nov10b.indd


November 2010  567 C&RL News

Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, 
C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; 
e-mail: agalloway@ala.org.

Acquisitions

A rare medieval bible has been ac -
quired by the University of South Carolina 
(USC). The book is English and was made 
in Oxford around 1240, and is in pristine 
condition. It was purchased at auction in 
London with support from New York’s B. 
H. Breslauer Foundation. Most complete 
medieval Bibles in the United States, fewer 
than 100 in number, are from France or 
Italy, and USC’s Bible likely remained in its 
country of origin from its creation until this 
year. The Bible acquired by USC is the only 
English pocket Bible in the Southeast.

A collection of Jan Morris has been gifted 
to the University Libraries at George Mason 
University. It comprises a comprehensive 
collection of nearly all of her travel narra-
tives in not only the first editions, but also 
most of the subsequent editions, including 
galleys, proof versions, and editions with 
composition errors. The Jan Morris Col-
lection consists of 136 titles and one rare 
poster (a chromolithographic enlargement 
of the dust jacket of Manhattan ’45, a pro-
motional piece, signed by Morris). The col-
lection includes Morris’s Coronation Everest, 
signed by Sir Edmund Hillary. Born James 
Morris in 1926 in Somerset, England, Morris 
began medically transitioning from male-to-
female in 1964, and underwent gender re-
assignment surgery in 1972. She published 
under her former name, James Morris, until 
the 1970s. She is widely acclaimed for her 
travel writing, which includes famous pro-
files of Oxford, Venice, Wales, Hong Kong, 
and New York City, among other places. 
Morris’ most recent book, Contact! A Book 
of Encounters, was published in 2010. A 
Welsh nationalist, and also an essayist and 

historian of note, her most famous nontra-
vel work is the Pax Britannica trilogy, a 
history of the British Empire. 

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

into question the often assumed privilege of 
printed text. Transliteracy works against the 
“entrenched bias towards the written me-
dium.” ALA Committee on Literacy’s definition 
of literacy demonstrates this bias. It defines 
literacy as the ability to use “printed and 
written information to function in society, 
to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s 
knowledge and potential.” 

Transliteracy is not unique in questioning 
this bias—media literacy efforts have certainly 
tried to raise the profile of nonprint materi-
als. But transliteracy is unique in combining 
democratizing communication formats, ex-
pressing no preference of one over the other, 
with emphasizing the social construction of 
meaning via diverse media.

Because of the ways in which transliteracy 
questions authority and devalues hierarchi-
cal structures for disseminating information, 
proponents tend to advocate for issues that 
help level the information playing field, 
such as ensuring neutrality and bridging the 
digital divide. 

Despite the fact that transliteracy originat-
ed outside the library realm, librarians should 
follow the development of this concept 
because so much of transliteracy overlaps 
concerns much at the heart of librarianship. 
As more research is created in the field, librar-
ians can incorporate these new ideas into the 
ways they assist patrons with accessing, un-
derstanding, and producing information. The 
social aspects of transliteracy can enhance 
the workplace by creating robust systems of 
knowledge sharing and can enhance user 
experience by granting them a role in the 
construction of information. 

(“Introducing transliteracy,” cont. from 
page 533)