jan07c.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  

The Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries have 
been awarded a $185,000 grant from the 
Institute of Museum and Library Services to 
create a prototype system that will capture 
and preserve the massive digital datasets 
generated by large­scale astronomy projects 
for the Virtual Observatory (VO). The VO is a 
Hopkins­led effort to develop a common set 
of standards in a Web framework for digital 
astronomy. Johns Hopkins will establish a 
collaboration of publishers, libraries, and the 
National Virtual Observatory (NVO) to give 
astronomers universal access to the specially 
processed digital images, spectra, and time 
series that are graphically represented in 
scientifi c literature. 

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research 
Center of the University of Texas­Austin has 
completed work to preserve and catalog a 
large portion of the center’s modern French 
literary manuscript and visual arts holdings 
with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon 
Foundation. The award made possible the 
arranging, housing, and description of fi ve 
sizable modern French collections, specifi cally 
the Ransom Center’s Carlton Lake collection, 
widely recognized as one of the fi nest research 
collections of modern French materials out­
side of France; the Princess Marthe Bibesco 
papers; the William Bradley Literary Agency 
records; the Edouard Dujardin papers; and 
the Artine Artinian collection. The collections 
include diverse works in history, literature, 
music, philosophy, photography, religion, and 
women’s studies by such important literary 
and cultural figures as Charles Baudelaire, 
Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau, Georges 
Hugnet, Valentine Hugo, James Joyce, Pierre 
Louÿs, Henry Miller, Henri­Pierre Roché, 
Maurice Saillet, Erik Satie, Gertrude Stein, 
and Henri de Toulouse­Lautrec. The depart­

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 created archival finding aids for each 
collection, including biographical sketches, 
scope and content notes, series descriptions 
and detailed indices of manuscript titles, 
correspondence, and photographic materi­
als present in the collections. The fi nding 
aids for each collection can be found at the 
Texas Archival Resources Online Web site 
at www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/. 

Acquisitions 

The archive of The New Leader, a magazine 
of political opinion and cultural criticism, 
has been acquired by Columbia University’s 
Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Founded 
in 1924 as a newspaper of the American 
Democratic Socialist movement, it went 
on to publish some of the most infl uential 
intellectual figures of the 20th century. The 
Columbia Libraries will also host Myron 
Kolatch, The New Leader’s executive editor 
from 1962 through its final issue in 2006, for 
a five­year appointment to develop an active 
New Leader Web site, put together a New 
Leader anthology, and write a history of the 
magazine. During its 82 years of publication, 
The New Leader provided one of the fi rst 
American forums for Soviet­era dissidents, 
such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Milovan 
Djilas, and Joseph Brodsky, as well as for the 
vanguard of the U.S. civil rights movement, 
including Martin Luther King Jr., whose “Letter 
from Birmingham City Jail” appeared in the 
magazine’s June 24, 1963, issue. 

A major collection of photo postcards has 
been acquired by Angelo State University 
(ASU). The postcards and other materials on 
the borderlands augment ASU’s holdings on 
the Mexican Revolution and expand its overall 
collection of Mexican holdings for the period 
between the 1870s and 1940s. The West Texas 
Collection historical repository at ASU acquired 

C&RL News January 2007  48 

www.lib.utexas.edu/taro
mailto:agalloway@ala.org


the collection from collector Russ Todd, who 
amassed a collection of some 8,500 postcards 
during his career as a bookseller and collec­
tor. The collection was acquired for $81,250 
through an anonymous gift to the Friends of 
the Porter Henderson Library and West Texas 
Collection. Of the 8,500 postcards, approxi­
mately 8,000 are photo postcards, meaning 
they are images made by photographic rather 
than printing processes, thus providing a high­
er quality image. The images include extensive 
shots from the Mexican­U.S. border as well as 
the Pacific Coast, including 
Mazatlán before 1914. The 
collection also includes nu­
merous books, railroad bro­
chures, photograph albums, 
pamphlets, posters, maps, 
and other ephemera. 

The K. Marie Stolba collec­
tion has been bequeathed to 
the Colorado Christian Uni­
versity (CCU) Library. Stolba, 
an author, violinist, composer, 
musicologist, and educator, 
served on the faculty of CCU 
as distinguished lecturer and 
visiting professor of music 
from 1993 until her death in 
2005. She was the author of 
the widely used text The Development of Western 
Music: A History, as well as several scholarly 
articles and monographs. After her death in 
2005, she gifted a significant portion of her estate 
to CCU and her entire personal library, which 
included more than 2,000 items: books, music 
CDs, slides, original scores, research materials 
for articles. 

The Harvard Business School’s Baker Li­
brary (HBS) has acquired the Polaroid Cor­
poration’s archives. Housed in the library’s 
Historical Collections, the Polaroid Corporation 
Collection includes approximately 4,000 linear 
feet of materials dating from the company’s 
founding in 1937 to the present—and chroni­
cling the invention of instant photography 
by Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land. Artifacts 

A 1954 Polaroid test photograph of 
company founder Edwin H. Land. 

within the collection include sunglasses, military 
goggles, 3D glasses, and examples of many of 
the camera models and accessories Polaroid 
produced from the early 1950s to the late 1990s. 
Notable items within the collection are research 
and development files and patent records that 
detail the company’s many innovations, includ­
ing Land’s early work with polarizing lenses and 
the invention of instant photography. The fi rm’s 
marketing and publicity efforts are well docu­
mented by an extensive collection of advertising 
materials, product packaging, and corporate 

publications. The collection 
also contains a vast and 
comprehensive set of pho­
tographs taken by Polaroid 
employees and professional 
photographers from 1937 
to the 1990s. These images 
were taken for research pur­
poses during the testing of 
new Polaroid products and 
as part of the company’s 
advertising campaigns. 

The institutional archive 
of the Penumbra Theatre 
Company has been ac­
quired by the University of 
Minnesota Libraries, which 
will become part of the Giv­

ens Collection of African American Literature. 
The archive includes the historical documen­
tation of the theatre, as well as the personal 
and artistic papers of Penumbra Founder and 
Artistic Director Lou Bellamy, who is also on 
the faculty of the University’s Department of 
Theatre Arts and Dance. Once the Penumbra 
archive is catalogued and processed, it will 
be available for research and study by the 
general public as well as University students, 
faculty and staff. Penumbra, founded in 1976, 
was born of the Civil Rights and Black Arts 
Movement and the tenet that an artist’s eth­
ics and aesthetics must be one. The theatre 
has garnered critical acclaim for creating an 
authentic voice and style for African American 
theatre and achieved national recognition as a 
pioneer in crosscultural dialogue. 

January 2007  49 C&RL News