ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

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News front the Hield

Acquisitions

•Eastern New Mexico University’s Jack Williamson Science Fiction Library, Portales, has been designated a regional repository by the Science Fiction Oral History Association. During the past decade, SFOHA has been active in recording hundreds of interviews with science fiction writers, editors, fans and scholars as well as in taping convention sessions and other programs. Cassette copies of the tapes have been placed in the library.

•The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., was presented with a recorded collection of 118 hours of American English dialect samples by representatives of the Center for Applied Linguistics at a November 12 ceremony. The donation marked the completion of a four-year project initiated by the Center, an independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1959. Preserved on 10-inch, non- ferrous metal reels, the speech styles and verbal arts of a broad spectrum of American people are represented. Some of the recorded voices are familiar: those of Fiorello La Guardia, Groucho Marx, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Others are those of persons who, despite their celebrity, are seldom heard: Amelia Earhart, Jack Dempsey, and H.L. Mencken. The greater part of the collection consists of the voices of unknown individuals whose statements form a kaleidescope of the American experience: Gullah speakers from coastal South Carolina; sharecroppers from Arkansas; Puerto Rican teenagers in New York City; Basque sheepherders from Colorado; a Mandan Indian from South Dakota; Croatian, Serbian, and Slovenian workers from the Minnesota Iron Range; Chesapeake Bay watermen from Smith Island, Maryland; newly- arrived Vietnamese immigrants in northern Virginia; bear hunters from the Great Smoky Moun- tins; a French black creole from southern Louisiana, and many others. The speech samples are supported by documentary information that will make them useful to linguists, folklorists, theatrical performers, and other potential users. Many samples have complete, verbatim transcripts, and all provide the name and address of the contributing collector, the date of recording, and data regarding the social, cultural, and geographical circumstances of the speakers. The collection was drawn from the archives of 50 linguists, dialec- tologists, folklorists, and other speech collectors.

The Library has also received a collection of 8,000 photographs and documents relating to historic buildings and artifacts in the state of Missouri and the Mississippi Valley. The collection is the work of travel author Charles van Ravenswaay, photographer Alexander Piaget, and later, his brothers Carlos and Paul. Work on the collection began in 1931, when van Ravenswaay recognized the need to document the vanishing buildings and artifacts of the early American frontier. It is estimated that more than 80 % of the sites represented have been destroyed or substantially altered during the past 50 years. The donation will be added to the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division.

•Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York, Brooklyn, has acquired a collection of journals, pamphlets, bulletins, leaflets, books, photos, clippings, articles and papers relating to economic, political and social issues in southern Africa from the 1960s to the present. The bulk of the material deals with Namibia and issues resulting from apartheid. Journals range from Soldier of Fortune to the South African Labour Bulletin and New Africa. The collection, of approximately 120 cubic feet, was acquired through the Mission Education and Cultivation Program Department of the United Methodist Church, and the Church of the Intercession, both of New York City. Indexes and descriptive bibliographies are planned.

•The New York Public Library, New York City, has received a collection of more than 3,000 volumes, drawings, and other items on the history of papermaking from Leonard B. Schlosser, chairman of the Lindenmeyr Paper Corporation. Included are ancient specimens of Japanese paper dating to 770 A.D.; the first book of trades, published in Frankfurt in 1568, with illustrations of papermaking by Jost Amman; early engineering works, including one by Vittorio Zonca (Padua, 1607), showing a stamping mill for the preparation of paper pulp; and the first great technical work on papermaking, Arte de faire le papier (Paris, 1761). Books unique in America include Thomas Churchyard’s A Sparke of Friendship (1588), the earliest description of English papermaking, printed on paper watermarked with the royal arms of Elizabeth I. A number of volumes relate to the search for raw materials for paper, such as studies by Jacob Christian Schaffer (Regensburg, 1765-71). Others illustrate the role of paper production and its development in the industrial revolution, including the first practical treatise on board and paper manufacture in the United States (1866). An extensive selection of books relates to the revival of papermaking by hand, including collections of the works of Dard Hunter and the Bird and Bull Press.

• The St. Croix Landmarks Society, U.S. Virgin Islands, has received an extensive collection of West Indian Publications from the private collection of librarian/author Robert V. Vaughn. This collection of rare and modern publications is housed in the Society’s Research Library at the Estate Whim Plantation.

• The University of California, Santa Rarbara, has received a collection of more than 750,000 aerial photographs valued at more than $2 million from Teledyne, Inc., and California State University, Northridge. Included in the Teledyne gift of 600,000 prints and negatives is a major portion of the remaining Fairchild Film Library (named for pioneer aerial photographer Sherman Fairchild), 940 cannisters of negatives and photographs mainly of Southern California intermittently covering the period 1927 through 1964. The remainder of the Teledyne gift is made up of the film libraries of five aerial photographic companies acquired over a 20-year period, and includes images dating to 1890. The Cal State Northridge collection of approximately 100,000 prints and negatives is concentrated on the eastern United States from the mid–1940s through the mid-60s. Spanning nearly a century, the depth of the collection will allow researchers to investigate how areas change over time. One of the earlier photographs in the Teledyne collection is a panoramic view of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 recorded by a giant camera carried aloft by 17 kites. The rare imagery will be placed in acid-free containers in a climate-controlled section of the University Library laboratory. Once an inventory is complete, the library plans to develop a computerized catalog that would provide a brief description of the photos available in an area by entering a set of geographic coordinates.

• The University of Delaware, Newark, has acquired a manuscript by Henry David Thoreau of historical significance. The 18-page autograph manuscript of “A Winter Walk” bears emendation and deletions in the hand of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who edited it for publication in The Dial. Written in New York in 1843, when Thoreau was staying with Emerson’s brother, it was published later that year. It had been revised during composition by Thoreau and shortened by at least two pages by Emerson, who also made a few substantive changes, and thus varies significantly from the published text, as it was used as a printer’s copy with all the revisions and deletions observed. “A Winter Walk,” first published in book form in Excursions (1863), has been called Thoreau’s “first fully mature piece of writing.” The essay contains some of his earliest writings on nature, with allusions to both Walden Pond and the Concord River.

Grants

• The Case Western Reserve University Libraries’ Conservation Department, Cleveland, Ohio, was awarded a grant of $3,520 by the Cleveland Foundation. The funds were used for preliminary planning activities for a proposed Cleveland area conservation treatment center for library materials. In early October George M. Cunha, director emeritus of the Northeast Document Conservation Center, undertook a survey of several area libraries to analyze environmental conditions, assess the current condition of collections, and discuss conservation policies with administrators. In November, as the second grant-funded project, former Stanford University conservation officer Sally Ruchanan presented an all-day seminar entitled “Library Conservation: Administrative Issues and Challenges,” for Cleveland area librarians, administrators and staff.

• Davidson Community College, Lexington, North Carolina, has received a special grant of $25,000 from the North Carolina General Assembly to develop a collection related to furniture, art and decoration. Working with the Readex Corporation, the college will microfiche the collection of the Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library, of High Point, North Carolina. Included are materials related to furniture design and construction (some of which date to 1640), interior design and decoration, architecture and ornamentation, and the complete works of Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite.

Lilly Endowment offers funding

The Lilly Endowment, Indianapolis, will commit $24 million to boost the quality and distinctiveness of two groups of independent colleges and universities over the next five years. The funds will be evenly divided between Indiana’s private colleges and universities, and the historically black, undergraduate institutions affiliated with the United Negro College Fund. The Endowment, founded in 1937, has had an historic interest in independent colleges and universities, particularly those that serve minorities and Indiana students.

All eligible institutions must submit a proposal outlining their “dream of distinction.” They may propose a capital improvement project or other major investment that will help them fulfill that dream. Successful proposals must demonstrate how they will improve education and/or campus life and bring distinction to the institution. Library improvements are eligible for funding, but the grants are not designed to support proposals that will require ongoing funding.

Participating schools will compete for grants ranging from $100,000 to $500,000 on a dollar–for- dollar matching basis. All proposals are due by July 1, 1987. The Endowment’s Roard of Directors will determine which proposals it will fund by September 30,1987. Grants will be paid between 1988 and 1991, depending on how fast the institutions can raise their share of funding.

For more information, contact the Lilly Endowment, Inc., 2801 N. Meridian St., P.O. Rox 88068, Indianapolis, IN 46208-0068. ■ ■

• Memphis State University, Tennessee, has been awarded a $121,000 grant from the Tennessee State Library and Archives for the first phase of development of a Tennessee Union List of Serials. The list will provide greater access to an estimated 64,000 periodical titles and is designed to facilitate resource sharing among libraries. Twenty-eight libraries around the state have given tentative approval to participation in the project, and will provide current periodical subscription holdings for an initial list. The union list will be available via the OCLC network to all OCLC members and, upon completion of this initial phase of the project will also be available in paper copy to all participating and interested libraries.

• The University of California, Riverside, has received a grant of $200,000 from the Ahmanson Foundation to continue work on the Eighteenth Century Short-Title Catalogue for North America. The project also has grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities ($499,607) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation ($235,000). The compilation of the Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue began at the British Library in London in 1977. Work on the North American side of the project began in 1979 at Louisiana State University and was transferred to UC–Riverside in May, 1986. Publication of the catalogue in microfiche is planned for 1989. The catalogue will include all titles printed in the British Isles and British dependencies between 1701 and 1800, as well as library locations for those titles. The data is currently available online through RLIN.

• The University of Kansas, Lawrence, has been awarded a grant of $78,057 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for the second and third years of the Kansas Collection’s current project to survey and accession records of the black community in Kansas. ■ ■