jan06c.indd


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

Columbia University has received a plan­
ning grant of $50,000 from the Andrew 
Mellon Foundation for a project to explore 
the landscape of scholarly publishing in the 
fields of art history and architecture, with 
the objective of understanding the chal­
lenges faced by researchers and scholars in 
these disciplines. The goal of the study is 
to understand the scope of retrenchment in 
monograph publishing, the shifts occurring 
in the supply and demand for these types 
of publications, the reasons behind these 
changes, and effects on scholars at different 
stages of their careers. 

Simmons College has received $1.8 mil­
lion to prepare a new generation of Vietnam­
ese librarians to run some of the country’s 
largest university libraries and to help fur­
ther its educational system. The grant from 
the Atlantic Philanthropies will pay for 25 
Vietnamese librarians to study at Simmons 
College’s Graduate School of Library and 
Information Science, before returning to 
Vietnam and completing coursework in their 
home country, where they will be taught by 
Simmons faculty. Emphasis will be placed on 
developing leadership and information man­
agement skills during their course of study. 
Upon successful completion of the program, 
each Vietnamese librarian will receive an MLS 
from Simmons. 

The University of North Carolina­Chapel 
Hill has been awarded $363,000 from the 
Mellon Foundation to digitize records from 
a collection of materials relating to the 
experience of Russian émigrés in the 20th 
century. The University Libraries purchased 
the collection of the late Andre Saviné, a 
Parisian book dealer and son of Russian 
emigrants. In the wake of the 1917 revolu­

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

tion, Russians dispersed across the globe in 
waves of migration that continued through 
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. 
Rare editions, archives, and published and 
private journals provide a vivid record of 
people’s lives as they struggled to retain 
their culture and maintain their ties to 
Russia during the Communist era. Saviné’s 
own annotations, maintained in 21,500 
index cards and notebook pages, provide 
the key for understanding and mining the 
collection. The Mellon Foundation funds 
will enable the library to digitize these 
documents and create the first module of 
an expandable database of materials from 
the collection. Scholars will be able to 
search and cross­reference names, organi­
zations, publishing houses, geographical 
locations, occupational titles, and other 
essential data. 

Acquisitions 

The Russell E. Train Africana Collection has 
been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution 
Libraries. The collection includes approxi­
mately 2,000 books and an extensive array 
of manuscripts, photographs, watercolors, 
sketches, maps, newspaper clippings, ar­
tifacts, and other ephemera ranging from 
the late 18th to mid­20th centuries, with 
a concentration on items relating to early 
British and American explorers. Train is 
chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife 
Fund. Under President Richard Nixon, he 
served as under secretary of the Depart­
ment of the Interior, chair of the Council on 
Environmental Quality, and administrator 
of the Environmental Protection Agency, 
a position he continued to hold under 
President Gerald Ford. President George 
H. W. Bush awarded Train the Presiden­
tial Medal of Freedom in 1991. He seri­
ously began to collect books, documents, 

January 2006  39 C&RL News 

mailto:agalloway@ala.org


artwork, and artifacts relating to African 
exploration and Natural History after his 
first visits to East Africa in 1956 and 1958. 
The Train Collection holds first­person 
accounts of expeditions to Africa, ranging 
from those of French scientist and traveler 
Francois le Vaillant in the 1780s to a safari 
undertaken by Ernest Hemingway in the 
1950s. Missionary David Livingstone and 
journalist Henry Stanley, as well as linguist 

Sir Richard F. Burton and President Theodore 
Roosevelt, are well represented with numer­
ous books by and about them, manuscript 
letters, privately printed materials, dozens 
of photographs, and other ephemera. Some 
of the published books in the collection are 
presentation copies autographed by the au­
thor, while others have original artwork or 
engravings. Many of the 19th­century works 
have pristine gold­stamped bindings. 

(“Internet Reviews” continued from page 36) 

levels, and the “IRE Educators’ Center” offers 
“a meeting place for journalism educators to 
share ideas, course materials and resources.” 

Among the many other resources on the 
site is a section with compiled links, tip­sheets 
and other resources on science, health, and 
environmental reporting, as well as a subsite 
called 2000Census.org, which was developed 
to help journalists better use the census for 
in­depth investigative stories and to archive 
and preserve government census data. 

While much of the site is freely accessible, 
one of the drawbacks is the number of resources 
that are restricted to IRE members only. Annual 
membership costs are relatively inexpensive, but 
membership is limited to professional journal­
ists (active or retired), journalism educators and 
researchers, and journalism students. Despite 
these restrictions, the IRE site remains a valuable 
resource for students, librarians, and faculty affi li­
ated with journalism programs or anyone with an 
interest in investigative reporting.—Patrick Reakes, 
University of Florida, pjr@ufl ib.ufl .edu 

C&RL News January 2006  40 

http:2000Census.org