ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


C & R L N e w s ■ F e b r u a r y  2001 / 221

G r a n t s  a n d  A c q u i s i t i o n s Ann-Christe Young

New York University (NYU) has received a 
two-year grant of $80,000 from the Gladys 
Krieble Delmas Foundation to assist in 
preserving and cataloging a collection of 
papers and photographs of Sir Harold Acton 
and his family. The collection is currently 
housed at Villa La Pietra, the Florentine estate 
bequeathed to NYU by Acton that now  serves 
as the university's study center in Italy. Acton, 
a scholar, aesthete, writer, historian, and art 
collector, dedicated himself to developing 
the art and literary collections of his estate (his 
mother bought the villa in 1903). Of special 
interest in the collection are letters and books 
by such friends and contem poraries as Evelyn 
Waugh, Nancy Mitford, the Sitwells, W. 
Somerset Maugham, Gertrude Stein, Peter 
Quennell, Graham Greene, D. H. Lawrence, 
Aldous Huxley, Bernard Berenson, and Henry 
Moore. During the 1930s Acton lived in China 
and taught at the University of Peking, and his 
papers contain an extensive correspondence 
with Arthur Waley, the noted Buddhist scholar.

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

Jou rn alist, co m m entator, and au th o r 
Shana A lexander will d o n ate h e r pap ers to 
the U n iv ersity  o f Illin o is at U rb an a- 
Champaign. A lexander w as the first w om an 
staff w riter for Life m agazine, the first 
w om an ed ito r of M cC all’s, and the first 
w om an colum nist at Newsweek. In the 1970s 
she w as w ell k n ow n for her p o p u la r “Point 
C o u n terp o in t” segm ent on 60 M inutes. In 
recent decades, A lexander has tu rn ed  her 
in te re st a n d  ta le n ts to  n o n fic tio n . In 
particular, she has w ritten ab o u t fam ous 
trials involving w om en such as Patty Hearst, 
Bess M yerson, an d  Jean  Harris. H er most 
recent book, The A sto n ish in g  Elephant, is 
based o n  decades of w riting about elep h a n t 
births in captivity, the ab u se of elephants 
in circuses, an d  their en d an g erm en t in 
various parts o f th e w orld. Parts of the 
collection have already b e e n  received,

including scrapbooks, notebooks, photos, 
and other books.

A  collection of family photos, scrapbooks, 
and memorabilia of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 
daughter Joan, has been donated to the Uni­
versity of Louisville. Roy and Dela White of 
Denver, Colorado, made the donation to add 
to the Edgar Rice Burroughs Collection— 
w h ic h  w a s e s t a b li s h e d  by G e o rg e  T. 
McWhorter, its curator, as a memorial to his 
m other Nell Dismukes McWhorter. In addi­
tion, the gift includes 35 original paintings 
used for illustrations in Burroughs's Tarzan 
and Mars stories.

The p e rso n a l M iddle E a st stu d ie s 
collection of Thomas Naff, a professor at the 
University of Pennsylvania, was donated to 
Portland State University. The collection 
includes 1,724 books, 81 periodicals, 56 reels 
of microfilm, 35 pamphlets, and personal 
papers. The gift includes Early M uslim  
Architecture, by K. A. C. Creswell; History o f  
Turkey, by A. De Lamartine; Precis de l ’histoire 
d'egypte, and a num ber of other rare items. 
The collection illustrates the influence of 
France on the Middle East, and features many 
books in the vernacular.

The archival collection of Beat poet Philip 
Whalen has been acquired by the Brancroft 
Library at the University of California, Berkeley. 
The library received nine boxes of journals, 
posters, cor-respondence, photos, writings, 
and W halen’s personal library. The bulk of 
the collection is 62 of W halen’s handwritten 
notebooks from 1959 to 1979, a period 
generally considered his most productive and 
creative. Whalen is author of more than 20 
volumes of poetry, fiction, commentary, and 
interviews. His volumes of poetry include On 
Bear's H ead (Harcourt, 1969), Canoeing up 
Carbaga Creek (Parallax Press, 1996), Scenes

Ed. note: S e n d  yo u r new s to: Grants & Acquisitions, 
C& RL News, 50 E. H uron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; 
e-m ail: ayoung@ ala.org.

mailto:ayoung@ala.org


222 /  C&RL News ■ February 2001

o f  Life fr o m  the Capital (cranium  Press, 1970), 
and Overtime (Penguin, 1999).

A microfilm copy of the Bleek & Lloyd 
Collection of African /Xam San (“Bushman”) 
folklore from the 19th century has b een  ac­
quired by Texas A&M University. The mi­
crofilm collection was purchased from the 
University o f Cape Town, South Africa, un­
der the auspices of the School of Expressive 
Culture (SEC), w hich is housed in the Texas 
A&M Departm ent o f Anthropology. The col­
lection consists of 19th-century folklore and 
other verbal materials dictated to linguists 
Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd by indigenous 
/Xam San (“Bushman”) people. The /Xam 
w ere living around 1870-1884, but no m em ­
bers remain today. Their /Xam language is 
also extinct, so the Bleek Collection is the 
last key to this ancient “click” language. The 
collection’s painstaking linguistic detail is a 
source o f scientific data for archaeologists, 
confirming metaphoric patterns in the rock 
paintings o f South Africa.

A significant collection of scholarly 
books on Buddhism, focusing particularly on 
Buddhism in China and Japan, has been be­
queathed by Stanley and Lucie Weinstein of 
Hamden, Connecticut, to the University of Vir­
ginia (UV). The collection of 10,658 books is 
particularly strong in 19th- and 20th-century 
publications on Buddhism, and also includes 
many books on other East Asian religions, as 
well as history, literature, art, and related sub­
jects. W hen asked about his choice of UV as a 
perm anent home for his library, Weinstein said, 
“The University o f Virginia has show n a deep 
commitment to the study o f Buddhism by es­
tablishing four full-time positions in Buddhist 
Studies. An especially strong constellation of 
scholars has m ade Virginia one of the major 
centers in this country  for the serious study of 
Buddhism.” A book endow m ent has been es­
tablished in the UV Library to purchase books 
on Buddhism and other East Asian topics. The 
library is seeking additions to the book en­
dow m ent to reach a goal o f $100,000.

More than 200 children's books w ith 
illu s tra tio n s  b y  A rth u r R ack h am  h a v e  
b een  donated to the University o f Michigan, 
Ann Arbor, by alumni Joann and Ned Chalat. 
Rackham published more than 3,300 illustrations

in classic children’s literature o f th e  late 19th 
century. Some titles in th e collection include 
C in d e re lla , M o th e r  Goose, an d  A lice's 
A dventures in  Wonderland.

 sketch fro m  a 1980 Rackham Christmas card, part 
f th e  Chalat Family A rth u r Rackham Collection.

Texas A&M University Libraries increased 
its Russian and Slavic collections by 20 per­
cent through the acquisition of three privately 
held collections. Professor Emeritus Horace G. 
Lunt of Harvard University, a leading scholar 
of early Slavic linguistics, donated nearly 6,000 
volumes all in Slavic languages. The univer­
sity libraries received a second gift o f more 
than 1,500 volumes of Russian, Soviet, and 
post-Soviet law and politics from retiring Pro­
fessor Donald Barry, a political scientist from 
Lehigh University. The Lunt collection contains 
most of the major dictionaries of all Slavic lan­
guages ever printed. The Barry collection con­
tains ongoing subscriptions to Russian law jour­
nals in translation. Robert Bathurst, a retiring 
diplomat, donated his 43-volume Encyclope­
dic Dictionary (Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar) pub­
lished by Brockhaus and Efron in 1890-1906, 
w hich Associate Professor o f History Chester 
Dunning describes as the “best reference work 
in Russian ever printed.” These acquisitions 
increase the Russian and Slavic Collection to 
m ore than 50,000 volumes. Stephen Atkins, 
associate university librarian for collection man­
agement, said the library also acquired 2,500 
volumes o f Soviet science materials, covering 
1945 to 1965, during the spring of 2000. ■

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224 I  C&RL News ■ February 2001