ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Acquisitions

•Iowa State University, Ames, has acquired the papers of Dr. Norman Borlaug (1914– ), known as the father of the “Green Revolution.” Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, Borlaug developed a disease-resistant, high-yield hybrid wheat strain that has contributed enormously to lessening severe malnutrition and starvation around the world. Borlaug’s papers span more than forty years of scientific research and humanitarian service and include extensive correspondence, reports, speeches, clippings and other materials. They will be housed in the library’s Archives of American Agriculture.

•Mississippi State University’s Mitchell Memorial Library has received the papers of journalist William Turner Catledge (1901–1983), who served as managing editor (1951–1964) and executive editor (1964–1968) of the New York Times. The collection includes 12 cubic feet of correspondence, reports, notes, and memorabilia documenting Catledge’s professional and personal life. The Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi, has designated the collection a national historic site in journalism.

• The Queens College Library of the City University of New York, Flushing, has received an extensive collection of early childrens’ literature illustrations. The gift was presented by Professor Gabriel Laderman, former chairman of the College’s Art Department. About one-quarter of the more than 200 items, which date predominantly from the 18th and 19th centuries, are not listed in NUC or the OCLC database. The collection will be featured at the inaugural exhibit of the Benjamin Rosenthal Memorial Library, scheduled for completion in late 1987.

• The University of Texas at Austin has acquired a major bequest of 287 classical texts printed in Venice between 1494 and 1588 by the Aldine Press. The collection is the gift of the estate of the late Giorgio Uzielli, an Italian-American stockbroker and book collector. The Aldine Press was founded in 1494 by Aldus Mantius, known as the first scholar-printer, whose dolphin-and-anchor logo became a familiar mark in the printing world at the turn of the 16th century when three-quarters of all the classics made their first modern appearance under that imprint. The Uzielli collection contains the most famous of all Aldine editions, a fivevolume set of Aristotle’s works published between 1495 and 1498, the first major Greek text to be reintroduced in the original to the Western world by the invention of the printing press. Other volumes include Erotemata, a 1495 Greek grammar by Constantine Lascaris, the first major book printed by Aldus; the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna; a 1501 edition of Virgil’s writings printed entirely in italic type, which Aldus is credited with inventing; two 1513 volumes of Plato, the first in the original Greek; and other unusual and rare items. The collection will be housed at the University’s Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

Texas has also acquired a collection of between 7,000 and 9,000 photographs and negatives donated by photographer Russell Lee shortly before his death August 28. The collection will be housed at the Barker Texas History Center at the University. Best known for his depression-era images of rural America as a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, Lee also worked for private corporations and national magazines during his 40year career. The bulk of the collection dates from the past 30 years, when Lee worked as an independent photographer primarily in the Southwest. Images range from 1950s political rallies in hot, dusty Texas towns to a reunion of wizened cowboys and a 1977 trip on a Mississippi riverboat. A resident of Austin since 1947, Lee taught in the University’s Art Department from 1965 to 1973.

Grants

• Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania, and Swarthmore College, Philadelphia, recently received $20,000 from the Pitcairn-Crabbe Foundation to organize and publish information on their historical records of the Quakers’ Philadelphia Yearly Meetings. The combined resources of the two institutions represent the largest collection of Quaker documents in the world. Beginning in 1676 during the time of William Penn, they constitute an unbroken record of the sect’s activities to the present, and contain the stories of the Quaker movements for the abolition of slavery, Indian rights, prison reform, hospital treatment for the insane, women’s rights, and education. The grant will be used to create a new guide to the combined collections aimed at making the records more accessible to historical researchers. It will explain the overall organizational pattern of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which has historically reviewed the proceedings of more than 100 monthly meetings in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and parts of Maryland and Virginia.

•Loyola Marymount University’sCharles Vonder Ahe Library, Los Angeles, has received $100,000 from the Jones Foundation to complete its retrospective conversion project. The grant will also be used to assist in acquiring and installing an online public access catalog.

•The Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, has received a grant of $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts to help finance the conservation treatment of selected rare books. A total of 137 books, selected on the basis of their immediate need for treatment and artistic importance, will be preserved via rebinding or full restoration. Many outstanding botanical illustrations from past centuries are represented, with much of the artwork and binding of the books hand-created, unique, or otherwise significant. Many of the books also feature early examples of woodcuts, with hand-colored plates and extremely high quality paper.

•Rutgers University,New Brunswick, New Jersey, has been awarded a grant of $10,200 by the New Jersey Department of Higher Education for the state’s Humanities Media Resource Service. The Service circulates humanities films and videos throughout New Jersey, and provides brochures, speakers, and special programs.

•The University of California Division of Library Automation (DLA) has been awarded $341,500 in federal Library Services and Construction Act funds by the California State Library. The grant provides funding for the third phase of a research project currently underway to develop a demonstration wide-area packet radio network. This network will consist of a chain of seven California public libraries extending from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sacramento, linked to each other and connected to the UC library telecommunications network. Participants are being selected jointly by the State Library and the DLA.

•The University of California, Riverside, Library has been awarded a Title II-C grant of $135,000 by the U.S. Department of Education for the purpose of cataloging the Eaton Collection of

Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. Previously unavailable to scholars, the collection will be entered onto the OCLC database. Many examples of foreign-language science fiction and fantasy are represented.

News Notes

•The New Bedford Whaling Museum, Massachusetts, recently completed conservation of fifty logbooks documenting 156 years (1745–1901) of maritime history. The two-year project was carried out by museum staff members with funds provided by a grant from the Institute of Museum Services. Five treatment stages were researched and especially adapted for the project, including new methods of leather consolidation, use of enzymes, deacidification, paper fills, and non-adhesive binding.

•Pennsylvania State University,UniversityPark, has issued a progress report stating that some $400,000 of a planned $1 million has been raised for the Paterno Libraries Endowment. The project started two years ago with a five-year planned duration in support of the Penn State Libraries. Major benefactors include the Richard King Mellon Foundation and friends, alumni, and several major corporations. The Paterno Endowment is named in honor of longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, an outspoken supporter of academic libraries as well as a generous donor.

•The State University of New York at Albany’s School of Library and Information Science became one of four independent graduate schools of the University as of June 2. With the Schools of Criminal Justice and Social Welfare and the Graduate School of Public Affairs, it now comprises part of the Nelson A. Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and is known as the School of Information Science and Policy. The name change is part of substantial planned curricular growth, with an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program scheduled for 1989. To be included in an enlarged MLS program are revised specializations in records management and archives, information systems development and management, and information policy. The new curriculum is being designed in consultation with the New York State Archives staff. ■ ■