ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


38

Humanities Grant to R are Book Library 
Will Support Six-Year Bibliographic P roject

John C arter Brown Library o f B R O W N  U N I­
V E R S IT Y , one of the world s largest collections of 
books and maps relating to the first three cen­
turies of American history, has received a major 
research grant from the National Endowment for 
the Humanities (NEH)to produce a chronological 
guide to writings on the Americas published in 
Europe before 1801.

The $232,000 award, the second largest grant 
received by Brown University in recent years for 
a project in the humanities, will be supplemented 
by an in-kind university contribution o f some 
$59,000 and an additional $66,000 provided by 
the Readex Microprint Corporation o f New York, 
which will publish and market the eight-volume 
bibliography when it is completed. The Readex 
firm has been assisting the library since 1968 to 
assemble materials for the project in preliminary 
form.

Expected to include 45,000 separate listings of 
books or other printed materials, the proposed 
chronological guide is designed, said John Carter 
Brown Librarian Thomas R. Adams, to help an­
swer a complex of questions that faces scholars at­
tempting to study the early development of the 
American continents: that is, what did Europeans 
know about the New World, when did they know 
it, how did they learn it, and what effect did the 
new information have on them?

Since the expansion of knowledge in Western 
Europe is inextricably linked to the spread of 
printing, it is vital, Adams explained, for scholars 
to know what information about America was 
published in Europe and when. To date, students 
of New World history have had to rely largely on 
an unwieldy and now out-of-date twenty-nine- 
volume bibliography called the D ic tio n a r y  o f  
B oohs Relating, to A m erica.

Begun in the middle of the nineteenth century 
by a bibliographer named Joseph Sabin, the work 
was finished by others in 1936. It was alpha­
betically, rather than chronologically, arranged, 
the JC B  librarian notes, thus obscuring the inter­

relationships betw een works printed during a 
given period.

A m ore significant reason for updating the 
Sabin reference work lies within the John Carter 
Brown Library itself. Over the years, the library 
has acquired enough important European im­
prints from the period 1493-1800, not listed in 
Sabin, to more than double the number of entries 
appropriate to a revised version of the list. The 
new chronological guide will also aim for com­
prehensiveness, listing relevant materials held in 
other collections as well.

The NEH funding, which will cover the first 
three years of what Adams expects will be a six- 
year undertaking, will pay for the addition of a 
special b ib lio g r a p h ic  team  to th e  J C B  staff, 
charged wth responsibility for preparing the new 
list for p u b lica tio n  and co m p le tin g  a co m ­
puterized index to accompany it.

Already at work on the massive project is the 
guide s ed ito r , John Alden. R e ce n tly  named 
keeper emeritus of rare books at the Boston Pub­
lic Library, where he had supervised the rare 
book collections for some twenty years, Alden is 
widely known for his contributions to the fields of 
librarianship and historical bibliography. The au­
thor of monographs and books, including a bibli­
ography o f p re -1 8 0 0  Rhode Island im p rints, 
Alden has held posts on the staffs of the British 
M useum , th e  L ib ra ry  o f C o n g re s s, and the 
Houghton Library at Harvard and has served as a 
library consultant to many other institutions.

“In the sense that scholars using the chronolog­
ical guide will find many new texts they weren’t 
aware of before, this project will raise more ques­
tions than it answers,” Adams said. “But working 
with original sources is a dynamic process in 
which new information is continually developing, 
and I am pleased that the NEH grant will allow 
us to use the unique resources of the John Carter 
Brown Library to take the leadership role in that 
process.” ■■

Ramapo College Dedicates New Library
On November 17, Ramapo College, Mahwah, 

New Jersey, dedicated its new $ 4 .2  million li­
brary, marking the completion o f the new state 
college’s initial building program. Ground was 
broken for the four-year liberal arts college on 
November 17, 1970.

The official dedication ceremonies featured remarks

 by the 1962 Nobel Laureate James Dewey 
W atson, who re c e iv e d  the N o b el P rize for 
M ed icin e for his work in u n rav elin g  the 
molecular structure of DNA— the key to cell re­
production. Watson currently serves as director 
of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Edward Hollander, New Jersey chancellor of