july04c.indd G r a n t s a n d A c q u i s i t i o n s Ann-Christe Galloway The University of Cincinnati has received two grants totaling nearly $60,000 to improve access and use of technology in the College of Applied Science (CAS) Library and for students with disabilities. The two grants, funded by Instructional Technology and In­ structional Equipment (ITIE) fees, are issued by the university in support of programs that improve and enhance technology. The Library Company of Philadelphia has received two grants from the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities. The first is a Pres­ ervation and Access program grant ($220,000 outright and $25,000 gift and matching) to support work on the Library Company’s McAllister Collection, which comprises ap­ proximately 50,000 Civil War­era posters, broadsides, pieces of ephemera, graphics, and manuscripts compiled by 19th­century Philadelphia antiquarians, John McAllister Jr. (1786–1877) and his son John Archibald McAllister (1822–1896). The Library Com­ pany also received a “Fellowship Programs at Independent Research Institutions” grant ($138,000) to fund post­doctoral fellowships for each of three years. The University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries has been awarded a $295,507 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to continue cataloging and access efforts with the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature. The focus will be on 7,500 books printed between 1870 and 1889. More than 2,000 volumes that contain color illustrations or decoration will also be digitized by the Digital Library Center and made available on the PALMM (Publication of Library and Museum Materials) Web site. Columbia University has been awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Endow­ Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e-mail: agalloway@ala.org. ment for the Humanities to continue the de­ velopment of Digital Scriptorium, a collabora­ tive online project that digitizes and catalogs medieval and renaissance manuscripts from institutions across the United States. Under the two­year grant, the online project will move from its current home at the University of California­Berkeley to Columbia. Digital Scriptorium is one of the oldest collaborative digital content projects. It is an image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites resources from numerous separate li­ braries into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. As a visual catalog, cur­ rently holding 15,000 images and 3,500 records from 19 participating institutions (with two more in process), it allows scholars to verify cataloging information about places and dates of origin, scripts, artistic styles, and quality. A c q u i s i t i o n s More than 2,000 manuscript pages of screenplays written by F. Scott Fitzgerald from 1937 to 1938, when he worked for Metro­Goldwyn­Mayer in Hollywood, have been acquired by the University of South Carolina’s Thomas Cooper Library. The col­ lection, which comprises the largest single cache of Fitzgerald manuscripts ever offered for sale, was purchased with private funds for $475,000. The library of Carter G. Woodson (the “Father of Negro History”) and the Associa­ tion for the Study of African American Life and History, have been acquired by Emory University. In 1926, Woodson organized the first Negro History Week, now celebrated each February as Black History Month, to fos­ ter the study of African American history. The collection includes rare books, pamphlets, and periodicals. Among the earliest books in the collection is a leather­bound copy of A Short History of Barbados, From its First Discovery and Settlement, to . . . 1767 (1768). 394 / C&RL NewsJuly/August 2004 mailto:agalloway@ala.org Within the collection of books there are many important inscriptions to Woodson, including one from musician W. C. Handy, who signed his book, Unsung Americans Sung (1944), “To the Father of Negro History Week, From the Father of Blues.” The American Newspaper Repository (ANR), a 5,000­volume collection of rare 19th­ and 20th­century American newspapers, has been donated to Duke University. Novelist and essayist Nicholson Baker founded the repository in 1999 and acquired the bulk of the collection from the British Library. The ANR collection includes extensive runs of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Tribune and Herald Tribune, and the New York World. The New York World, published by Joseph Pulit­ zer, had the largest circulation of any Ameri­ can newspaper in the 1890s and published short stories by O. Henry and caricatures by Al Frueh. The New York World also was the first newspaper to include crossword puzzles and children’s activities. ANR also preserves many immigrant newspapers, including the Irish World, and foreign language papers, such as the Yiddish Forward and the Greek Atlantis. New manuscripts and photographs collec­ tion about the Faith Cabin Libraries in South Carolina and Georgia have been received by the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina. These private, community­ based libraries were in operation from 1931 to the mid­1970s, to provide book collections for rural African American communities during the segregation era. The libraries’ name came from a statement from one elderly lady who appreciated the value of books and reading, “We didn’t have money; all we had was faith.” The first library was established at the Plum Branch community in Saluda County, South Carolina, by a white textile worker, Willie Lee Buffington, who later became a college professor and Methodist minister. Through Buffington’s letter­writing campaign and appeals for donations, more than 100 small libraries were constructed in South Carolina and Georgia. Works by and about Vladimir Nabokov have been donated to the University of Michigan by Fan Parker. Among the many highlights of the collection are fi rst editions of Lolita; editions of Lolita in many lan­ guages, including Russian, Japanese, French, Hebrew, Danish, Greek, and Spanish; more than 500 issues of periodicals with articles by or about Nabokov; and works related to Nabokov related to his scientific research as a lepidopterist. The collection also features materials of Lewis Carroll, including Anye v Strane Chudes—a Russian­language edi­ tion of Alice in Wonderland translated by Nabokov—as well as a book written by Parker on Carroll works in Russian. Parker also gave the university library rare works by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, including the first Russian edition of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, as well as a number of first edition signed works by John Updike. Parker has established the Dr. Fan Parker Family Endowment Fund for support of the collection and the acquisition of other Nabokov materials. T h e D o n a l d a n d M a r y H y d e C o l ­ lection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a collection of 18th­century English literature, has been bequeathed to Harvard University’s Houghton Library by Mary Viscountess Eccles (1912– 2003). Eccles also made a substantial gift to endow the position of curator of the Hyde Collection and to fund acquisitions to ensure the growth of the collection and support 18th­century studies in the scholarly world. Assembled over a 60­year period, the Hyde Collection, with Johnson at its center, en­ compasses letters, manuscripts, fi rst editions, portraits, and even his silver teapot. With more than 4,000 volumes, approximately 5,500 letters and manuscripts, and more than 5,000 prints, drawings, and objects, it paints a broad yet detailed picture of 18th­century English literature and culture. The American Antiquarian Society has acquired two important files of newspapers from their original publishers. The fi rst is the first 200 issues of the southern Illinois newspaper, the Centralia Sentinel from 1863 to 1867. The second is from the office of the Observer-Reporter (Washington, Pennsylva­ nia). The society received 45 bound volumes of the Reporter for 1808 to 1825 and for 1843 to 1876, plus five volumes of their competitors from the 1850s and 60s.  C&RL NewsJuly/August 2004 / 395