june08c.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 Brown University has received a grant of $228,454 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create a statewide data­ base, entitled the Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online (RIAMCO). Through the application of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids, RIAMCO will collocate more than 300 dispersed but over­ lapping collections about the history of Rhode Island drawn from local public and university libraries across the state, fashioning a union Web resource hosted and supported by Brown University. The material documented in RIAMCO represents the history of Rhode Island from the colonial period to the pres­ ent day and provides valuable insight into a range of topics including business, the Civil War, slavery, literature, church history, poli­ tics, diplomatic history, art and architecture, military history, labor, health and medicine, state and local government, higher education, and Native Americans. Johns Hopkins University and the Biblio­ thèque Nationale de France have received grants of $779,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to provide scholars with virtual access to more than half the known versions of Le Roman de la Rose, a medieval poem on the art of love that was the most­ read work of French literature for hundreds of years. The two grants will enable the Roman de la Rose project at Johns Hopkins’ Sheridan Libraire to digitize 90 manuscripts of the poem held in the BNF and another 40 manuscripts from university and municipal libraries throughout France. The Columbia University Oral History Re­ search Office has received a grant from the Agnes Gund Foundation to record an oral history of women in the visual arts. The Ed. note: Send your news to: Grants & Acquisitions, C&RL News, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795; e-mail: agalloway@ala.org. project will be named “The Elizabeth Murray Oral History of Women in the Visual Arts,” in honor of the deceased celebrated painter and printmaker. Through the two­year project, the Oral History Research Office will conduct life and career histories of 20 women artists, collectors, and curators whose contributions have impacted the art world in the 20th and 21st centuries. An advisory committee led by Gund will select the interviewees for project. The interviews will take place over two years and result in 200 hours of interviews. Each woman’s history will be approximately ten hours in length, composed primarily of audio, supplemented with video, and available to the public through the Columbia University Libraries upon completion in 2009. Acquisitions Three titles from a Rhode Island book dealer have been donated to Brown University Library. The items include a first edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, a fi rst English language edition of Ludwig Wittgen­ stein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and John James Audubon’s The Quadrupeds of North America. Each of the books includes details that add to their value and importance to scholars and researchers. The edition of The Great Gatsby contains an inscription from the author T. S. Eliot in which he writes, “For T.S. Elliot [sic]/Greatest of Living Poets/ from his entheusiastic[sic]/worshipper/F. Scott Fizgerald/Paris Oct./1925.” There are also notes in the margin, most probably from Eliot. The Wittgenstein features annotations and corrections in the text by the author himself. The Audubon, comprising some 155 color plates, is unusual in that it retains its original printed wrappers. The history archives of the Washington Of­ fice on Latin America (WOLA) will be donated June 2008 359 C&RL News mailto:agalloway@ala.org to the Duke University Libraries. WOLA will transfer its inactive physical archives, includ­ ing documents in the organization’s research, advocacy, and monitoring roles regarding major issues and events since the 1970s, including the Contra war in Nicaragua, U.S. funding for anti­drug efforts in the Andes, the 1980s civil war in El Salvador, and the Fujimori government in Peru. The agreement with Duke will provide for the transfer of about 100 boxes of inactive documents and papers from all facets of WOLA’s work. The papers of author Ken Haruf have been acquired by the Huntington. A native of Colo­ rado, haruf writes novels and stories about life in a small town on the American plains. His fi rst novel, The Tie That Binds, received a PEN/Hemingway Award and a Whiting Foun­ dation Writers Award. Each of his next novels have earned awards and honors: Where You Once Belonged (1990); Plainsong (2000), his best­known book; and Eventide (2004). The collection consists of extensive and multiple corrected drafts of Haruf’s novel, short stories, poems, and essays, as well as correspondence with editors, publishers, and such authors as John Irving and Annie Proulx. The writings of Joseph Priestly (1733– 1804)—the Unitarian minister, educator, theo­ logian, historian, and political radical, best known for the discovery of oxygen—have been acquired by Urbana University. Born a cloth­dresser’s son at Fieldhead in Birdstall Parish, Leeds was ordained a minister in 1762. He became a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, who encouraged his work in sci­ ence and politics. Priestley founded the fi rst Unitarian church in America. Described as the most important English writer on education between John Locke and Herbert Spencer, he was consulted by Thomas Jefferson on the curriculum for the University of Virginia that Jefferson was in the process of founding. This 30­volume collection was part of the personal library of John James, who donated land for Urbana University in Ohio and many volumes contain handwritten annotations by James. Included in the collection is one of two major philosophical works, Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit, as well as his more revolutionary works An History of the Corruptions of Christianity , An History of Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, and Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, Part I. The archives of Samuel Roth (1893–1974), publisher and writer, have been acquired by Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manu­ script Library. During his career Roth established bookstores in New York City that published and sold books, magazines, and erotica, and operated a mail order operation that defi ed Post Office censors for two decades. He founded two successful literary magazines, including Beau, the first American “men’s magazine.” As a pub­ lisher, Roth was frequently accused of violating the copyrights of authors such as D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, and was responsible for the fi rst, unauthorized editions of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ulysses. He published a critical trea­ tise on Herbert Hoover that helped defeat the President in 1932. In 1951 he issued My Sister and I, purportedly a memoir by Nietzsche about his incestuous relationship with his sister. Its authenticity is still being debated. Roth last achieved notoriety in 1957 as the appellant in the Supreme Court case, Roth v. United States. The minority decision in the case opened the way to Constitutional protection for expression previously censored for indecency, and became a template for the liberalizing First Amendment decisions of the 1960s. The archive contains letters and manuscripts from Edwin Arlington Robinson, Maurice Samuel, Frank Tannenbaum, Israel Zangwill, Clement Wood, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, H.D., Claude McKay, George Sylvester Viereck, Harry Roskolenko, and Gay Talese. It also contains Roth’s FBI fi les and transcripts of court cases and photographs, as well as Roth’s own writings, including his anti­Semitic screed Jews Must Live, his prison memoir, his large body of unpublished essays and novels, his personal letters, and his own poetry. Both his unpublished autobiography and his daughter’s unfinished memoir of her father are also included in the collection. 360C&RL News June 2008