C&RL News October 2017 524

G r a n t s  a n d  A c q u i s i t i o n sAnn-Christe Galloway

A private Lincoln and Civil War collection,   
amassed over the past 50 years by Frank J. Wil-
liams (former Rhode Island Chief Justice and 
nationally known Abraham Lincoln authority), 
will be donated to Mississippi State Univer-
sity (MSU). Williams, the longtime president 
of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, was pre-
viously instrumental in relocating that group 
and its own archives to MSU nine years ago. 
The Frank J. and Virginia Williams Collection 
boasts rare historical memorabilia; priceless ar-
tifacts; original, signed documents; ephemera; 
books published over a span of 150 years; and 
both original one-of-a-kind, and early mass-
produced, artwork relating to Lincoln and the 
Civil War era. The collection, which the Wil-
liamses will officially gift to the MSU Libraries, 
has been valued at nearly $3 million. Commit-
ting themselves to providing perpetual support 
to maintain, study, and publicly display high-
lights from the collection, the Williamses have 
also offered a promised gift of $500,000 for the 
creation of the Frank J. and Virginia Williams 
Research Fund—an endowment to MSU to cu-
rate the material in the years to come.  

A c q u i s i t i o n s

The George Clulow and United States Play-
ing Card Company Gaming Collection—one 
of the world’s premiere collections of books 
about card games, games of chance, play-
ing cards and chess—has been acquired by 
Vanderbilt University Libraries. The collection 
of approximately 1,000 volumes dating from 
the 15th to the 20th century was acquired from 
The United States Playing Card Company, 
which bought the bulk of the collection from 
the English playing card maker George Clulow 

Ed. note: Send your grants and acquisitions to Ann-
Christe Galloway, production editor, C&RL News, email: 
agalloway@ala.org.

in 1898 and have augmented and enhanced it 
over the past 100 years. Also included in the 
collection are archival records that document 
the development, design, and manufacture of 
playing cards in America. Playing cards prob-
ably originated in China, though the earliest 
literary reference to a card game suggests an 
Arabic source. The books in the new Vander-
bilt collection come largely from England, 
France, Germany, Italy, India, Spain, Switzer-
land, and the United States. Subjects from the 
collection that lend themselves to teaching and 
research include the economics, mathematics, 
and social consequences of gaming, as well 
as the legal ramifications. Art students will be 
interested in the art of playing card design and 
students of mathematics and statistics will ap-
preciate the tracts on the ambiguities and sci-
ence of games of chance. In addition, there 
are theological diatribes and literary treatments 
related to gaming. 

regardless of the changes to the mapping 
tools themselves.

Notes
1. To read more about this project, see 

History professor Steven Soper’s conference 
paper “Prisoners on the Stage of International 
Politics: The Evidence from Risorgimento 
Italy,” academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners 
_on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics 
_The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy.

2. We georeferenced the map (connected 
the historic image to current coordinates) in 
ArcGIS desktop. There are a number of tu-
torials available online for georeferencing in 
ArcMap and QGIS as well as free web tools 
like Map Warper at http://mapwarper.net/.

3. A glossary of terms and tables of 
platform features is available at http://
d i g i . u g a . e d u / w p - c o n t e n t / u p l o a d s 
/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf. 

(“We mapped it...,” continues from page 490)

mailto:agalloway%40ala.org?subject=
academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners
_on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics
_The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy
academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners
_on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics
_The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy
academia.edu/33521255/Prisoners
_on_the_Stage_of_International_Politics
_The_Evidence_from_Risorgimento_Italy
http://mapwarper.net/
http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf
http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf
http://digi.uga.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2017/09/Glossary-of-Terms.pdf