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 

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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. 

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