feb11b.indd


February 2011  115 C&RL News

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

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-
paign Library has received a $1.25 million 
challenge grant from the Andrew W. Mellon 
Foundation to fund a senior-level conserva-
tor position in its Conservation Unit. The 
Mellon Foundation grant includes $1 million 
as a permanent endowment and $250,000 to 
establish the new senior conservator position 
while matching funds are being raised. The 
University Library has committed to match 
and exceed the amount of the grant by raising 
$1.5 million over three years. The endowment 
will generate funding to support the position 
permanently.

T h e  H i s t o r i c a l l y  B l a c k  C o l l e g e s  a n d  
Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance has 
received a $70,000 grant award from the 
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the Al-
liance’s “Preserving Our History” project. 
The two-year project will document and 
disseminate the history of the HBCU Library 
Alliance and highlight member success sto-
ries. This is the first grant awarded directly 
to the Alliance.

Acquisitions

The Oberman Research Library has been 
acquired by the University of Arizona (UA), 
following the completion of the endowment 
of the Heiko A. Oberman Chair in Late Medi-
eval and Reformation History in 2010. Ober-
man researched and published extensively in 
his field; his oeuvre includes 17 independent 
works, 19 edited or co-edited volumes, and 
137 articles, prefaces, etc. His most well-

known works stem from his study of Martin 
Luther. His book Luther: Man Between God 
and the Devil (1982)—originally published 
in German—has been translated into Italian, 
Dutch, English, and Spanish. After receiving 
a doctorate in theology in his home city of 
Utrecht, and being ordained a minister in the 
Reformed Church of The Netherlands, Ober-
man accepted a position at Harvard Divinity 
School, leaving only to assume the director-
ship of the Institute for Late Middle Ages and 
Reformation at the University of Tübingen. 
Oberman was called to the University of Ari-
zona in 1984. Named a Regents’ Professor 
in 1988, he became the founding director of 
the Division for Late Medieval and Reforma-
tion Studies. Oberman’s working library of 
more than 10,000 volumes, some of which 
are rare, were appraised in 1998 at $1.2 mil-
lion. Prior to his passing in 2001, Oberman 
himself declared that the high ranking of the 
Division for Late Medieval and Reformation 
Studies is due largely to students’ ability to 
access this tremendous resource, and it was 
his intention to bequeath this trove to UA. 
In what has been called a typically creative 
gesture however, Oberman made this gift a 
challenge grant: he would donate his library 
only upon the creation of an endowed fac-
ulty chair within the division. The Heiko A. 
Oberman Research Library includes more 
than 100 original Martin Luther texts, more 
than 60 John Calvin texts, as well as the 
first collected edition (dated 1545) of Ulrich 
Zwingli’s work, “the crowning glory of a dis-
tinguished collection.” Zwingli, the first of the 
“Reformed” Reformers, is thought by some 
to have had an even greater influence than 
his counterparts on Western European, and 
subsequently American, life and thought. The 
Oberman Library also contains writings from 
the Second Vatican Council, including drafts 
of each document produced, as well as final 
printings. 

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