News from the Field

David Free

MSU Libraries acquire Borges materials

One of the 20th century’s greatest writers, Jorge Luis Borges—who called the universe a library, served as director of the Argentine National Library and left a prolific body of literature when he died in 1986—now has his own sort of library within a library at Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries.

The libraries recently acquired more than 19 boxes of correspondence, papers, photographs, rare manuscripts, first editions, publicity, clippings, and other ephemera related to Borges’s life and work that was collected by former MSU Professor Donald Yates. The most recent materials in the Donald Yates Collection on Jorge Luis Borges were acquired from Joanne Yates, the wife of Yates, and join books in the Library’s Borges Collection of first and rare editions and books in the Donald A. Yates Spanish American Literature Collection.

Donald Yates joined MSU as an assistant professor of Spanish in the early 1960s. He was the coeditor and translator of the first collection of Borges’s fiction to appear in English, and he had a long friendship with Borges. He was instrumental in bringing Borges to MSU, where the Argentinian writer shared several lectures, taught several classes, and received an honorary doctorate. Borges died in 1986. Yates died in 2017. Highlights in the collection from Don and Joanne Yates include several first editions, Borges’s handwritten manuscripts, 100 hours of recordings on approximately 75 cassette tapes, one video, and several reel-to-reel tapes.

KSU open textbook program fundraising

On March 24, 2021, Kansas State University (KSU) alumni, faculty, students, staff, and friends gave more than half a million dollars to help students save money on textbooks by supporting Textbooks 2.0 through All In for K-State, KSU Foundation’s second 24-hour fundraising sprint. Once deployed, this investment will save KSU students at least $5 million or more per year.

Supporters from every state, Washington D.C., and as far away as Liverpool, England, came together virtually to make essential class materials more affordable for KSU students by supporting Textbooks 2.0. Textbooks 2.0 saves students money by replacing expensive traditional textbooks with open/alternative digital resources tailored to the class by the instructor and has saved K-State students $6.8 million in the last six years.

“We have seen firsthand the difference this program has made for students, and this latest fundraising effort will dramatically amplify the impact we are able to make,” said Lori Goetsch, dean of the KSU Libraries. “We are overjoyed by the K-State family’s support of this initiative.”

The program was developed by faculty at the KSU Libraries in partnership with other faculty at the university. The initiative is administered through the Libraries Center for the Advancement of Digital Scholarship and is part of the libraries’ efforts to make college more affordable and accessible to students.

MIT Press launches open access collection of Architecture, Urban Studies titles

The MIT Press launched MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies, a robust digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books, on their digital book platform MIT Press Direct. The collection was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Humanities Open Book Program, cosponsored with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For years, the MIT Press has fielded requests for ebook editions of classic, out-of-print works, like the two volumes of The Staircase by John Templer, On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories by Mark Jarzombek, Possible Palladian Villas: (Plus a Few Instructively Impossible Ones) by George L. Hersey and Richard Freedman, and Making a Middle Landscape by Peter Rowe.

Many of these foundational texts were published before the advent of ebooks and remained undigitized because of complex design requirements and the prohibitive cost of image permissions. Now many of the titles will also be made available on the open access platform PubPub, where readers will be able to interact with and annotate the works with contemporary context and related readings. Learn more at http://bit.ly/OpenHumanities.

GPO names new Depository Library Council members

U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) Director Hugh Halpern recently announced the appointment of five new members to the Depository Library Council (DLC). DLC members advise the GPO director on policy matters relating to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP). In addition to experience working in various types of libraries, the new DLC members have experience with and knowledge of current developments in the fields of library science and U.S. government information.

With the increasing dissemination of information in electronic formats, these new members will help position DLC and FDLP for GPO’s ongoing mission of Keeping America Informed. The five new DLC members—Aimée C. Quinn, Valerie Glenn, Richard Leiter, Jen Kirk, and Allen Moye—will serve from June 1, 2021 through May 31, 2024.

World Methodist Museum collections move to SMU

The historical and theologically significant collections of the World Methodist Museum are moving to Bridwell Library, part of the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Libraries system and located in the Perkins School of Theology, where public exhibits and opportunities for study will ensure the long-term integrity and accessibility of this important resource.

The collections tell the story of Methodism, which began in England with brothers John and Charles Wesley meeting as a small student group at Oxford University in the early 18th century before their mission work carried their beliefs to the American colonies and beyond. Portraits of the early founders are included in the collections, as well as rare books and manuscripts, letters and the traveling pulpit of John Wesley. Part of the collections focus on the work of Charles Wesley, who wrote more than 9,000 hymns and poems over his lifetime, including such interdenominational favorites as “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

The collections, housed at the World Methodist Museum in Lake Junaluska, North Carolina, until its closure in February 2021, were transferred to SMU in May 2021, with plans for a celebratory opening exhibition and related events by the end of 2022. Find more about the acquisition of the collections at www.smu.edu/Perkins/News/News_Archives/Archives_2021/2021-Methodist-Museum.