceased operations in October 1986. Founded in 1852 as the Missouri Daily Democrat, the paper became a formidable voice for the Union—one of the few major pro- Union newspapers in a slave or border state. After the Civil War and until its closing, the Globe- Democrat (renamed in 1875) was a fast and firm organ for the Republican Party and conservative causes. In the 20th century it was considered the city’s newspaper of record and competed with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as the city’s leading newspaper, but succumbed to mounting financial difficulties in the 1970s and early 80s. Included in the collection are some 125,000 photographs covering a wide variety of topics, most dating from 1930 onward. Although the files have not been completely inventoried, those examined include images of Jefferson Barracks during World War II, the construction of the city’s Arch, a variety of air, rail, and river transportation scenes, St. Louis buildings, sports, political rallies, and crime. Photos of people are arranged alphabetically. The collection includes nearly a thousand glass plate negatives of St. Louis scenes in the 1920s and 1930s, with vivid images of local aviation, including shots of dirigibles, stunt flyers, Army balloons, and a poignant portrait of Amelia Earhart. A separate archive contains a vast collection of approximately ten million newspaper clippings on a numerous topics including labor, race relations, government and politics, transportation, education, urban affairs, and biographical information. The newspaper’s corporate records include board of directors’ minutes, correspondence and business files. The Library plans to inventory, organize, and catalog the collection, which will not be made available for general use until 1988, and is examining means to duplicate the clipping files.

•Texas Tech University, Lubbock, has received the papers of Southwest historian William Curry Holden, a longtime faculty member. The collection includes extensive material on Texas and Southwestern history and culture, native American and Mexican ethnohistory, anthropology and archeology, Southwestern arts and architecture, arid lands, water, women of the Southwest, and the University itself. Some 80,000 items collected by Holden and his wife, Frances Mayhugh Holden, are included.

Texas Tech’s Special Collections Department has also received the gift of several antique maps and prints from Frank Burke of Dallas and Frank Danner of Anchorage, Alaska. Included are maps from the 17th through 19th centuries, many hand colored, depicting regions in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. A number of the items document Captain James Cook’s voyages of exploration in the late 18th century.

•The University of Arizona’s Special Collections Department, Tucson, has received the papers of best-selling novelist and biographer Elliott Arnold (1912-1980). The gift includes the manuscripts of several of Arnold’s books and short stories as well as correspondence, research files, photographs, promotional materials and copies of his books in English and various foreign languages.

The library has also received a collection of Polish language books from Viktor Kwast, a retired engineer of Polish descent. Included are dictionaries of various types, literary works, and several important works on pianist and composer Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) not readily available in the West.

•The University of California, Riverside, has acquired a rare photographic archive on the Mexican Revolution of 1910-17. The photographer, known only by his surname, Osuna, had access to the protagonists on all sides of the war, and captured the drama of the era in images of battles, important political and military figures, and the common soldier. The Mexican government has requested a complete set of prints from the more than 400 5" x 7" glass plate negatives for the Institute Nacional de Estudios Históricos de la Revolution Mexicana.

•The University of Hawaii, Honolulu, has receivedfrom Eloise L. Squires, a city resident, a collection of 114 volumes on Morocco, primarily in English. The collection contains rare and out-of- print titles published from 1682 through the 1950s. Included is a rare two volume set, The Travels of Ali Bey in Morocco, Tripoli, Cyprus, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Turkey between the Years 1803-1807, published in London in 1816.

•Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana,has received about 2,000 letters and documents of Richard Yates, governor of Illinois during the Civil War, the gift of the family of Professor Winfred A. Harbison. Included is the typescript of the first three chapters of Harbison’s unpublished Life of Richard Yates. Of note are letters from Rear Admiral Porter written from the Blackhawk in 1863-64, another letter describing a plot on the governor’s life, and various notes and scrapbooks belonging to Yates.

Grants

•Livingston University, Alabama, has beenawarded $6,500 for the purchase of children’s literature, contemporary fiction, and materials related to the history of the old South. The grant, from the Alabama Commission on Higher Education through the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries, also includes funds for support of the special education collection.

•Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, hasbeen awarded a $10,000 endowment grant from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation of New York, which will be used to establish a Judaica Rook Fund. The funds will also support teaching and research in the Religious Studies Depertment.

•The New York Public Library, New YorkCity, has received a $1 million grant from Philip Morris Companies, Inc., to clean its research collection of some 30 million items. The project was launched February 10 at the Library’s 3.5 million volume Fifth Avenue facility. Each book will be taken off the shelf and cleaned with a hand vacuum and/or with soft brushes, and will be wiped with a soft cloth. Highly fragile materials will be placed in a special wrapper and identified for treatment by the Library’s Conservation Division. A random sampling of materials in the open stacks that will be cleaned over the next five years include 21 different editions of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, the year books of Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence; a three-foot-high volume of plates, Voyage Pittoresque De Constantinople; Great Britain Revenue Frauds: A Committee Report, 1783-1784, and the latest phone books from around the world.

•The Rochester Institute of Technology, NewYork, has been awarded a grant of $7,000 from the New York State Discretionary Grant Program for the Conservation and Preservation of Unique Library Research Materials. The funding will allow microfilming of hundreds of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings dating back to 1885 that chronicle the history and growth of the Institute.

•The Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadel-phia, together with the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, are the principal recipients of a three-year, $550,000 grant by the Mabel Pew Myrin Trust. The three are part of the sixteen-member Philadelphia-Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries, formed in 1985. Funds from the grant will address the special needs of the three institutions and will provide for long-term planning to make the resources of all PACSCL institutions better known. The Rosenbach has joined the Research Libraries Group and will soon begin entering records of its manuscript and archival holdings into RLIN.

•Troy State University, Alabama, has beenawarded a $13,000 grant through the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries for the acquisition of instrumental music, including band scores and backfiles of music periodicals. A smaller grant of $4,178 will be used for the acquisition of monographs and journals in the area of interpersonal communication for special education.

•The University of Alabama at Birminghamhas received a Network of Alabama Academic Libraries grant of approximately $47,000 for acquisitions at the Mervyn H. Sterne Library and the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. The Sterne Library will collect materials related to the history, literature, art and archeology of the Arthurian period of English history. The Hill Library will purchase monograph and serial backfiles in the area of substance abuse.

•The University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,has received a two–and-a-half-year, $187,716 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Commonwealth newspaper project. The funds are part of more than $800,000 awarded to the Pennsylvania State Library, also a cataloging site along with Pennsylvania State University and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The staff at Pitt is responsible for cataloging newspaper holdings at libraries and other repositories in southwestern and northwestern Pennsylvania.

•The University of South Carolina Libraries, Columbia, have been given $504,000 by the University’s Athletic Department. The money represents the receipts from two nationally televised football games in the fall of 1986—both lost by South Carolina. The gift will help offset cuts in the Libraries’ budget necessitated by mid-year cuts this year and by reduced state funding for 1987-88. Books purchased with the money, the second such gift, will be identified with a special bookplate.

•The University of Victoria’s McPherson Library, British Columbia, has been awarded a grant of $28,685 from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under its Specialized Research Collections Program. The funds will be used for further development of the Library’s collection of research materials on composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). The collection focuses on published facsimiles and microfilm copies of Beethoven’s manuscripts and sketchbooks, and on pre–World War II Beethoven scholarship in monographs and journals. ■ ■