ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 390 / C&RL News News from the Field ACQUISITIONS • C B N U n iv e r s it y , Virginia Beach, has acquired the hymnology collection of Keith C. Clark. The materials cover a variety of subjects in a wide range of formats, including hymnals, psalters, oblong tune-books, as well as books on hymnody, church music, composers, early sermons on church music, and journals. An overview of the collection may be gained through examination of Clark’s Selective Bibliography fo r the Study o f Hymns (1980). •The O h io St a t e U n iv e r s it y Libraries, Colum­ bus, have received a collection of correspondence, manuscripts, and other materials from the estate of Nelson Algren (1909-1981), author of The Man with the Golden Arm. This acquisition, together with a large body of Algren manuscripts obtained directly from the author in the 1960s, brings to­ gether a nearly comprehensive archive fo r the study of his work. A major part of the correspon­ dence is a file of about 340 letters from Simone de Beauvoir written from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s. There is also a joint diary of their much publicized Mexican trip in 1948. Also included are multiple states of Algren’s last unpublished novel, The D evils Stocking, a fictionalized account of the career of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, leading con­ tender for the middleweight boxing crown who was convicted of triple murder in a very controver­ sial trial during the late 1960s. • The U n i v e r s i t y o f N o r t h C a r o l i n a a t C h a p e l H i l l ’s Southern Historical Collection has received and prepared for research use the papers of Walker Percy, novelist, essayist, and North Car­ olina alumnus. The collection consists primarily of manuscripts from work on his published novels and on a few of his essays. For each novel there are notes, partial or preliminary drafts, and as many as five complete drafts. •The U n iv e r s it y o f U t a h ’s Marriott Library, Salt Lake City, has received the papers of promi­ nent Utah historian Fawn M. Brodie. Brodie died in 1981, shortly after completing her biography, Richard M. Nixon: The Child and the Man. Her children recently gave the library drafts and manu­ scripts from that book and from her biography of Thomas Jefferson. Also donated were taped inter­ views with Richard Nixon as well as notes, newspa­ per clipppings, reviews, articles, and approxi­ mately 400 books used to supplement both her research on Nixon and Jefferson and her biography of Sir Richard Burton. Utah’s Special Collections Department has also acquired the correspondence and manuscripts of Sonia Johnson, an excommunicated Mormon femi­ nist. Johnson recently donated the manuscript from her autobiography, From Housewife to Heretic, along with newspaper clippings, speeches, let­ ters from supporters, and correspondence with her family that predates her Equal Rights Amendment involvement. Part of the collection is closed to the public until Johnson releases it, GRANTS •The A sso c ia t io n o f R e s e a r c h L ib r a r ie s ’ Of­ fice of Management Studies has received a grant of $250,000 from the General Electric Foundation for a “Public Services in Research Libraries Project.” Over a two-year period OMS will develop a series of aids that libraries can use to analyze, improve, and adapt their public services programs to chang­ ing economic, technological, and user needs. The results of the project will provide an assisted self- study manual and process for evaluating and im­ proving public services operations, a series of data­ gathering and analysis instruments and forms that can be used to analyze public services activities, and published reports on the sponsored research projects. OMS hopes to have all the materials and the self-study ready for use by late 1984. •D r e x e l U n iv e r s it y ’s School of Library and In­ formation Science has been awarded a contract of $140,000 to evaluate the National Library of Medi­ cine’s program in the medical behavioral sciences. The research team will focus on a comparative evaluation of the efficiency of NLM’s online biblio­ graphic search services. • The H a r v a r d U n iv e r s it y Library’s Judaica Department has received a grant of $50,000 from the S.H. and Helen R. Scheuer Family Foundation of New York to help develop its Jewish children’s literature collection. This grant will support the li­ brary’s long-range program to encourage research in literature for and about Jewish children. Harvard’s Fine Arts Library was granted $13,000 from the Commemorative Association for the World Japan Exposition (1970) to add over 100 volumes on Far Eastern art to its Rubel Asiatic Re­ search Collection. Among the works purchased with the aid of the fund are a five-volume study of the paintings of the Rimpa school, a thirteen- volume illustrated compendium of registered Japa­ nese national treasures, several sets of books on the history of Japanese architecture, and sets dealing with Japanese textiles and papermaking. •The R e s e a r c h L i b r a r i e s G r o u p , Stanford, California, has received a grant of $143,354 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the development of an RLG automated union list of microform master negatives. Follow­ ing retrospective conversion guidelines, ten RLG members will enter records for their microform master negatives collections into the RLIN data- C &RL News / 391 base. The New York Public Library is also entering records for its retrospective collection of master negatives into RLIN as part of a project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The RLG pro­ ject will help guard against expensive duplicate filming among members and will lay the ground­ work for a cooperative preservation microfilming program now in the planning stages. NEWS NOTES •The L ib r a r y o f C o n g r e s s and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have com­ pleted the Library’s first large-scale mass deacidifi­ cation experiment. The experiment was designed to test whether as many as 5,000 books could be treated successfully at one time. Using a large NASA vacuum chamber originally designed to test satellites for outer space, LC staff used a patented process developed by the Library’s preservation scientists. The week-long process involved the use of a chemical vapor, diethyl zinc (DEZ), to perme­ ate the books and neutralize harmful acids destructive to paper, at the same time leaving an alkaline reserve to combat the return of an acid condition. Analysis of the books used in the test will now begin and complete results are expected in early 1983. •The St e r l i n g an d F r a n c in e C l a r k A r t I n s t i­ t u t e , Williamstown, Massachusetts, has joined the Research Libraries Group as the thirteenth special member of R LG ’s Art and Architecture Program. The Institute’s library is particularly strong in Eu­ ropean and American art from the Renaissance to the present. •The U n i v e r s i t y o f C h ic a g o began construc­ tion of the new John Crerar Library building on October 4. The university’s scientific, medical, and technical collections will be merged with the Crerar collections in science and technology. From the outset of discussions about the merger, it is un­ derstood that Chicago’s mathemetics collection will remain in a separate facility but will also be available to users of the Crerar Library, which has always been accessible to the public. The Crerar Library is leasing space from the Illinois Institute of Technology until the autumn of 1984, when the building is scheduled for completion. ■ ■ W A S H I N G T O N H O T L I N E by Carol C. Henderson Deputy Director ALA Washington Office Comments are invited on library education study. The Education Depart­ ment, through its Office of Libraries and Learning Technologies under the Higher Education Act title II-B research and demonstration program, recently awarded a contract to King Research, Inc. to determine the present and future competencies needed by library and information science professionals and to examine the educational requirements necessary to achieve those competencies. The study, “New Directions for Library and Information Science Education, is addressed to traditional roles of information professionals as well as new, emerging roles, and to formal education as well as ongoing, continuing educa­ tion. A planning process will be established to identify, define, describe and validate competencies; define education and training requirements; design and implement curricula; establish and validate measures of competency attainment; and evaluate curricula. This planning process will be documented so that it can be repeated as needed by associations or institutions. The contractor has established an Advisory Group of consultants and experts, plans a quarterly project newsletter, and will make copies of working documents available for review. Comments and suggestions from interested parties are encouraged, particularly relating to job descriptions, career paths, education and training received and required, and to identify potential test sites. Those interested should contact the Project Director, Dr, Jose- Marie Griffiths at 6000 Executive Boulevard, Rockville, Maryland 20852; (301) 881-6766. ”