ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

ACQUISITIONS

•The Claremont Colleges’ Honnold Library, Claremont, California, has received the personal collection of working papers of Irving Wallace, best-selling author of The Prize and other novels. The papers include rough notes for his 28 books, galleys, correspondence, contracts, research materials, photographs, movie screenplays, posters, and audio and videotaped interviews with Wallace, Marlene Dietrich, Raymond Chandler, and Pablo Picasso. The collection also contains documents relating to the writings of Wallace's wife, Sylvia, who has published two novels, and his son David Wallechinsky and daughter Amy who have collaborated on the People's Almanacs and Book of Lists. In return the library has offered Wallace online access to his working files via a home computer terminal . The arrangement permits his continuing use of the files while ensuring their protection.

•Harvard University’sBotanical Museum has acquired the Tina and Gordon Wasson Ethnomycological Collection as a research adjunct of the museum's Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames. The collection, donated by mycologist R. Gordon Wasson, consists of approximately 2,400 books, periodicals, and pamphlets, ranging from the 15th century to the present, dealing with hallucinogenic mushrooms in art, religion, and folklore. Material on the chemistry and pharmacology of mushrooms is also included, as well as books on linguistics and dictionaries of unusual languages. In addition, the collection contains numerous archeological artifacts associated with mushroom worship in Mexico and Guatemala: an excellent collection of Chinese ling-chih and Japanese netsuke in the form of mushrooms in jade, ivory, deer-horn, wood, and metal; and charts, paintings, and posters relating to mushrooms, many of them Japanese or Chinese.

•Stanford University’sHoover Institution Archives have made available the first 28 reels of the 266-reel Herman Axelbank Film Collection, an important film resource for the study of Russian history. Much of the footage on these reels, dating from about 1901 to 1921, is extremely rare. The subjects covered include Czar Nicholas and his family, scenes of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russian Revolution, and the Civil War, with especially good coverage of Trotsky’s role and of Siberia and the Far East. Funds to describe, index, and produce preservation and use copies of these 28 reels were donated by Alexander E. Kulakoff.

•Texas A&M University,College Station, has purchased a significant proportion of original research collections from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. A major part of the book collection of approximately 13,000 volumes dates from the late 19th century through the 1930s and covers specialized fields of science and technology as well as general areas in the arts, history, and military science. One highlight is the Herbert T. Walker Collection of Locomotive Engines consisting of drawings, photographs, blueprints, and engravings that traces the early history of steam locomotives in England and America. Also included in the purchase were two editions of Denis Diderot’s and Jean d'Alembert’s Encyclopedic. the Paris Neuchatel edition (1751-1780) and the Livorno (1770-1779).

•The University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography. Tucson, has received the Marion Palfi Photo Archive as a gift of the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas. A contemporary of Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke-White, Palfi portrayed the abandoned, the neglected, and the victimized until her death in 1977. From 1940 through the 1970s she traveled across the United States to photograph people in poverty-stricken areas. Especially notable are her photos of the Hopi, Navajo, and Papago Indians on their reservations and in urban relocation and acculturation centers. The gift consists of over 1.500 master prints, 10.000 work prints, hundreds of glass plate and film negatives, contact sheets, several unpublished book manuscripts, and two boxes of correspondence.

•The University of Texas. Austin, has acquired a collection of documents relating to the poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977). Included in the collection are 8,000 pages of Lowell’s manuscript works, galleys and page proofs of his last five books of poetry, and nearly 2,000 pages of correspondence from literary figures such as Adrienne Rich, Allen Tate, Elizabeth Bishop, and Allen Ginsberg.

GRANTS

•Lewis and Clark College.Portland, Oregon, has received an $85,360 library grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a 15- month program to improve public understanding of human life in the Pacific Northwest from prehistoric times to the era of exploration and settlement. The grant funds a “Perspectives on Our Past” series of lectures, films, library exhibits, and dramatizations expected to attract a number of leading archeologists, anthropologists, and historians. Beginning in March 1983 and running through the spring of 1984, the lectures and exhibits will raise public awareness of the resources that academic libraries provide on the cultural history of the region.

•Rutgers UniversityLibrary, New Brunswick, New Jersey, has received a grant of $9,280 from the New Jersey Committee for the Humanities to create a SPINDEX generated index to the extensive collection of New Jersey maps in their Special Collections and Archives Department. The resulting database of 3,000-5,000 maps will provide detailed cartographic information for each map.

•The University of Michigan Library, Ann Arbor, has received $56,747 from the Council on Library Resources and $110,000 from the Mellon Foundation to investigate the use of technology to improve the accessibility of collections in storage. Under the grants, RLIN records will be created for American culture materials stored in the library’s closed stacks facility, allowing enhanced access to these volumes. The project involves the installation of RLIN terminals in three academic departments in the humanities. Faculty will be given extensive training in using the online system and will participate in several surveys and group interviews during the grant period to evaluate their acceptance of storage and technology. The grant project will aid in the removal of nearly 2 million volumes to a closed access facility, and at the same time introduce an online system that will ensure greater access to stored materials.

•The University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill, Library has been awarded a grant by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in Winston-Salem to produce and distribute a COM catalog of their holdings and the holdings of Duke and North Carolina State Universities. The microfiche catalog is an interim stage of the catalog automation project undertaken by the three universities. Eventually the collections will be accessible through online terminals.

NEWS NOTE

•The University of Maryland Baltimore County. Catonsville, dedicated and renamed its library in honor of its first chancellor, Albin O. Kuhn, in a ceremony last December. Kuhn retired last summer as executive vice president of the University of Maryland system after 42 years with the university. The main address of the ceremony was given by Richard W. Couper, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and former president of the New York Public Library. ■ ■