ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries December 1 9 9 0 / 1087 News from the Field Acquisitions • T h e American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, M assachusetts, has received from the late Paul F enim ore Cooper, Jr., an AAS m em ber, important m anuscripts o f his great-great-grandfa- ther James Fenim ore Cooper. T he C ooper bequest includes com plete or partial m anuscripts o f the novels Red Rover, The Bravo, Satanstoe, and Chainbearer, as well as fragm ents o f other novels and essays. Among the papers is extensive corre­ spondence, notably with C ooper’s American p u b ­ lisher Carey and Lea and with m em bers o f the Cooper and D eLancey families. Also in the corre­ spondence is a large cache o f letters Fenim ore Cooper w rote to his lifelong friend, Com m odore William B. Shubrick. Legal and business papers make up the bulk o f th e rem aining materials. They will enhance the Society’s distinguished C ooper holdings, which include some 600 editions or p rin t­ ings o f his works betw een 1820 and 1870 and the research papers collected or controlled by the late James F. Beard, Jr., “th e dean o f C ooper scholar­ ship,” who died in D ecem b er 1989. • Boston University has received th e papers of actor-playwright James Kirkwood, coauthor o f A Chorus Line. “James Kirkwood was a giant in the field, and his papers strengthen our collection of other playwrights, including F rank Marcus (The Killing o f Sister George), N o rm a n C o rw in (Sandburg), David Rabe (Streamers), and Sam Shepard (Buried Child),” says H oward B. Gotlieb, curator and director o f th e d ep artm en t o f special collections. T he Kirkwood papers include drafts and m anuscripts for all th e playwright’s major works— There Must Be a Pony!, Some Kind of Hero, A Chorus Line, American Grotesque, Legends, and Diary of a Mad Playwright. They are available for use at the M ugar M emorial Library. Boston University has also received for its Tw en­ tieth C entury Archives th e papers o f Elliot Norton, who retired in 1982 after 48 years as a th e a te r critic in Boston. D uring his career N orton was honored with a George F oster Peabody Broadcasting Award (1963), a Tony Award (1971), and a New England T heatre C onference Award (1974). His papers include correspondence from actors and actresses, critics and writers, lectures from N orton’s college courses, and transcripts from his television show. T here are letters from Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Laurence Olivier, Janet Leigh, D orothy Lam our, and Ralph Bellamy among the correspon­ dence. • The Ohio University Libraries, Athens, have received a large collection o f records from the Colum bus & Hocking Coal & Iron Company. The records w ere d o n ated by th e N ew Straitsville (Ohio) B e tte rm e n t Association. T he collection includes coal shipm ent records, company store account books, house rental records, le tter books, payroll and tim e books, and mine maps, mostly dating from the period 1880-1920 and docum ent­ ing th e heyday o f th e Hocking Valley coal field. • T he Franklin D. Schurz Library at Indiana University, South Bend, has received from John Fink o f Mishawaka about 6,000 books in American history, including a rare and valuable set o f the Journals o f th e C ontinental Congress, 1774-1787. T he set com prises not only the first journals o f the C ontinental Congress b u t also th e initial publica­ tion o f the D eclaration o f Independence, th e Ar­ ticles o f C onfederation, and the Constitution. Few sets w ere originally printed and even fewer survive. Fink decided to donate the collection, which origi­ nally belonged to his father, after touring the Schurz Library. • The University of Maryland at College Park Libraries have been given the personal p a­ pers o f th e late James Cabell Bruce, form er U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, financier, industrialist, and m em ber o f a prom inent Maryland family. H. Joanne H arrar, director o f libraries, describes the collection as including correspondence from presi­ d e n ts T ru m a n , E is e n h o w e r, K e n n e d y , a n d Johnson, Vice President Alben W. Barkley, Gover­ nors J. Millard Tawes o f Maryland, Abraham Ribi- coff o f Connecticut, G. M ennen Williams o f M ichi­ gan, L u th er Hodges o f N orth Carolina, and T ho­ mas Dewey o f New York; Secretaries o f State George C. Marshall, D ean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Christian H erter, and D ean Rusk; Francis Cardinal Spellman and President Juan Peron of Argentina and his wife, Eva, as well as oth er prom i­ n en t figures. The m ore personal side o f B ruce’s life is re p re s e n te d by early c o rre sp o n d e n c e w ith m em bers o f his family, biographical files, and photographs o f the Bruce family and th eir resi- 1 0 8 8 / C &RL News dences. H arrar adds that the gift from B ruce’s daughter, Louise E ste Bruce, is especially timely in light of the new National Archives facility now being constructed on the university campus. • Washington University Archives, St. Louis, has received th e papers o f E u g en e F e e n b e rg (1906-1977), form er Wayman Crow professor of physics, from his widow. Now cataloged and avail­ able to researchers, they docum ent his pioneering work in many-body theory, which led to the estab­ lishm ent o f an annual award, the F een b erg Medal, given by th e International Society for Many-Body Problem s. In addition to research and lecture notes, journal offprints, and books, the F eenberg p a p e rs in c lu d e c o rre sp o n d e n c e from figures prom inent in the early history o f quantum m echan­ ics in E u ro p e , such as H ans B ethe, E u g en e W igner, Max Born, and John von Neum ann. • Western Carolina University’s H u n te r Library, Cullowee, has received a collection of m anuscripts and related docum ents from Sue Ellen Bridgers, award-winning author of Home Before Dark. Included in the collection, which is organized and ready for use, are original m anu­ scripts with handw ritten notations, revised m anu­ scripts, correspondence with editors and publish­ ers, galley proofs and final hardcover and p ap er­ back editions o f Bridgers’ five novels as well as the short stories “Life’s a Beach” and “The Beginning o f Som ething.” E veryone o f th e novels— Home Be­ fore Dark, All Together Now, Notes for Another Life, Sara Will, and Permanent Connections—has been selected for th e annual ALA list o f Best Books for Young Adults. Although Bridgers’ publishers have targeted a young adult audience, many critics say that h er books appeal to readers o f all ages. Grants • T he American Library Association has received a $275,000 grant from the National E n ­ dow m ent for the H um anities for the project “Brave New W orlds,” which includes the developm ent o f reading and discussion program them e materials related to the Colum bus Quincentenary. U nder th e grant, ALA will develop 2 or 3 them e packages m odeled after the “L et’s Talk About I t” library reading and discussion program. O ne them e will be “Seeds of C hange,” tying in with the travel exhibi­ tion now being developed by ALA, the Sm ith­ sonian Institution, and the F ederation o f State H um anities Councils. Materials will be available in the fall of 1991. ALA also will publish u n d er the grant a new issue of the “Whole Person Catalog,” featuring information on library hum anities p ro ­ gramming materials available from ALA and other groups. The catalog will be mailed in fall 1991. A third com ponent o f the project involves dem on­ stration projects using th e reading and discussion materials with new audiences. M em bers o f the advisory board are Peggy Barber, ALA; Charles M. Brown, Arlington C ounty Public Library; Robin Kickingbird, ALA; Sylvia Rigge Liroff, the National Council on the Aging, Inc.; Judith Ginsberg, Jewish E ducation Services of America; Sally Mason, ALA; M argaret Sayers Peden, Columbia, Missouri; Beth Smolcic, Federation o f State H um anities Councils; David Tebaldi, M assachusetts Foundation for the Hum anities; H erm an J. Viola, Smithsonian Institu­ tion; John Alexander Williams, Appalachian State University. • T he California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, has received from th e Alfred P. Sloan Foundation a $300,000 three-year grant to fund p art o f Project SE E D . The money will be used to develop the Science Library Catalog, an online, interactive catalog o f science materials for elem en­ tary school students. T he project’s principal inves­ tigator, James Bower, assistant professor o f biology at C a lte c h , is w o rk in g w ith c o in v e stig a to rs Christine Borgman and Virginia W alter, both on th e faculty o f UCLA’s G raduate School o f Library and Inform ation Science. “F u n d ed research such as th e Science Library Catalog is im portant to our role at GSLIS as leaders in the developm ent of new approaches to library and inform ation science,” said Beverly P. Lynch, dean o f GSLIS. “This proj­ ect also creates opportunities for our graduate stu­ dents to work with faculty researchers at the cutting edge o f th e field.” T he Science Library Catalog project will investigate th e inform ation-seeking behavior o f children and design appropriate soft­ ware th at children can easily use and understand. In addition to providing basic inform ation such as title and author, the com puter program will allow children to “brow se th e bookshelves” through graphic displays. T he program will also include a com puter adventure game in which children can explore a model world about which they can ask for m ore specific inform ation and receive an encyclo­ pedia-like explanation and a picture. • Augusta College Foundation, Georgia, has received a $500,000 gift from Mr. and Mrs. Robert P. Pam plin o f Portland, O regon to establish the K atherine R eese Pam plin E ndow m ent for the Reese Library. T he Pamplins have been the strong­ est supporters o f th e Reese Library, according to li­ brarian Ray Rowland, who notes th a t it was their gift o f $250,000 in 1972 th at served as the catalyst for the Board o f Regents o f the University System o f Georgia to approve funds for a new library building at Augusta College. T heir continued fund­ ing over th e years has m ade it possible for the A.C. Reese Library to go from being one o f the smallest academic libraries in Georgia to having one o f the largest collections. Overall, the Pam plin’s gifts and December 1 9 9 0 / 1089 commitments to Augusta College have approxi­ mated $1 million. • Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois, has been given $125,000 by the A rthur Vining Davis Foundation to purchase equipm ent and fur­ nishings for a new library. • Berea College has received $750,000 from the Kresge F oundation for renovation o f th e Hutchins Library. • George Washington University, Washing- ton, D.C., has been given $34,886 by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission to organize, describe, and make available two col­ lections: the records of Friendship House, a settle­ ment house located in the District of Columbia, and the personal papers and institutional records pertaining to planning and constructing transpor­ tation facilities in the greater Washington, D.C. area. • Gonzaga University, Spokane, E astern Washington University, Cheney, and Whitworth College Libraries, Spokane, will participate in a one-year cooperative collection developm ent proj­ ect funded by the Library Services and Construc­ tion Act, Title III. A total of $75,000will be spent by the three libraries during 1990 to purchase and process both monographs and backruns of periodi­ cals, with subscriptions to the periodicals to be continued beyond the period of the grant. An important part o f the project will be a comparison by com puter o f the holdings of the three libraries with the titles in Books for College Libraries, 3rd ed., published by ACRL and available in MARC tape format. The LSCA grant will pay for W LN (now W estern Library Network) to do the neces­ sary program m ing and run the comparison, which will becom e the basis for collection assessments at the cooperating institutions. • Harvard University's H arvard-Y enching Library has received a grant of $70,000 from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan, for the acquisition of a large fulltext database of the Twenty-Five Dynastic Histories o f China. The database, containing some 60 million C hinese characters, comprises the entire text of the Twenty- Five Dynastic Histories com piled over a period of more than 2,000 years from about 100 B.C. to the end of C hina’s imperial period in 1911. This series of historical writings is the single most im portant collection o f primary sources in Chinese studies. According to librarian E ugene W. Wu, “The availa­ bility of this database will not only save enormous research tim e, b u t also revolutionize th e a p ­ proaches to the study o f Chinese history, as in ter­ disciplinary and cross-dynastic them es can now be more easily and fruitfully explored, and in the process, the study of C hinese history will have gone through a perm anent and fundam ental qualitative change.” • The Library Company of Philadelphia has received a U.S. D epartm ent o f Education grant of $85,571 to begin cataloging its Afro-Americana collection into the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN). The award represents 74% of the anticipated costs for the first year. The project, being supported under the Title II-C Strengthen­ ing Research Library Resources Program, is ex­ p ected to take three years to complete. T he Library Com pany’s Afro-Americana collection of 12,000 im prints spans 400 years from the 16th century to the early years of the 20th century and includes 2,000 titles owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania which are housed in the Library Company’s stacks and provided to researchers in the Library Company’s reading room. One o f the most com prehensive collections o f Afro-Ameri­ cana, it includes material on the early exploration of Africa, the Atlantic slave trade, pro-slavery argu­ ments, the politics of slavery in antebellum Amer­ ica, colonization, reconstruction, and the culture of free blacks up to about 1900. Cataloging the collec­ tion in the RLIN database will make the records fully accessible for the first tim e in the Library Company and equally accessible online in hu n ­ dreds of other libraries throughout the country. The records will also be tapeloaded into OCLC, making the collection accessible in hundreds of public and college libraries not served by RLIN. • M other Irene Gill Memorial Library of the College of New Rochelle, New York, the Tho­ mas Paine National Historical Society, and the New Rochelle Public Library have been awarded $32,000 by th e N ational E ndow m ent for the H um anities to celebrate Thomas Paine and his contribution to th e A m erican Revolution and American political thought. The celebration in­ cludes a series of book discussions led by faculty m em bers from the College of New Rochelle and th ree lectures by noted Paine scholars, all at the New Rochelle Public Library; an exhibition of original and rare editions of Paine’s w orks and m em orabilia scheduled for next M arch at the Thomas Paine Museum, and a full-day interna­ tional symposium to be held at the College of New Rochelle in April 1991. • National Book W eek will expand significantly in 1991, thanks to a grant of $60,000 from the Lila W allace-Reader’s Digest Fund. Support from the Fund, which is particularly interested in the rela­ tionship betw een artists and audiences, will be used for programs around the country featuring appear­ ances By finalists for the National Book Awards. According to John Y. Cole, director of the C enter for the Book, the involvement o f the award winners and finalists will dram atically increase public awareness of books and their writers. Neil Baldwin, executive director of the National Book F ounda­ tion, adds that another goal of National Book W eek 10 9 0 / C&RL News is “to foster th e developm ent o f new partnerships am ong organizations th at support literary n d liter­ acy activities nationwide, so th a t all o f us can com ­ bine forces and reach even larger audiences for books.” National Book W eek 1991 will be observed January 20-26. It is cosponsored by th e National Book Foundation, which adm inisters th e National Book Awards, and th e C e n te r for th e Book in the Library o f Congress. • Newberry Library, Chicago, will receive up to $85,000 from th e National Historical Publica­ tions and Records Commission to establish an ar­ chives program for the library’s records. • Penn State University Libraries, University Park, have received $150,000 from Johnson and Johnson, m anufacturer o f health care products, to create a health care inform ation retrieval system. T he Librries will use th e grant in 2 ways. T he search capabilities o f th e com puterized library inform a­ tion access system will be enhanced in several aspects, including th e addition o f a key-word search capability, and several medical databases will be acquired. • San Francisco State University has received $51,348 from th e National Historical Publications and Records Commission to survey historical rec­ ords and papers held by labor organizations and private individuals involved in labor issues in th e San Francisco Bay area. News notes • Boston University’s M ugar M emorial Li- brary is staging a major exhibition o f autograph materials through June 1991. T he exhibit features hundreds o f docum ents including letters from such literary and political figures as King H enry VII and King H enry V III, H orace W alpole, David Living­ ston, N ehru, Carlyle, Hardy, Coleridge, Yeats, Tennyson, D .H . Lawrence, and R obert Louis Ste­ venson. Also on display are m anuscripts by Dick­ ens, Kipling, W ordsworth, O scar W ilde and C h ar­ les Lam b as well as American w riters Longfellow, W hittier, Steinbeck, Alcott, Poe, Hem ingway and Thoreau. T he materials are drawn from a collection consisting o f 4,000 m anuscripts, 1,500 etchings and engravings, and hundreds o f signed photo­ graphs and docum ents donated to Boston U niver­ sity by Paul C. Richards, a 1960 graduate. • Bowling Green State University Libraries, Ohio, are offering a new service to all graduate stu­ dents working on theses and dissertations at the university, according to a report received from Bonnie Gratch. PERCS, or PErsonalized Research Consultation Service, aims to pair graduate stu­ dents with subject-specialist library faculty who will assist students with their literature searches, topic formulation, and proposal developm ent, as well as o th e r library research -related needs. D ata o b ­ tained from a com prehensive graduate student study and a pilot program last year confirm ed the n eed for such an individual consultation service. Inform ation ab o u t PE R C S is being m ailed to graduate advisers and graduate students known to be working on theses and dissertations. F o r m ore details, contact Janet W elch, coordinator o f library user education and PER C S at BGSU. Bowling G reen State University Libraries’ M ul­ ticultural Affairs C om m ittee invited all students to participate in an essay contest addressing “The Role o f th e L ibraries in C onfronting C ultural Conflicts at BGSU.” T hree LLR staff m em bers judged entries on both content and style and se­ lected th ree w inners who w ere honored at a recep ­ tion held in th e Library. T he first, second, and third place w inners received award certificates from the com m ittee and gift certificates for $100, $50, and $25 from the University Bookstore. T he com m ittee has planned a n u m b e r o f o th er events for th e 1990- 1991 academic year u n d e r th e rubric “Issues in C ultural Diversity: Dispelling th e Myths.” • T he Avery A rchitectural and F ine Arts Li- brary o f Columbia University recently began a year-long celebration o f its centennial with an exhi­ bition o f 37 o f th e rarest items in its collection, including th e first book p rin ted in E urope on the subject o f architecture (De Re Aedificatoria by Leone Battista Alberti, in 1485) and Hypnerotoma- chia Poliphili, published in Venice in 1499, which contains a famous w oodcut th at was th e first cross section o f a building (the round tem ple o f Venus) ever p rin ted in E urope— a m ilestone in th e history o f architectural representation. T he O ctober dis­ play o f the rarest o f th e rare was curated by H erb ert Mitchell, librarian and bibliographer at Avery, and Adolf Placzek, Avery librarian em eritus. A com ­ panion book with th e title o f th e exhibit—Avery’s Choice: 500 Years of Architectural Books-will be published later this year. E d ited by Placzek, it will contain annotations for some 450 significant archi­ tectural books, p rep ared by distinguished faculty and alumni o f Colum bia University. O th er cen ten ­ nial events will be an exhibition in April 1991 of contem porary architectural drawings newly do­ nated by m ore than 100 prom inent architects in honor o f Avery’s anniversary, and publication of Architectural Drawings, A Book of Postcards from the Avery Library and a 1991 calendar entitled “W alter Burley Griffin, Architect, a Year in India,” which reproduces 12 drawings from th e Griffin collection in Avery. • “Developing Library Collections for Califor- nia’s Em erging Majority” drew nearly 500 people to San Francisco in S eptem ber to address th e need librarians have for ethnic collection developm ent inform ation in a state w here ethnic populations will December 1 9 9 0 / 1091 soon account for over 50% of inhabitants. All atten ­ dees received the m anual Developing Library Collections for Californias Emerging Majority, which contains several articles about ethnic collec­ tion developm ent issues, as well as extensive lists of resources—publishers, distributors, bookstores, resource specialists, and p rin t sources— to use in obtaining African American, Am erican Indian, Asian/Southeast Asian, and Chicano/Latino m ate­ rials. The manual is being sold by th e Bay Area Library and Inform ation System, which can be reached at (415) 839-6001. Tapes o f all th e sessions are available from C onference Recording Service, 1308 Gilman St., Berkeley, CA 94706; (415) 527- 3600. • Radcliffe College’s A rthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on th e History o f W om en in America, Cam bridge, Massachusetts, has received the Distinguished Service Award o f the Society of American Archivists. The citation accompanying the award read in part: “T he decision o f Radcliffe in 1943 to begin collecting w om en’s history materials was extraordinary, because the subject was o f little interest to academic historians, and because no one outside the w om en’s m ovem ent understood there was a continuing evolution o f w om en’s experience worthy or capable o f docum entation. Now, after almost 50 years the Library is a model o f system­ atic, sustained collecting and has created a truly national research resource.” The library was also cited for its timely and effective use o f current professional m ethods to provide excellent access to its holdings and for being a focal point o f campus community life, with num erous public events held at the library or in conjunction with it. • Stanford University’s M eyer Library is cur- rently hosting an exhibition called War Bonnets, Tin Lizzies and Patent Leather Pumps. Subtitled “Kiowa C ulture in Transition, 1925-1955,” the show features the photographs o f H orace Poolaw, a Kiowa Indian. Included are 72 photographs se­ lected from th e large archive being cataloged by the Horace Poolaw Photography Project, th e work of Stanford students and faculty u n d er th e direc­ tion o f th e photographer’s daughter, Linda Poolaw. The exhibit also includes a video docum entary of Poolaw’s life. The Stanford University Libraries are highlight­ ing th eir James A. Healy collection o f Irish litera­ ture with an exhibition on W.B. Yeats and the Irish Renaissance. The centerpiece o f the show is a set of 58 titles published by th e Cuala Press, a publishing house run by Yeats’ sister, Elizabeth. Each o f these volumes is inscribed by Yeats, and th e inscriptions include Yeats’ observations about his own writing and the work o f his contem poraries. T he inscrip­ tions are being published for th e first tim e in an exhibit catalog th at will be available at th e exhibit, which will run through January 11 in the H erb ert Hoover M emorial Exhibit Pavilion. • University of Arizona H ealth Sciences C en ter Library, University o f Colorado at Colo­ rado Springs, E astern W ashington University, Ham ilton College, U.S. Naval W ar College, and O regon State Library have com pletely switched th e ir cataloging operations from O C L C ’s first on­ line system to the new PRISM service. • The University of California, Santa Cruz, is displaying for the first tim e the archive o f the Trianon Press, Paris, a small publisher o f excep­ tional art and fine-press books from the mid 1940s through th e 1980s. T he Trianon is probably best known for its production o f facsimilies o f the works o f William Blake, about which th e Times Literary Supplement predicted th at “N othing like these books is ever likely to appear again, and they will, in the future, be the treasures o f lib ra rie s. . . . Books as Blake conceived them , poetry, painting, and craftsm anship com bined in a way unattem pted since th e Middle Ages . . . . A degree of skill, knowledge and devotion has been brought to bear on the production o f this series that it would be idle to look for again.” Ownership o f the Trianon ar­ chive will make UCSC a major cen ter for the study o f Blake, according to university librarian Allan Dyson, who notes also that the archive represents aspects o f th e printing arts that have all bu t disap­ peared. T he show continues through D ecem ber 14. • World Book, Inc, has joined ALA and the Library o f Congress C en ter for the Book to sponsor th e “Year o f the Lifetime R eader” photo contest. A grand prize o f $2,000 will go to the photograph judged th e best overall in depicting th e pleasures of lifelong reading. O ther prizes include $1,000 for first place, $500 for 2nd place and $250 for 3rd place entries in four divisions: youth/color, youth/ black and white, adult/color, and adult/black and white. U.S. libraries o f all types are encouraged to hold contests to announce local winners during National Book Week, January 20-26, 1991. First place winners in adult and youth divisions at each participating library will th en be eligible for na­ tional judging. W inning entries m ust be subm itted to ALA for consideration for national awards by F ebruary 15. National prizes will be announced during National Library W eek, April 14-20. The winning photos will be displayed at the Library of Congress and the grand prize w inner will receive a trip to Washington, D.C., and a tour o f th e Library o f Congress. Librarians are responsible for publi­ cizing local contests and awarding prizes in keeping with th e national contest. E ntries are to be judged on the basis o f photographic quality, artistic merit, and depiction o f the “lifetime read er” them e. Tips on how to organize the contest, a sample press release, and ready-to-print entry forms are avail­ able from the ALA public information office. ■ ■