December 2014 667 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 North Carolina State University (NCSU)  
Libraries has been awarded a grant to tackle 
how best to capture and save the increas-
ingly critical but ephemeral social media 
conversations that now regularly docu-
ment our lives and times. The EZ Innova-
tion Grant from the State Library of North 
Carolina will enable librarians Jason Casden 
and Brian Dietz to lead a team to develop a 
freely available web toolkit to help guide in-
stitutions that preserve our cultural heritage 
by collecting and curating the primary docu-
ments that are the raw materials of history. 
Increasingly these materials are created and 
shared on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and 
other social media platforms. But since few 
institutions are systematically saving these 
conversations, much of our current history’s 
raw material is quickly and irrevocably dis-
appearing as quickly as it is produced. And 
while tools to save these materials are be-
coming more sophisticated and less expen-
sive, very little has been done to help librar-
ies and others deploy them in thoughtful, 
effective ways. The toolkit will also include 
materials to help other cultural heritage in-
stitutions design and document criteria for 
what they collect and strategies to begin 
collecting social media. These materials will 
include a scan of work being done in the 
area, a risk assessment for potential legal 
concerns, and a discussion of the impact of 
social media on archival research. The social 
media toolkit is planned for release in Sum-
mer 2015.

A c q u i s i t i o n s

The papers of Mo Willems—author, illu- 
strator, and award-winning creator of 

some of the most beloved characters in con-
temporary children’s literature—have been 
acquired by Yale University. Willems’ original 
sketches, notebooks, and book drafts will join 
a growing archive 
at Yale Univer-
sity documenting 
the reading and 
imaginative lives 
of American chil-
dren. Willems, 46, 
began writing for 
children as a staff 
writer for “Sesame 
Street,” where he 
spent nine years 
and earned six 
Emmy Awards. His first publication for chil-
dren—Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!—
was named a Caldecott Honor Book in 2004. 
Since then, he has created a cast of memo-
rable characters that have made him one of 
the most recognized talents in the world of 
children’s literature. Knuffle Bunny: A Cau-
tionary Tale, another Caldecott Honor Book, 
has been made into a stage musical, and the 
Elephant and Piggie series has been praised 
by Kirkus Reviews for its “snappy pacing 
and wry humor.” The New York Times Book 
Review has placed the Pigeon in “the pan-
theon of great picture book characters.” The 
archive thus far consists of a selection of 
notebooks in which Willems works through 
book ideas, manuscript “dummy” books for 
several Elephant and Piggie titles (includ-
ing the original artwork for I am Invited to a 
Party!), notes, drafts, and production material 
for the premiere production of “Knuffle Bun-
ny: A Cautionary Musical”; storyboards for 
animated series; early notebooks (published 
as You Can Never Find a Rickshaw When it 
Monsoons); and copies of all his published 
books up to 2012. Future additions will add 
archival material related to other well-loved 
books and papers documenting his career at 
“Sesame Street.” 

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

Mo Willems. Photo credit: 
Marty Umans