|
 Volume
XIX, Number 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
The Lost
Papers of Louise Bryant
 The
personal papers of the pioneering foreign correspondent Louise Bryant
arrived unexpectedly at the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale University.
Thought to be lost, the papers contain such treasures as Bryant's notes
on what she witnessed in Russia during the communist revolution of 1917
and several poems written by the young playwright Eugene O'Neill, apparently
never before published.
Louise Bryant lived a remarkable life. Born in 1885, she was one of the
earliest women to become a star foreign correspondent. Her reporting on
the Russian Revolution appeared in hundreds of American newspapers and,
for a brief period, she was one of the leading authorities in the United
States on the new Soviet government, publishing two books on the subject.
She knew personally and interviewed many of the leading figures of revolutionary
Russia including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Alexandr Kerensky.
Bryant filled her personal life with similarly noteworthy individuals.
Her second husband was the radical journalist John Reed; her third husband
was William C. Bullitt, the first American ambassador to the Soviet Union
and later ambassador to France; and she had a short but intense affair
with Eugene O'Neill.
The Bryant papers came to Sterling Memorial Library along with the papers
of William C. Bullitt as part of a deposit by Anne Moen Bullitt, the daughter
of Bryant and Bullitt. Biographers of Bryant believed her personal papers
to be lost, but when the boxes arrived, archivists were astonished by
the quantity and quality of the materials relating to Louise Bryant. In
addition to notes on World War I in France and Russia and Turkey in the
1920s, the papers include an extensive collection of letters to Bryant,
photographs, other journalism notes, and many of Bryant's unpublished
poems, plays, and short stories.
The Louise Bryant collection is now open to researchers in the Manuscripts
and Archives collection, housed in Sterling Memorial Library. A guide
is available here.
For information, contact William Massa (william.massa@yale.edu;
203-432-1735).
Sahr Conway-Lanz
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[
Home ]
Library
Acquires Richard Minsky Archive
The
Arts of the Book Collection recently acquired the archive of Richard Minsky,
a critically acclaimed book artist whose innovative use of materials and
pioneering techniques have contributed to the expanding field of the book
arts for over 30 years. Minsky views his approach to art as the meeting
of "material and metaphor" where the binding represents the
ideas contained inside. In Minsky's hands, the well-known cliché
becomes untrue: a book can be judged by its cover.
Examples of Richard Minsky's work are held in important museum and library
collections worldwide, including the Getty Research Library, Los Angeles,
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. To promote the book arts
in education, Minsky lectures and conducts workshops around the world.
He is also the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City.
The Minsky Archive provides an overview of the artist's creative process
and participation in the book arts community. Holdings range from the
artist's first experiments with letterpress printing to the sketches and
maquettes for recent one-of-a-kind binding commissions. The archive also
includes correspondence as well as holographic manuscripts and early versions
of select works. It documents Minsky's exploration of printing technologies
over forty-five years from the mimeograph and spirit duplicator to his
early use of inkjet printing on handmade paper.
While the archive will not be made public until processing is finished,
a complete set of Minsky's editioned work (non-commissioned work made
in multiple copies) is available in the Arts of the Book Collection reading
room in Sterling Memorial Library. For more information about Richard
Minsky and his work, consult www.minsky.com.
For more information about the archive, contact Jae Rossman, Special Collections
Librarian, Arts Library (jae.rossman@yale.edu).
Jae J.
Rossman
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[
Home ]
Lloyd
Richards Papers at the Beinecke Library
The Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library has acquired the papers of Lloyd Richards,
theater pioneer and Professor Emeritus of the Yale School of Drama.
One of the most significant figures in the history of African American
culture, Lloyd Richards was born in Toronto in 1923 and subsequently relocated
to Detroit. Though his family faced enormous adversity through the Depression,
Richards went on to pursue post-secondary education at Wayne State University.
Returning from his tour of duty in World War II, he was active in local
theater before moving to New York City in 1947.
In 1958 Richards was asked by friend and colleague Sidney Poitier to direct
the Broadway staging of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.
The revolutionary production marked the first Broadway production of a
play by an African American woman, the first Broadway production directed
by an African American, and the first verisimilar portrayal on Broadway
of a contemporary African American family. It launched the careers of
Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Diana Sands at a time when roles available to African
American actors were restricted to those of servants or comedians.
Since A Raisin in the Sun, Mr. Richards's career has been devoted
to teaching and fostering new dramaturgical talent. He taught at New York
University and Hunter College, and from 1979 to 1991 he served as dean
of the Yale School of Drama and artistic director of the Yale Repertory
Theater. It was here that the collaboration between Richards and celebrated
African American playwright and activist August Wilson began, a collaboration
that resulted in Pulitzer Prize- and New York Theater Critics Circle Award-winning
productions.
The Lloyd Richards papers join the Yale Collection of American Literature.
They contain scripts, audio and video recordings of plays, photographs,
posters, programs, reviews, and correspondence pertaining to plays Richards
directed, including those by August Wilson and Athol Fugard, and the television
production about Paul Robeson with James Earl Jones. Photographs and other
materials document the National Playwrights Conference held annually at
the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, from its
foundation by Richards in 1968.
The materials contained in this collection will prove an essential resource
to scholars pursuing research in a variety of disciplines, including studies
in American theater and African American cultural history. For more information,
contact Patricia D. Willis, Curator, Yale Collection of American Literature
(patricia.willis@yale.edu).
Patricia
D. Willis
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Department
of Education Funds Middle East Virtual Library
The
Yale University Library recently received a grant of $750,000 to develop
A Middle East Electronic Library (AMEEL). The funding comes from the US
Department of Education's Title VI TICFIA Program (Technological Innovation
and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access). In supporting efforts
of educational institutions and libraries to develop the means to gather
and disseminate information about foreign regions, this program aims to
enhance international education and foreign language study in the United
States.
Under the four-year term of the grant, which begins in October 2005, Yale
library staff, with publishing and library partners around the world,
will coordinate a collaborative virtual library project that will make
available important Middle Eastern resources. The four-part initiative
will:
• Develop an infrastructure for integrating digital content from
diverse sources (freely available as well as publisher-licensed)
• Digitize key journals about the Middle East, especially fully searchable
Arabic texts
• Build and expand libraries' capacity for Arabic full-text scanning
through workshops led by experts
• Develop technologies and protocols to facilitate interlibrary lending
between the US and Middle Eastern libraries
In addition to staff and resources of Yale and other American libraries,
key partners will include the Biblioteca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt),
which has developed the most advanced Arabic optical character recognition
(OCR) techniques, the Universitaets und Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt
(Halle, Germany), with its highly developed Middle East portal including
extensive journal tables of contents; and publishers such as Brill Academic
Publishers (Leiden, the Netherlands); JSTOR (New York, USA); Multidata
(Beirut, Lebanon); and Oxford University Press (UK).
AMEEL follows on the library's currently funded Title VI project, Online
Access to Consolidated Information on Serials. OACIS is a database of
journal and serial holdings from a group of seven initial US partners
plus a growing number of domestic and international libraries. The oacis
database (www.library.yale.edu/oacis)
currently holds some 46,000 bibliographical records representing approximately
13,000 unique serials titles; searchable in both Roman and Arabic alphabets,
it has become a key discovery source for scholars and librarians seeking
information about serial titles, bibliographical information, and holdings.
OACIS will become an integral part
of AMEEL.
AMEEL and OACIS manifest the library's strategy for expanding global activities
and becoming a widely recognized digital center of excellence in several
world areas. The Middle East is a particularly appropriate region, as
Yale University was one of the earliest higher-education institutions
formally to study the Middle East, and its library collections and other
educational resources are among the strongest in the world.
Ann S.
Okerson
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Cuban
Collection Grant from Seaver Institute
The Seaver
Institute is providing $140,000 to the library for both research in and
the preservation and reformatting of a large collection of films and photographs
taken during the Cuban Revolution. The collection comprises papers, artifacts,
photographs, audiotape, and movie film documenting the Cuban Revolution
and the early days of post revolutionary Cuba in the 1960s. The materials
provide important insight into day-to-day operations of the revolutionaries
and offer first-hand accounts of their rise to power and the development
of modern Cuba.
Preservation funds from the grant will be used to microfilm and rehouse
papers and artifacts as well as to clean and copy the 16mm movie film
to an archival format and to digital video disks for public use. These
treatments will enable History Professor Lillian Guerra to undertake a
research project entitled "Visions of Power, Nation and Revolution
in Cuba, 1959-1999." Professor Guerra noted that "Yale's Cuban
Collection is immensely valuable for historians of 20th century Cuba and
comparative revolutionary movements as well as scholars from other disciplines
who are eager to understand this momentous period in history."
David E.
Walls, Nancy F. Lyon
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
 Latourette
Initiative Supports Preserving Church Archives
The Yale
Divinity Library and World Council of Churches have agreed to microfilm
selected materials from the WCC archives, continuing five years of previous
collaboration that resulted in the microfilming of four major council
collections.
The agreement will help preserve additional archival holdings documenting
the council's work around the world, some affiliated organizations, and
its predecessor bodies. Funding will be provided through the Divinity
School's Latourette Initiative for the Documentation of World Christianity,
which preserves and provides access to material documenting the history
of Christian missions and world Christianity.
"These archives are important primary documents for understanding
the history of Christianity in the twentieth century," said Paul
Stuehrenberg, Divinity School Librarian, who represented Yale at the signing
ceremony in Geneva. "We are delighted that this project both preserves
this important documentation and makes it available to scholars and the
church."
The World Council of Churches (WCC) describes itself as the broadest and
most inclusive among the many organized expressions of the modern ecumenical
movement, a movement whose goal is Christian unity. The organization brings
together more than 340 churches, denominations, and church fellowships
in over 100 countries and territories throughout the world, representing
some 400 million Christians and including most of the world's Orthodox
churches.
In previous years, the Yale Divinity Library has underwritten the cost
of microfilming World War II-era material (1938-1948) documenting the
founding of the World Council of Churches; the World Student Christian
Federation archives; and archives of the Programme to Combat Racism, a
controversial council program that supported liberation movements in underdeveloped
countries. A fourth collection, the archives of the Dialogue with People
of Living Faiths, a program to encourage Christians to be open to persons
of different religious traditions, is currently being microfilmed. These
microfilm collections are distributed by IDC Publishers of Leiden, the
Netherlands.
The Latourette Initiative is named for Kenneth Scott Latourette (1884-1968),
who was the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity
at Yale Divinity School. Latourette was instrumental in changing the focus
of the Day Missions Collection at Yale from a resource for training missionaries
to a collection documenting the history of Christian missions. The endowment
he established provides the funding for the Latourette Initiative.
Other microfilming projects supported by the initiative include the archives
of the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, held at the University of Edinburgh;
monographs related to the "Old Believers" held by the Russian
National Library; and the missions archives of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America.
Gustav
D. Spohn
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Teagle
Grant Funds Partnership for Liberal Arts Education
The Teagle
Foundation has awarded the library $98,830 for "Strengthening Liberal
Education through Special Collections." Liberal arts colleges and
research universities share the mission of educating their students in
the basic methods of research. All of these institutions grapple with
the challenge of finding stimulating means to engage students in the research
process and to foster an understanding of how knowledge is constructed
from numerous original resources. The grant from the Teagle Foundation
will allow Yale along with partner Connecticut colleges and universities
to explore and develop best practices for successful student learning
using library special collections. The project will bring together librarians,
faculty, curators, and other professionals who will explore current practices
and define the basic challenges of using special and original collections.
The project will be launched with an initial seminar for participating
institutions, followed by in-depth, small-group workshops, concluding
with a final symposium for the entire group. According to Barbara Shailor,
Deputy Provost for the Arts, "At the center of our project is the
proposition that active learning by students is an optimal product of
the nexus between objects and other scholarly materials and between teaching
and the classroom."
Ann S.
Okerson
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
NEH
Funds Preservation of Arabic Collection
The National
Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $300,000 grant to Yale Library
for preservation of its Salisbury Collection. The Salisbury Collection
at Yale began in 1870 with a gift from Edward Elbridge Salisbury, the
first professor of Arabic Languages and Culture at Yale College. It has
since become a comprehensive collection of foundational works on Islamic
law, history, religion, science, mathematics and poetry; in addition,
a large collection of European imprints document European scholars' first
systematic study of Arab religions, language, and cultures.
Today, the Salisbury Collection consists of approximately 16,000 items
and forms the core of the library's Near East Collection of over 400,000
volumes supporting teaching and research in Arabic, Islamic, and Middle
Eastern Studies. According to Simon Samoeil, Curator of the Near East
Collection, "The project will enable us to make the collection more
accessible to a wider audience through microfilming and other preservation
activities. We are delighted to have the means to conserve this collection
for use by present and future generations."
David
E. Walls
Nota Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Grant
Supports Teaching and Learning with Collections
The Davis
Educational Foundation, established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis, has
awarded $299,600 to the library for "Collections-Based Learning and
Teaching at Yale." Through this award and its Electronic Library
Initiative (ELI), the library seeks to improve teaching and learning by
providing digitized images of library materials to support undergraduate
courses.
The ELI model offers faculty an innovative method of course design that
brings together campus experts in pedagogy, technology, and information.
In concert with specialists from the library, Academic Media and Technology,
and the Graduate School, faculty can develop courses to engage students
with primary source collections and new study tools. The team approach
makes course design efficient, enhances course content, and develops research
skills for primary source materials. Faculty will present proposals to
participate in the program.
Responding to one of the 2003 recommendations of the Committee on Yale
College Education, the program integrates collections into the curriculum,
encouraging habits of personal research and discovery. According to University
Librarian Alice Prochaska, "The library has a special responsibility
to work with faculty as they seek innovative approaches to their courses
and to support students who seek their own pathways through the rich primary
sources of both text and images at Yale."
For information about the Electronic Library Initiative (ELI), visit:
www.library.yale.edu/eli/.
Danuta
A. Nitecki
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
 Exhibit
and Events Mark Nathan Hale's Birth
Of all
the distinguished graduates of Yale, Nathan Hale, Class of 1773, fills
a special niche as an icon of patriotism — a brave hero who risked
and lost his life at the age of 21. An exhibit in Sterling Memorial Library
marks the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Born in 1755 in Coventry, Connecticut, Hale was educated by the Rev. Joseph
Huntington, Class of 1762, and entered Yale at the age of 14. Following
graduation Hale taught in one-room schoolhouses in Eastern Connecticut.
When fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, he enlisted as an officer
and joined the fight for independence. In September 1776, he answered
General Washington's desperate call for someone to spy on the British
in New York. He was caught within two weeks and hanged on September 22nd.
The exhibit includes letters between Hale and his friends, Hale's college
records, classmate James Hillhouse's sheepskin diploma, and artifacts
evocative of
the colonial period. One curious item is a lock of hair from Major John
André, the British go-between in Benedict Arnold's intended surrender
of West Point. André was hanged four years after Hale. Curated
by Richard E. Mooney '47, onetime reporter on the Yale Daily News,
the exhibit assembles materials from Manuscripts and Archives and the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where many of Hale's papers
and items are kept. Mooney became interested in Hale upon learning that
the young spy was hanged at Third Avenue and East 65th St. in Manhattan,
near his apartment. With the help of Robert A.M. Stern, Dean of the Yale
School of Architecture, he arranged for a plaque to mark the spot. When
he realized that there had been no recent biography, he began writing
a book to unravel the facts and mystique about Hale's short life. The
material on display forms the basis of Mooney's research. A lecture marked
the opening of the exhibit. On Hale's birthday, June 6th, the Sons of
the American Revolution will place a wreath on the Hale statue in front
of Connecticut Hall on the Old Campus and fire off muskets.
The exhibit will remain on display through July.
Amanda
J. Peters
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Exhibit
Highlights Muslims' Contributions to Medicine
A new exhibit
in Sterling Memorial Library illuminates medieval Muslim scholars' and
doctors' contributions to medicine. Organized by Simon Samoeil, Curator
of the Near East Collection, "Muslims' Contributions to Medieval
Medicine and Pharmacology" displays Arabic manuscripts from the Historical
Medical collection at the Medical Library that trace this influence over
seven centuries.
The establishment of Arab dominion over the territories of the ancient
Persian, Greek, and Roman empires by the early eighth century led to a
flourishing of scholarly disciplines, including medicine and pharmacology.
The caliphs of the new Islamic empire encouraged this scholarship by supporting
the translation of previous scholarship into Arabic. One example on display
is the translation of a text by the Greek physician Galen.
In addition to preserving and developing older medical traditions, Muslims
introduced new fields of medical research and clinical practice, focusing
on the care of mothers and children, gynecology, and embryology. They
also contributed to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of many new
diseases such as smallpox and measles. Unlike the Greeks, Muslim doctors
incorporated surgery into the study of medicine and elaborated its practice
and techniques. A 1384 text by Mansur ibn Muhammed ibn Ilyal depicts human
internal organs, exemplifying this development.
The exhibit will be on display through August.
Amanda
J. Peters
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
Library
Supports International Education Program
In December
2003, Programs in International Educational Resources (PIER), the outreach
arm of the Yale Center for International and Area Studies (YCIAS), collaborated
with the Yale Library to launch the Community Faculty Fellowships Program.
The fellowships aim to provide guided access to Yale's international education
resources for a selected group of faculty from Connecticut's community
colleges. This access will enable them to conduct research, create new
courses, or add international content to current courses. The first six
fellows were appointed in January and met recently with librarians and
PIER staff. Twelve subsequent fellowships will be offered at the start
of each calendar year. Among the many benefits, fellows will receive library
privileges, an individually tailored program of lectures and activities,
and the opportunity to participate in the PIER Summer Institutes and Overseas
Field Study Programs.
For further information about the PIER Community Faculty Fellowships,
please contact Janet Headley, PIER Director (janet.headley@yale.edu,
203-432-3429).
Amanda
J. Peters
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
 Ake
Koel, 1920-2005
Ake Koel,
a long time colleague and friend with an exemplary record of service to
the Yale Library, died of cancer on April 2nd, 2005. He was 85 years old.
Ake Koel joined the library in 1969 as head of the Catalog Department;
in 1974 he became Associate University Librarian for Technical Services.
Appointed as "planning librarian" in 1986, he retired in 1988
only to return in 1990 to serve as Bibliographer for German and Scandinavian
literature. He retired for the second time in 1996.
As a member of the principal national committee that contributed to the
international development of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd
ed. (AACR2), published in 1978, Mr. Koel was present at the creation of
the modern cataloging rules currently in use. In addition, as Associate
Librarian for Technical Services, he played a major role in the transition
from typing catalog cards to creating machine-readable cataloging in national
bibliographic utilities. This important change led ultimately to today's
online catalog.
Library staff and colleagues remember Mr. Koel with fondness and respect.
Ann
S. Okerson
Nota
Bene Vol. XIX, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2005)
[ Home
]
[ Nota
Bene XIX Menu | Home
]
[ Volume
XIX.1 PDF Format ]
|
