june14_b.indd


C&RL News June 2014 352

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

Penn Libraries has received two Nation-
al Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) 
awards amounting to $530,000 to fund Hu-
manities Collections and Reference Resourc-
es projects in the libraries’ Kislak Center for 
Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manu-
scripts. An award of $300,000 will support 
a three-year project, “The New Schoenberg 
Database of Manuscripts: A Research Tool 
for Tracking the Current and Historic Lo-
cations of Manuscripts,” directed by Lynn 
Ransom, project manager for the Schoen-
berg Database of Manuscripts (SDBM), who 
wrote and submitted the grant. SDBM is the 
largest repository of data on medieval and 
early modern manuscripts for the study of 
the provenance history of manuscript books 
produced before 1600. The grant will sup-
port the redevelopment of SDBM to improve 
the free exchange of information. A grant 
of $230,000 will support a project directed 
by Nancy Shawcross, “Providing Global Ac-
cess to Penn’s Indic Manuscripts, circa 1527-
1930.”  Shawcross wrote and submitted the 
grant and is the curator of manuscripts in 
Penn Libraries’ Rare Book & Manuscripts 
Library. With the largest collection of Indic 
manuscripts in North America—Penn’s col-
lection comprises 3,050 discrete items and is 
considered the most substantial in the U.S. 
for studying the history of ancient and me-
dieval scribal and literary traditions of South 
and Southeast Asia—the grant will enable 
Penn Libraries to catalog and create digital 
facsimiles for all of its holdings. The images 
will be available to view, download, and 
harvest free of charge via the website Penn 
in Hand: Selected Manuscripts at http://dla.
library.upenn.edu/dla/medren/, a discovery 
engine developed by the Penn Libraries for 
its digital collections. 

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

A digital archive documenting the United 
Farmworkers’ (UFW) Movement in Cen-
tral California from 1962 to 1993 has been 
acquired by the University of California-San 
Diego Library. The archive, which was devel-
oped by LeRoy Chatfield, includes a wide va-
riety of information on the activities, accom-
plishments, challenges, and work of Cesar 
Chavez and the farmworkers who participat-
ed in the farmworker movement. The Farm-
worker Movement Documentation Archive, 
which can now be accessed on the library’s 
website, comprises thousands of items docu-
menting the UFW history and related events, 
including a timeline of significant milestones, 
oral histories, and manuscripts, as well as es-
says, and poetry penned by volunteers. Also 
included are 13,000 photographs, videos—
including a short video on the farmworker 
union (NFWA/UFW) historic march to Sac-
ramento in 1966—and a variety of art and 
images of cultural artifacts such as stamps, 
posters, paintings, and illustrations. 

The extensive collection of astrology jour-
nals and books belonging to Michael Er-
lewine, an American musician, astrologer, 
photographer, television host, and Internet 
entrepreneur. The collection includes many 
videos, calendars, kits, and tarot card decks, 
and more than 16,000 books and periodi-
cals—4,000 of which no other library ap-
pears to hold. Part of the Erlewine collec-
tion includes papers from Gary Duncan (Neil 
Llewellyn Bloch), an important research 
astrologer. The collection resided for many 
years in Heart Center Astrological Library in 
Big Rapids, Michigan. According to Erlewine, 
the Library of Congress was interested in the 
journals within his collection; however, he 
opted to donate them to Illinois to keep all 
of the materials together. 

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