march13_b.indd


C&RL News March 2013 168

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 Michigan Library has  
received a $1.25 million grant from The An-
drew Mellon Foundation to create an en-
dowed conservation librarian position. The 
library is to receive $1 million in endowment 
money from the foundation, which it will 
match by raising funds to create a $2 million 
endowment within three years. The founda-
tion will also provide $250,000 in spendable 
funds to hire and support the conservation 
librarian for the first three years.

The Institute for Advanced Technology in 
the Humanities at the University of Virginia 
has partnered with the Northwest Digital 
Archives program of the Orbis Cascade Alli-
ance to build, evaluate, and demonstrate the 
long-term viability of the Cross-Search and 
Context Utility (XCU). XCU will bring together 
digitized content from 36 systems at 25 insti-
tutions and detailed metadata from archival 
and manuscript collections at 33 institutions. 
The result will be access to digitized objects 
in the context of the collections to which they 
belong, greatly improving the presentation 
and usability of digital content and associ-
ated metadata, and better meeting the needs 
users. The project is funded with a $249,904 
National Leadership Grant from the Institute 
for Museum and Library Services.

Penn State has received a $1.25 million 
grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Founda-
tion to establish a new full-time senior con-
servator position in the university libraries. 
Based in the Department of Digitization and 
Preservation, the conservator will help to 
care for the libraries’ extensive collections 
at all Penn State locations. A permanent 
endowment for the position will be estab-
lished with $1 million of the grant, and the 
libraries will raise an additional $1.25 mil-

lion in matching support over three years. 
The remainder of the grant will support the 
position during the challenge period. The li-
braries will launch a national search for the 
senior conservator in the spring of 2013.  

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

A collection of science fiction has been  
gifted to San Diego State University’s Love Li-
brary by Edward E. Marsh. Marsh has spent 30 
years assembling this large collection, valued 
at more than $2.25 million. The collection will 
eventually be displayed in the Edward Marsh 
Golden Age of Science Fiction Room, created 
specifically to house these works. Science 
fiction authors featured in the collection in-
clude Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray 
Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, L. 
Sprague de Camp, and Kevin Anderson, as 
well as classic science fiction by Jules Verne, 
H. G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Most 
of the books are signed first editions and 
include ephemera, such as press clippings, 
notes, and autographs. The collection also in-
cludes autographed photos, busts of authors, 
movie props, original artwork for book cov-
ers, literary contracts, portraits, and authors’ 
yearbooks.

The Congressional papers of U.S. Repre-  
sentative Steven LaTourette (R-Painesville) 
have been acquired by Hiram College in Hi-
ram, Ohio. The eight-term Capitol Hill veter-
an who retired from the House of Represen-
tatives in 2012 made the donation to Hiram 
College to ensure that the documents remain 
within the district for use by the people of 
Northeast Ohio. It is estimated that the La-
Tourette papers will result in 18 linear feet 
of materials. The congressman’s personal pa-
pers will be closed until his death, and the 
other materials will remain closed until 15 
years after he left office. 

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