Grants and Acquisitions


May 2016 261 C&RL News

UCLA Library has received a grant from the  
Ahmanson Foundation to fund key aspects 
of the Sinai Library Digitization Project. This 
project—initiated by the fathers of St. Cath-
erine’s Monastery of the Sinai, Egypt, and 
made possible through the participation of 
the UCLA Library and the Early Manuscripts 
Electronic Library (EMEL)—will create digital 
copies of 1,100 rare and unique Syriac and 
Arabic manuscripts dating from the 4th to the 
17th centuries. A UNESCO World Heritage 
site located in a region of the Sinai Peninsula 
sacred to three world religions—Christianity, 
Islam, and Judaism—St. Catherine’s Monastery 
houses a collection of ancient and medieval 
manuscripts second only to the Vatican Li-
brary. Access to these materials has often 
been difficult, and now all the more so due to 
security concerns in the Sinai Peninsula. Built 
in the sixth century, St. Catherine’s Monastery 
holds the oldest continually operating library 
in the world. The library’s manuscripts cover 
subjects ranging from history and philosophy, 
to medicine and spirituality, making them of 
interest to scholars and learners across a wide 
range of disciplines. Among the monastery’s 
most important Syriac and Arabic manuscripts 
are a fifth century copy of the Gospels in 
Syriac; a Syriac copy of the “Lives of Women 
Saints” dated 779 CE; the Syriac version of the 
“Apology of Aristides,” of which the Greek 
original has been lost; and numerous Arabic 
manuscripts from the ninth and tenth centuries, 
when Middle Eastern Christians first began to 
use Arabic as a literary language.

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

A collection of zines have been acquired by  
the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries. The 

collection of fan-made, self-published maga-
zines—better known simply as zines—that 
provide a window into politics, fandom, 
music, community, history, and the idea of 
“do it yourself” communications both before 
and after the Internet became a dominant 
vehicle for communication and expres-
sion. The Wilcox Collection of Contempo-
rary Political Movements in KU’s Kenneth 
Spencer Research Library is the new home 
of this collection of nearly 1,000 zines on 
a wide range of topics. Frank Farmer, pro-
fessor of English, arranged for the acquisi-
tion of the zine collection of Solidarity, a 
now-defunct political activist organization 
based in Lawrence. The former Solidarity 
collection holds homemade publications 
on topics from “killing the fur industry” 
to the Occupy movement, World Trade 
Organization protests, socialism, anarchy, 
and a wide range of often radical political 
ideas. But there are also a number dedicated 
to the arts, music, literature, and culture. 
Some have relatively well-known names, 
such as Maximum Rock and Roll or Fact 
Sheet Five, while others are decidedly less 
well-known, including Farmer’s personal 
favorite 13 Ways of Looking at Bill Murray. 
Originating in the 1930s and often devoted 
to science fiction and fandom, the self-made 
publications continued to grow in numbers, 
prevalence, and sometimes even popular-
ity throughout the ensuing decades from 
the 1940s through the 1980s. The arrival of 
the Internet in the 1990s certainly changed 
things but did not kill zines. While blogs and 
online forms of communication are nearly 
ubiquitous now, there are still a number of 
zines being produced. However, those from 
the past—including zines that existed only 
for a single issue—were rarely archived the 
way online writing is. Zines simply weren’t 
built to last. See more at https://news.
ku.edu/2016/02/16/ku-libraries-adds-nearly 
-1000-zines-examples-political-fan-centered 
-outsider-writing#sthash.FAu9hthv.dpuf. 

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

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