ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries vember 1982 / 359No News from the Field ACQUISITIONS • A l f r e d U n i v e r s i t y ’s Herrick M emorial L i­ brary, Alfred, New York, has acquired an impor­ tant archive of letters by 28 British authors includ­ ing T .S . Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley, E .M . Forster, and Rebecca West. All of the letters were written to Ursula Roberts, a British poet who used the pen name Susan Miles, and many of them are concerned with the British peace movement of the 1930s. •The N e w Y o r k St a t e A r c h i v e s , Albany, has received 3,500 cubic feet of records created by colo­ nial and state courts. They will be administered by the State Archives of the State Education D epart­ ment under an agreement with the New York State Court of Appeals. The list of well-known New Yorkers whose legal careers can be traced in these records includes Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, John Jay, George Clinton, D eW itt Clinton, Mil­ lard Fillm ore, and many others. State archivist Larry J. Hackman said that many of the records of the highest historical interest are in such poor phys­ ical condition that the Archives cannot make them available for research until they have received con­ servation treatment or have been microfilmed. The records had been previously stored at Queens Col­ lege in Flushing. •The U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a , S a n D i e g o , has acq u ired the papers of H arold C lay to n Urey (1893-1981), winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of deuterium. The pa­ pers include material dated 1934 to 1981, although the bulk of the collection concerns Urey’s work af­ ter 1945. It includes files concerning the Em er­ gency Committee of Atomic Scientists, 1946-1949, a small amount of material on the Rosenberg and Sobell cases, and several inches of correspondence documenting Urey’s work as science advisor to president-elect John F. Kennedy. GRANTS •The B o s t o n T h e o l o g i c a l I n s t i t u t e has been awarded grants totaling $78,431 from the Booth Ferris Foundation and the Council on Library Re­ sources for the completion of its CONSER serials cataloging project, launched in 1979. Over 85% of the serials have now been cataloged and the records are available online through O C LC . •The C e n t e r f o r R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s , C h i­ cago, has received $35,845 from the National E n ­ dowment for the Humanities to improve biblio­ graphic access to United States newspapers held by the Center. On November 1 the Center began to convert its catalog records for approximately 1,100 U.S. newspapers to machine-readable form using the C O N SER database. The C enter’s project is part of a nationwide program supported by NEH funds to promote resource sharing and cooperation in bibliograp hic control among m ajor U .S. li­ braries, particularly for newspapers that are not at present widely available to researchers. Another participating institution, the A m e r i c a n A n t i q u a r i a n S o c i e t y , Worcester, Massachusetts, has received $201,978 from NEH to catalog their holdings of more than 14,000 newspaper titles through 1876. O th er repositories selected for grants are the State Historical Society of W iscon­ sin, the Kansas State Historical Society, the New York Historical Society, and the Western Reserve Historical Society. • The N e w Y o r k P u b l i c L i b r a r y has received a surprise $375,000 challenge grant from the Chase Manhattan Bank to enable its Central Research L i­ brary at Fifth Avenue and 42d Street to reopen its doors on Thursdays, effective Jan u ary 6. The building has been closed Thursdays since 1975. •The U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a , B e r k e l e y , has been awarded an HEA Title II-C grant of $157,297 to strengthen the library’s Slavic and East Euro­ pean collections. The monies will be used to review the collections on the shelf, conserve them on archi­ val quality microfilm, enrich them by filling in m a­ jor lacunae, and fully describe them in the UC- Berkeley catalog and RLIN . • The U n i v e r s i t y o f M a n i t o b a Libraries, W in­ nipeg, have received a grant of $25,000 from the C anad ian Social Sciences and H um anities R e­ search Council for acquisitions relating to social gerontology. •Y o r k U n i v e r s i t y Libraries, Downsview, On­ tario, recently received a grant of $38,655 from the C anad ian Social Sciences and H um anities R e­ search Council which will enable processing of 10,000 Canadian pamphlets. The pamphlets pro­ vide a continuum of information about political and cultural events in Canada, especially Quebec and Ontario, between 1880 and 1950. NEWS NOTES • The R h o d e I s l a n d H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y , Provi­ dence, has completed a two-year project catalog­ ing the records of the U nited States Customs House, Providence. The thousands of documents date between 1789 and 1900 and were given to the Society in 1902 by Act of Congress. They were largely unavailable to researchers until a $48,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Hu­ manities enabled the Society to arrange and safely store the papers and compile a detailed inventory of contents. •The U n i v e r s i t y o f H o u s t o n Library has re­ cently completed an inventory of all monographs 360 / C&RL News in its collections. Very few research libraries hav undertaken such a comprehensive project in recen years. The library’s plan to conduct an inventor grew out of findings gathered through their Publi Services Review Project conducted in the Spring o 1981. Because of the project’s user orientation, th library was able to gather much information abou patron use and user success rates. The study re vealed that many titles listed in the card catalo could not be found in the stacks by either patrons o staff. The monographs inventory was begun in th Fall of 1981 and completed in 37 weeks. A tota number of 474,806 shelf list cards were checked, and 35,578 volumes could not be accounted fo (about 4% of all volumes held). One side effect o the project has been the identification of som 3,800 missing or incorrect records, including trans posed call numbers, mis-numbered copies, missin shelf list cards, and outdated location symbols. T reduce user frustration until such time as many o the volumes are replaced, all missing books hav been labeled as “lost” in the library’s C LSI circula tion system. A serials inventory has been planne for the Fall. A limited number of copies of the writ ten procedures for the Inventory Project are avail able from D ana Rooks, Personnel Coordinator, University Libraries, University of Houston Cen tral Campus, Houston, T X 77004. e t y c f e t ­ g r e l r f e ­ g o f e ­ d ­ ­ ­ •The U n i v e r s i t y o f I l l i n o i s has purchased its 6 millionth acquisition, John Flamsteed’s Celestial History (1712). When Flamsteed discovered that Edmund Halley (of Hailey’s Comet) had added ob­ servations of his own while editing the manuscript, he ordered all copies of the book burned. Only 61 are known to have escaped the flames. The U n i ­ v e r s i t y o f R o c h e s t e r acquired its 2 millionth vol­ ume, a rare 1557 folio edition of T he W orkes o f Sir Thom as More. The book was presented to the li­ brary by alumna Marie Ostendorf Wells. ■ ■ MUDGE CITATION The Isadore Gilbert Mudge Citation Committee is seeking nominations of outstanding reference li­ brarians for the annual award given by ALA’s Ref­ erence and Adult Services Division. The Mudge Ci­ ta tio n recognizes a person who has m ade a distinguished contribution to reference librarian­ ship in the form of an imaginative and constructive program in a particular library; the writing of a significant book or articles in the reference field; creative and inspirational teaching or reference N. F rederick Nash (left), rare books librarian, and R obert A. Watts (right), president o f the Friends o f the U. o f I. L ibra ry ‚ inspect the Celestial History. November 1982 / 361 services; active participation in professional associ­ ations devoted to reference services; or in other noteworthvj activities which stimulate reference li­ brarians to more distinguished performance. Send letters of nomination by December 15 to Joyce Duncan Falk, Library-Reference, Univer­ sity of California, Irvine, Box 19557, Irvine, CA 92713. ■ ■ People PROFILES G e r a r d B. M c C a b e has been appointed director of libraries at Clarion State College, Pennsylvania, effective July 1. He had been director of university lib raries at V irg in ia C om m onw ealth U ni­ versity, R ichm ond , since 1970. During his 12 years in Richmond, he guided the comple­ tion of additions to the Tompkins-McCaw and James Branch Cabell L i­ braries of the university. M cC abe earned his b a ch e lo r’s degree at Manhattan College, his MLS at the University of Michigan, and a mas­ Gerard B. M cC abe ter’s in English at Michi­ gan State University. In 1967-1970 he was assistant director for planning and development at the Uni­ versity of South Florida and prior to that associate director of libraries at the University of Arkansas (1966-1967), acquisition librarian at the Univer­ sity of South Florida (1959-1966), and he served in the libraries of the University of Nebraska, Michi­ gan State, and the University of Michigan. Active in ALA’s Library Administration and Management Association, McCabe was most re­ cently chair of the Building and Equipment Sec­ tion. He is co-editor of Advances in Library Ad­ ministration and Organization. R o n a l d E . W y l l y s has been named dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Sci­ ence at the University of Texas, Austin. A specialist in research methods emphasizing statistics, systems analysis, library automation and operations research, Wyllys joined the UT faculty in 1972 as an assistant professor. He received a Ph.D. in information science from the University of Wisconsin in 1974 and holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Arizona State University (1950). His previous professional experience includes po­ sitions as chief systems analyst for the University of Wisconsin Libraries (1966-1969); computer sys­ tems specialist for System Development Corpora­ tion (1 9 6 1 -1 9 6 6 ); associate in information re­ trieval for Planning Research Corporation in Los Angeles (1959-1961); and mathematician for the .S. Defense Department (1954-1959). Articles by Wyllys have appeared in Collection anagement, Communications o f the Association o r Computing Machinery, and Library Trends. e has also co-authored a book on n atio n al ocument-handling systems. J u d i t h A. Se s s i o n s has accepted the position of ssistant university librarian for administrative ervices at the Gelman Library, George Washing­ on U niversity. The older of an MLS degree rom Florida State Uni­ ersity (1971), Sessions as previously em ­ loyed at Mt. Vernon College, W ashington, .C ., as director of the ibrary/Learning R e­ ources C en ter. L ast pril she had been ap­ ointed director of li­ rary services at Stock­ on S tate C ollege, om ona, New Jersey, Judith A. Sessions ut sought other em ­ loyment when Stockton’s Board of Trustees took everal months to examine the college’s search procedure A C R L L ib rary Statistics In Philadelphia the ACRL Board of Direc­ tors voted to repeat the statistical survey of non- ARL university libraries which was first under­ taken in 1978-79. (Copies of the results of that survey are still available from ACRL at $5 for members and $7.50 for non-members.) At the end of September a questionnaire based on the survey done by the Association of Research L i­ braries was sent to the 91 U.S. university li­ braries and 10 Canadian university libraries which are not members of ARL, asking for data for the 1981-82 school year. The questionnaires are due back at ACRL by December 1 and pub­ lication of the data is planned for Spring, 1983. The University of Idaho has won our unofficial promptness award by returning its question­ naire on October first! U M f H d a s t h f v w p D L s A p b t P b p s