ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 68 News fro m th e F ield ACQUISITIONS • Boston College Library, Chestnut Hill, re­ cently acquired the personal library and papers of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), a prolific British au­ thor, journalist, and correspondent. Belloc’s let­ ters from 1889-1945 comprise the bulk of the col­ lection, which also includes manuscript material for about 60 of his books. The library consists of his own books and pamphlets, many with notes, corrections, and dedications in his hand; books directly contributory to his work; and collections or works of varying significance sent to Belloc by the authors. • Case Western Reserve University Li­ brary, Cleveland, has received a gift of more than 100 letters, documents, and autographs of poets, authors, artists, statesmen, and other prominent persons, mostly American and British. Included in the collection are the letters of authors Henry W. Longfellow, A.A. Milne, John Galsworthy, Theodore Dreiser, and James T. Farrell. Note­ worthy artists such as James McNeill Whistler, Benjamin W est, John Singer Sargent, Joshua Reynolds, and Edward Burne-Jones are also rep­ resented, as are rare letters from Aubrey Beards­ ley and Arthur Hallam. The political figures Tal­ leyrand, King George III, William Duke of York, and Prince M etternich are also rep resen ted . This manuscript collection, donated by an anony­ mous Case Western alumnus, is an addition to the Special Collections D epartm ent’s growing number of autographed letter collections which include 64 letters by John Masefield to Dr. Jean Pilcher, a retired Cleveland pediatrician, and the Frances W. and H. Jack Lang Letter Collection, “The Best Practitioners of the Art of L etter Writing.’ • The University of Dayton Library recently received from an anonymous donor first edition copies of all of Booth Tarkington’s novels and some plays. Most are presentation or autographed copies. The same donor had previously presented the library with first edition copies of George Burr McCutcheon’s novels, some of which are presentation and autographed copies. • The University of Missouri-Kansas City Libraries have acquired the Paul Jenkins Collec­ tion of 78 rpm sound recordings. Spanning the period between the two world wars, this exhaus­ tive collection consists of approximately 6,000 shellac disks of various types of recorded music including jazz, classical, movie and Broadway sound tracks, novelty songs and pop tunes. The originals will eventually be re-recorded onto reel- to-reel tapes. The master tapes will then be used to dub cassette tapes for the expanding library media center and sound archives. The library has also received a gift of over 3,300 musical scores from Gertrude Kaufmann of Kansas City. The collection, which had originally been gathered by her father, Harry Kaufmann, contains many rare and interesting arrangements and scores as well as some band music and hym­ nals. Kaufmann was the first music director at radio station WDAF in Kansas City as well as a conductor of theater orchestras, a booking agent for musicians, and a producer of many local musical events. GRANTS • The Christian Broadcast Network Uni versity Library, Virginia Beach, has received a grant of $25,000 from The Adolph Coors Founda­ tion to support the acquisitions program in educa­ tion. This grant, the second one from Coors, will be used to secure materials for the curriculum laboratory. Last year’s grant of $20,000 was used in building the basic collections for the newly opened Graduate School of Education. • Columbia University has been awarded a $50,000 grant by the Carnegie Corporation of New York for the development of programs to train conservators and library preservation admin­ istrators. • Lehigh University Libraries, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, have been awarded a $500,000 challenge grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities. A portion of the grant will be used for the libraries’ new technology program, renovation of the Linderman Library, and endow­ ment of the humanities collection. The library re­ novation will upgrade several special collections areas and improve environmental control in the bookstacks where the library’s humanities re­ sources are stored. • The Marin Consortium for Higher Education, San Rafael, California, has received funding for an initial study of the feasibility of sharing library books and periodicals through an automated interlibrary network which may ulti­ mately include all college and public libraries in Marin County. The $9,580 grant was made by the San Francisco Foundation, and the colleges involved in the consortium include Indian Valley Colleges, College of Marin, World College West, Dominican College, Golden Gate Baptist Theolog­ ical Seminary, and the San Francisco Theological Seminary. The study will consider the need for automated library technical services, a common circulation and data management system which would facilitate interlibrary loans, and a consoli­ dated catalog created by conversion of existing card catalogs to a machine-readable form. • The Ohio University Library, Athens, has received an anonymous cash gift of $140,000 in 70 response to a $150,000 National Endowment for the Humanities challenge grant awarded in De cember. With this major contribution, together with other smaller ones received to date, the li brary has already raised over one-third of its $450,000 matching requirement. The purpose o the fund-raising is to upgrade the library’s hu­ manities collections and enhance their availability through increased cataloging and an automated circulation system. • The Philadelphia College of Pharmac and Science has received a bequest from 1922 graduate Harry H. Shull to be used for library purchases. The gift of over $150,000 will be known as the Carl Whitaker Shull Fund in mem­ ory of Shull’s father who graduated from the col­ lege in 1891. • Radcliffe College, C am bridge, Mas­ sachusetts, has received a grant from the Mas­ sachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities to preserve the scrapbooks of Boston social worker Eva Whiting White (1885-1974) at the Schlesin­ ger Library. The $277 grant, to be matched by funds provided by the Friends of the Schlesinger Library, will be used to remove and microfilm em brittled clippings, photographs, letters, and programs in the scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are primarily on the activities of Elizabeth Peabody House, a settlement house founded in 1896 in Boston’s West End. The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, established at Radcliffe in 1943, collects materials on women’s roles and contributions to American life from 1800 to the present. • The University of Arizona’s C enter for Creative Photography, Tucson, has been awarded $52,280 in funds by the Polaroid Foundation and Polaroid Corporation in support of five projects. Two monographs, Barbara Crane: Photographs 1948-1980 and A Reference Guide to Twentieth Century Photographic Materials are currently in progress and will be supported by the grant. The fund will also allow the continuation of an assis­ tant archivist and a graduate fellowship at the Center, as well as a photographic exhibition by Dan Budnik of the Navajo and Hopi Indian Res­ ervations. • The University of California at Los Angeles’ William Andrews Clark Memorial Li­ brary has been awarded $200,000 by the Ahman- son Foundation of Los Angeles. Over the next three years the grant will permit Clark to provide short-term fellowships for younger scholars who need to use the library’s unusual collections in support of their research in seventeenth and eig h teen th cen tu ry English lite ra tu re . The Ahmanson grant will also support UCLA graduate students working with eighteenth century biblio­ graphical studies, and will permit Clark to con­ tinue projects for rebinding and restoring rare books and cataloging unique manuscripts. • The University of Mississippi’s Center for ­ ­ f y the Study of Southern Culture has been awarded a $1,200,000 challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support re­ source development in the John Davis Williams Library. Funds raised during the term of the grant along with matching support from NEH will be employed in acquiring needed Southern studies materials, in endowing a fund for future acquisitions, and in providing staff support for the processing of special collections in that subject area. NEWS NOTES • Six private college libraries in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area have formed a consor­ tium to purchase the two-volume Vatican Fres­ coes o f Michaelangelo, recently published by Abbeville Press and listed in Books in Print at $4,500. Lewis and Clark College, Linfield Col­ lege, Marylhurst Education Center, Pacific Uni­ versity, the University of Portland, and Reed College will take turns housing the volumes so that the students and faculty of each institution will have an opportunity to use them. • The Claremont Colleges’ Honnold Li­ brary, Claremont, California, has celebrated its one millionth acquisition with the purchase of a rare Spanish manuscript of De Re Metallica, the Renaissance classic on mining and metallurgy. This is the only known Spanish manuscript of Georgius Agricola’s book which first appeared in Latin in 1556. • The Board of D irectors of the Pacific Northwest Bibliographic Center, University of Washington Library, met in Seattle on Decem­ ber 11 to discuss alternatives and solutions for en­ suring that information and materials will remain accessible to users in the Pacific Northwest. The Board adopted a mission statement which clar­ ified its goal to “facilitate sharing of resources and strengthening of library services among libraries in the Pacific Northwest.” The center serves as a regional bibliographic center for interlibrary loans, document delivery, and reference referral services, acting as a point of contact for national and other networks to facilitate liaison with Pacific Northwest libraries. • The Mary Couts Burnett Library at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, acquired the first English edition of Jean Froissart’s Chronicles as its one millionth volume. The book was trans­ lated by Johan Bourchier and printed by Richard Pynson, who introduced Roman type into Eng­ land, in 1523-25. A 35-member advisory commit­ tee selected the Chronicles, Froissart’s history of Europe during the Hundred Years War, from a group of four rare volumes nominated to the honor. • Thomas Jefferson University Library, Phil­ adelphia, has announced that the skull of the first known Shakespearean actor in America is now 72 available for loan to appropriate institutions. The skull of George F. Cooke (d. 1812) was given to Jefferson Medical College in 1926. The library’s offer to loan the Cooke skull came in response to a request by a Temple University faculty member that the relic be available for public display at such institutions as the Folger Shakespeare Li­ brary. Because the terms of the will of a former dean at Jefferson prevent the skull from being given away, librarian John A. Timour felt that lending the skull for public display was a fair compromise—since 1930 drama societies have been trying to obtain the skull on the grounds that it was more appropriate to a theater archive than a medical library. • Dedication ceremonies were held November 20 for the University of Michigan’s Alfred Taubman Medical Library, Ann Arbor. Built with a combination of state, federal, and private funds, the $8 million library and learning center is named after its largest private contributor, A. Alfred Taubman, board chairman of the Taubman Company, Troy, Michigan. With a total of 960 study stations, the new building has a greatly en­ larged capacity to serve its 4,000 primary users. The new structure also incorporates an expanded Learning Resource Center equipped with slides, photographs, microfiche, audio and video tapes, and computer terminals. • The East Asian Library of the University of Pittsburgh has been designated a depository li­ brary for government documents from the Re­ public of China (Taiwan). The chairman of the Research, Development and Evaluation Commis­ sion of the Executive Yuan (Executive Branch of the Government), Dr. Yung Wei, recently began a program of document distribution to selected East Asian libraries throughout the world. Pitts­ burgh’s library has received the first installment of Chinese publications printed between Julv 1, 1978, and June 30, 1980. BRAILLE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY TESTED A developmental laboratory for testing innova­ tions in braille production has been established at the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) in New York City. This five-year project is under the auspices of the Library of Congress’ National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. The purpose of the project is to improve pro­ duction of reading materials for 22,000 blind peo­ ple reading LC braille books and magazines. Cur­ rently the braille collection includes thirty-six popular magazines distributed at about the same time they become available at newsstands. Some 650 books are added each year to the braille lending collection, about half of which are con­ verted to braille by volunteers. Braille production methods range from slow and cumbersome hand embossing to computer production. The developmental laboratory will examine existing and developing technologies particularly in relation to computer production of high-grade braille. The first project is to produce several books in cassette braille—computer-coded braille stored on standard audio cassettes. Portable machines play the cassettes, which activate a series of pins into a line of braille. To automate braille produc­ tion further, the books for cassette braille will be entered into the computer using the Kurzweil Data Entry Machine, an automatic print-scanning device. Another project to be initiated will explore more efficient methods of using compositors tapes for braille production. Compositors tapes are commonly used for computer production of print books. By recoding these tapes, the National Geographic magazine is currently produced in braille for Library of Congress patrons. The LC program regularly serves a readership of over 700,000 blind and physically handicapped individuals with recorded as well as braille books and magazines through a nationwide network of 160 cooperating libraries.