Grants and Acquisitions
The University of Miami (UM) has received a $2.4 million donation from the Goizueta Foundation to support a comprehensive university-wide plan that will enhance and expand the reach of the Otto G. Richter Library’s Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC). The gift will also establish fellowship programs within the UM Libraries and the College of Arts and Sciences and launch a lecture series with the world-respected Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS). The grant, which will be spread over five years, will augment the reach of the CHC in its acquisition, preservation, and processing of documents, books, and other materials. It will also support the digitization of materials, including Web Site development and marketing efforts. Part of the grant will also establish the Libraries’ Fellowship Programs and support an Undergraduate Fellows Program in a partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences to attract students and scholars and cultivate the use of this unique Collection for research.
The Newberry Library has received a $488,179 three-year grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to catalog approximately 22,000 French pamphlets from four of its collections. The Newberry’s project is one of 14 selected out of 91 proposals in this year’s CLIR Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives initiative. The four Newberry collection include, 1) French Revolution Collection: more than 30,000 pamphlets and 180 periodicals published between 1780 and 1810. The periodicals and 12,000 anonymously authored pamphlets have already been cataloged, and 18,000 pamphlets with known authors will be cataloged through this grant. 2) Recueil de pieces historiques: At the end of the 18th century in Paris, the religious order of Saint-Sulpice at its headquarters assembled this collection of more than 2,600 biographical pamphlets to serve as an archive of primary source—printed and manuscript—material. Funeral sermons, orations, commemorative discourses, and verses dating from the 16th to the early 19th century were included. Among these are rare first editions of short works by Bude, Pascal, and Moliere. 3) Publishers’ prospectuses and catalogs: Parisian and rare provincial publishers are represented in this unique assemblage of publicity and advertisements for French printing and publishing from 1700–1850. The collection consists of more than 700 pamphlets. 4) Trial and execution of Louis XVI: This contemporary collection of more than 600 rare government pamphlets published at the time of the trial provides information on the collection of evidence, the defense by de Seze, public opinion (including a French tract of American Tom Paine), moral and political reflections on judging and executing the king, and opinions of Convention deputies (e.g., Marat, Saint-Just, Robespierre). The pamphlets are preserved in their original etui binding. Learn more about the program at www.clir.org/hiddencollections/index.html.
Lehigh University, in partnership with the Moravian Archives, has been awarded a $90,000 grant by the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) under its Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Program funded by the Mellon Foundation. This two-year collaborative project, “The Moravian Community in the New World: The First Hundred Years,” will process collections documenting the material culture, religious values, and cultural diversity of the Moravian community of Bethlehem from its founding in 1741 until the opening of the community to non-Moravians in 1844 and the subsequent incorporation of Bethlehem in 1851. Included are personal papers of artists, tradesmen, missionaries, and sailors, along with business records and the 2,000 volume congregational library. In addition, approximately 800 maps and architectural drawings showing the earliest documentation of European settlement in Pennsylvania will be included in this project.
Hope College has received a $200,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a new program designed to deepen students’ scholarship in the arts and humanities through collaborative, interdisciplinary research projects and the use of digital technologies. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholars Program in the Arts and Humanities, which will begin in the fall of 2010, will involve select students in a series of new courses beginning their sophomore year and enable them across the rest of their time at Hope to develop research projects in areas of scholarly interest with faculty mentors, with a particular emphasis on teaching them how to use new and emerging digital technologies in pursuing and sharing their work.
Acquisitions
The papers and library of Edward W. Said— internationally renowned author, educator, public intellectual, and a member of Columbia’s faculty from 1963 to 2003—have been acquired by Columbia University Libraries. Said was the author of more than 20 books, including his 1999 autobiography Out of Place, which won the New Yorker Book Award for nonfiction. His writings have been translated into 26 languages, including his most influential book, Orientalism (1978), a retrospective examination of the way the West perceived the East. Born in Jerusalem in 1935, Said was one of the most creative and important literary critics in post-war America. Said earned a B.A. from Princeton University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he won the Bowdoin Prize. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963, where he attained the rank of university professor, Columbia’s most prestigious academic position. Said also taught at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Yale universities. He was fluent in Arabic, English and French. In 1999, Said served as president of the Modern Language Association. Said was awarded numerous honorary doctorates from universities around the world and twice received Columbia’s Trilling Award and the Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Royal Society of Literature, and the American Philosophical Society.
A Gutenberg Bible Leaf has been given to Saint Louis University (SLU) by Professor Thomas A. Cahill and his wife Virginia Cahill (SLU ’64) of Davis, California. Printed in Mainz ca. 1452–1453, the Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg was the first book to be printed in Western Europe using moveable type—an entirely transformative information technology that has shaped communication ever since. This landmark in the history of the book survives today in only 48 copies. Thomas A. Cahill is professor emeritus of physics at the University of California (UC)-Davis. Cahill became involved with the Gutenberg Bible in the 1980s when he and a number of colleagues at UC-Davis applied nuclear physics to history by developing a nondestructive technique of analysis that used a beam of accelerated protons to examine the ink of the Gutenberg Bible, through which they were able to establish for the first time the chemical composition of the printing ink used by Gutenberg. This ink was and remains extraordinarily glossy and black, thanks to high levels of copper and lead, a formulation known only to Gutenberg and utterly distinct from other printers who followed him in the fifteenth century. Cahill and his colleagues carried out experiments on further copies of the Gutenberg Bible and were able to shed light on their printing process.
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