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Polish Government Awards Giroud Order of Merit On 19 March 2004 in Warsaw, Vincent Giroud, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Library, received the Order of Merit in Polish Culture, the highest official honor in the arts given by the Polish government. The presentation took place while Mr. Giroud was attending a six-day conference celebrating the centenary of the Polish playwright, novelist, and essayist Witold Gombrowicz (1904-69). The conference was organized by the Institute of Polish Studies at Jagiellonian University and the Polish Ministry of Culture. Mr. Giroud spoke at the meeting about Yale's Gombrowicz collection. The Order of Merit recognizes Mr. Giroud's extra-ordinary service in the international dissemination of Polish culture. Shortly after his arrival at Yale in 1986, Mr. Giroud began to build the Beinecke Library's archival collections in Polish literature. The papers of Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, which the library began to purchase in 1987, became a cornerstone for a growing and vibrant collection of Polish belles-lettres; it now includes the archives of such twentieth-century figures as Constantin Jelenski, essayist, translator, and founder of Polish futurism, and Alexander Wat, author of the memoir My Century. In the spring of 1989, Mr. Giroud organized an exhibition at the Beinecke Library based on materials from the archives of both Milosz and Wat. Vincent Giroud was instrumental in establishing the Witold Gombrowicz Archival Internship at Yale. In 2003, this program brought Monika Talar, an archivist at the State Archive in Warsaw, to the Beinecke Library to catalog the Gombrowicz papers. This collection will become the basis for a major centenary exhibition on Gombrowicz at the Beinecke Library next fall that will include a catalog written by Mr. Giroud. Vincent Giroud has also organized an international Gombrowicz conference at Yale that will take place in mid-October 2004. Christa
A. Sammons [
Home ]
Library Supports World Health Organization HINARI, the Health InterNetwork Access to Research
Initiative (http://www.healthinternetwork.org), is a branch of the World Health Organization (WHO). It
provides health professionals, medical researchers, and academics from more than 1,162 institutions in develop-
ing countries with online access to a library of 2,400 international scientific journals and full-text resources.
Sixty-nine of the world's lowest-income countries have free access, and last year an additional forty-four
countries joined for a low price.
Yale University Library has supported the HINARI
program since its beginnings in 2000. Yale's Cushing/ Whitney Medical Library provided the initiative with an authentication software
program that allowed hinari
to gather sources for its library. Ms. Obianuju Mollel, then Reference Librarian at the Medical Library, developed both instructional and
training materials. Paula Ball, Catalog Librarian at the Medical Library, is com-piling a subject-based classification system for the journals in
HINARI. Kimberly Parker, Head of Electronic
Collections for Yale University Library, is designing
and updating the database that provides access to and information about the online journals. She also leads the effort to evaluate and
produce the usage statistics for
the hinari program. She currently estimates that parti-cipants have accessed more than one million articles in the past year alone.
Warren Stevens of the Medical Research Council
Laboratories in Gambia notes that intellectual isolation hinders the development of world-class researchers in Africa. Access to timely,
relevant, high-quality scientific information is thus a huge gain for researchers, students, teachers, and policymakers in low-income
countries. Yale University Library is proud to contribute to the
efforts of the hinari program.
Kimberly
J. Parker & Barbara Aronson [
Home ]
Walpole Exhibit Explores Color Currently on display in the Lewis Walpole Library's Side Hall, Painted and Printed Color in Eighteenth- Century Satire offers nearly thirty examples of color in printmaking in England. Organized by Cynthia Roman, LWL Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Paint-ings, the works exhibited illustrate many techniques, from hand-colored mezzotints to prints on tinted paper. During the eighteenth century, the demand for color was met initially by hand-colorists, then increasingly by enterprising printmakers who developed new tech- niques for introducing color into the printing process itself. Though little has been published on colorists working in England during the eighteenth century, hand-colored prints survive in substantial numbers. If measured in economic terms only, they were highly valued by contemporary consumers-the cost of a hand-colored print was normally twice that of the same image "plain" or uncolored. Such hand-colored prints were often produced with the Ela poupE/i> method in which the plate is inked by hand with color before printing.
Erin
Colley [ Home
]
The Yale Library Associates celebrates its 75th anniversary by establishing
a Celebration Fund to support programs to make the Yale University Library's
special collections more accessible through cataloging, preservation,
and digitization. Income from the Cele- bration Fund may be used to support
projects like these:
Box 208240 New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8240 Christa A. Sammons [ Home
]
New Director of Library Development and Communications
Timlin joins the Yale Library system from the
Quinnipiac University School of Law, where she
was the Director of Development and Alumni Affairs.
She has also done fund raising for the New Haven
Symphony, the Barnum Museum, Kingswood-Oxford School, and Choate Rosemary Hall. Ms. Timlin received undergraduate and master's degrees in Economics from Southern Connecticut State University and is a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE). Katharine
Ann Hall [ Home
]
Exhibitions Honor Alumni Milestones
This year marks
significant milestones for two alumni artists who have donated collections
of their work to the Arts of the Book Collection (AOB). To honor these accomplished
and generous men, aob presented two exhibitions with selections from its
holdings in both the sml Nave and the Arts of the Book Collection. John O.C. McCrillis (MFA '52) celebrates his 90th birthday this year.
A recent exhibition brought together a wide selection of materials showcasing
John McCrillis' versatility in his professional career, as well as items
from his early days and personal graphic pursuits. After attending the
Rhode Island School of Design, McCrillis came to Yale to pursue a Master
of Fine Arts in Graphic Design. Even early works manifest his hallmark
versatility. The prints and a sketchbook on display show a range of styles,
from geometric patterns and abstractions to still life drawings with a
lyrical quality to the line. Mr. McCrillis designed logos, letterhead,
publications, and more for many Connecticut shoreline institutions, such
as the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the First Baptist Church of Branford.
He also designed book jackets for the Yale University Press.
A pamphlet with a checklist of the exhibition and several color illustrations
is available free of charge in the Arts of the Book Collection. In honor of his 50th reunion, an exhibition of the work of Joseph W.
Reed ('54) will be on view through July. A self-taught artist who works
primarily as a painter and a professor of English and American Studies
at Wesleyan University, Joseph Reed has had a prolific and varied career.
His paintings, prints, and book objects demonstrate his extensive scholarly
knowledge and wonderful sense of humor. Mr. Reed is well known for his
interpretations of history and historical figures. The series "The History
of Western Ant" depicts historical scenes with ants as the main characters,
instead of the ant-sized people usually depicted in large historically
themed canvases. More recently he completed two series of paintings: "First
Ladies in Space" and "Chief Executives Underwater." He has also produced
over 150 paintings and prints that thematically illustrate the letters
of the alphabet.
Jae Jennifer
Rossman [ Home
]
Among the most exotic and curious collections at Yale are the portraits of Chinese patients of medical missionary Peter Parker (1804-1888) painted in the 1830s by the Chinese artist Lamqua. Parker, a student of theology and medicine, earned degrees from both Yale College and the Medical Institution of Yale. In 1834, after obtaining his medical degree and being ordained, he sailed to Canton as the first Protestant medical missionary to China. He soon set up a flour-ishing ophthalmic hospital. In addition to routine operations on cataracts, Parker practiced general surgery. As there had been no previous surgeons in China in recent times, Parker encountered patients with prodigious and gruesome protuberances. He commissioned Lamqua, trained in the Western style of portraiture, to capture these pathologies on canvas before Parker operated to remove them. Parker gave the portraits to the Medical School in the 1880s. The new web page of the Medical Historical Library, features a gallery of most of the Lamqua portraits owned by the library as well as a finding aid to the Peter Parker Collection. These striking images, not for the faint of heart, can be found at http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/parker.html. Toby
Appel [ Home
]
In the summer of 2000 the Beinecke Library completed a three-year renovation project that included the construction of two additional classrooms, greatly expanding the ability to hold classes in the library and integrate the use of the Beinecke's rich collections into classroom instruction. This academic year an unprecedented 240 individual classes were held in the Beinecke Library, in addition to eight master classes and workshops and a five-week Papyrological Institute. The Beinecke Library has more than doubled the number of classes it has hosted over the past four years. The new seminar rooms each can seat twenty students, while the library's two older classrooms seat twelve each. All four rooms are available for use by Yale faculty who wish to exhibit Beinecke materials to their students. When reserved together, the two larger rooms accom-modate seventy students with lecture-style seating. Classrooms may be scheduled for individual sessions; for classes that rely heavily on the use of Beinecke materials, the rooms may be booked for the semester. Each classroom is equipped with Internet connections, VCRs, CD players, overhead projectors, and document cameras for projecting photographs, manuscripts, and pages from books. In its efforts to encourage the use of the Beinecke collections by Yale College students, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library invites faculty to arrange class meetings in the library as an integral part of their courses. Holding classes in the Beinecke should acquaint students with its riches and encourage them to use these resources in their coursework. Curatorial staff and reference librarians are avail- able to help the faculty choose materials from the collection to use in class presentations. In addition to assisting in class presentations, the curatorial staff are willing to help individual students with research in Beinecke's holdings. The Beinecke Library requests that faculty reserve facilities as far ahead as possible to ensure availability of rooms and staff. Please contact the Public Services Librarians, Ellen Cordes (432-2973) or Stephen Jones (432-7962), or email beinecke.library@yale.edu. Erin
R. Cordes [ Home
]
Divinity Library Contributes to Preservation Filming The Yale Divinity Library collaborated with the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and other libraries to successfully complete a major serials microfilming project entitled "Christianity and the Encounter with World Religions, 1850-1950." Funded by the National Endowment for the Humani- ties (NEH) in 2000, with an initial goal to microfilm 177 titles, the project aimed to preserve literature representative of non-Christian, missionary, and syncretistic religious journals. An extension in 2002 enabled the filming of an additional 100 titles. Upon its completion in December 2003, the project had preserved some 506 titles on 1,163 reels of film. Participating libraries included the Harvard Divinity Library, the Pitts Library at Emory University, and the Princeton Theological Seminary Library. Yale Divinity Library contributed about 130 titles and 5,500 volumes, chiefly missionary reports from the Day Missions Collection. Filming for ATLA's current grant, "African American Religious Serials, 1850-1950," also funded by NEH, began in May 2003. The two-year grant expects to film 152 titles including African American periodicals, African American church annuals and reports, and African American social service agency reports. Paul
F. Stuehrenberg [ Home
]
Beinecke Library archivists have recently completed reprocessing manuscript collections documenting
two major American literary figures: Ezra Pound
and Edmund Wilson. In both cases, they extensively improved access to collections that had been only
partially cataloged, creating the first complete descriptions and listings of these important holdings.
The Ezra Pound Small Collections Project identified, processed, and cataloged sixteen smaller collections
that complement the larger Beinecke collections
documenting American poet Ezra Pound. These include the papers of Julien Cornell, the attorney who defended Pound against treason charges while dealing with the personal and political chaos at the heart of his irascible client's life, and the Bride Scratton/Peter Whigham Papers, which contain highly personal letters from Pound to Scratton. Also processed were the Viola
Baxter Jordan Papers, containing Jordan's correspondence with her college friends Pound and William
Carlos Williams; and the Olivia Rossetti Agresti Papers,
in which Agresti and Pound both energetically defend
their opinions of Italian fascism, the Catholic Church, and American civilization.
Edmund Wilson (1895-1972), American literary
critic and editor and writer for Vanity Fair, The New Republic, and The New Yorker, wrote critical works spanning the 1920s through the 1960s, including
Axel's Castle, The Wound and the Bow, and The
Shores of Light. He was closely associated with such major figures as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Dos Passos, Mary McCarthy, and
Vladimir Nabokov. The Beinecke Library is the
principal repository for Wilson's papers. These include extensive correspondence; drafts, proofs, and subject files relating to his writings; and photographs, financial papers, and personal and family documents and artifacts. The finding aid for the collection fully lists
materials partially processed during the 1980s and
integrates all subsequent acquisitions as well. Process-
ing has also been completed for the papers of Elena Wilson, Edmund's fourth wife and widow, who edited
a collection of his correspondence, Letters on
Literature and Politics.
For these and other Beinecke finding aids see: http:// webtext.library.yale.edu. Note: The Wilson finding
aids will be available shortly. Diane
J. Ducharme & Karen Spicher [ Home
]
Love in Mesopotamia included spells to drive away temptress demons and to attract lovers; erotic objects; courtship, dowry, marriage, and divorce negotiations; love and bereavement poetry; family correspondence; and proverbs on love and happiness. Among the tablets was an excerpt from a poem celebrating the goddess of love and fertility written by Enheduanna, a Mesopotamian princess around 2300 bce, the first author in history whose name is known and who can be plausibly identified with a surviving literary work. Founded in 1910 by a gift from J. Pierpont Morgan, the Yale Babylonian Collection is the largest collection of documents, seals, and other artifacts from ancient Mesopotamia in the United States and is one of the leading collections of cuneiform tablets in the world. It comprises about 45,000 items, ranging in date from around 3000 bce to early in the Christian era. Katherine
Ann Hall [ Home
]
MADID contains digital reproductions of photographs, posters, drawings, text documents, and other images taken from the manuscript collections, Yale archival record units, and publications that form the research collections of Manuscripts and Archives. Database users can find, for example, images of an architectural design by Henry Austin, an eighteenth-century map of Pacaya Volcano, a Japanese petition to Commodore Matthew Perry, the 1903 Carlisle Indian School football team, Congress Avenue after the blizzard of 1888, and John Kerry as a Yale College freshman. The 3,700 interesting and diverse images currently available comprise only a small percentage of the department's holdings. These images represent items requested by departmental patrons over the past several years. The database continues to grow as patrons request the digitization of additional materials, and soon it will be possible for those needing high-quality images for publication to order them online. Diane
E. Kaplan [ Home
]
Vivian Perlis, Director of Oral History, American Music (OHAM), received a Letter of Distinction from the American Music Center (AMC) in New York City in May. Since 1964, the amc has given this award to individuals and organizations such as Aaron Copland, John Cage, Ornette Coleman, and Bang on a Can. The OHAM project, affiliated with the Yale University Libraries, is also one of eight arts-related institutions to have received a $148,000 Save America's Treasures Grant. OHAM will use this money to preserve and care for its valuable archive of recordings and interviews with great American musical figures such as Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, John Cage, John Adams, and Steve Reich. Preservation strategies include duplicating audio/ video tapes onto analog reel-to-reel tape, the most stable medium for archival purposes. Two CD copies will also be made, a reference master and a user copy, and stored at the OHAM office. Humidifiers and air conditioners installed at OHAM will provide climate control. Original audio tapes, transcripts, and video tapes will be duplicated and shelved at the Library Shelving Facility (LSF). For further information about the OHAM Project, visit http://www.yale.edu/OHAM. Elizabeth
Van Cleve [ Home ]
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Volume
XVIII, Number 1 (Spring 2004)
