I Llinoi S University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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I LLINOI S UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN PRODUCTION NOTE University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library Large-scale Digitization Project, 2007. Li$5X A57 VOLUME 16 NUMBER 1 SPRING 1994 ISSN 0192-55-39 University of Illinois Library Friends at Urbana-Champaign UNIV OF ILLII\. MAY 1 3 1994 LIB SCI LIBRARY Grant Funds critical to our existence as a research Adds Rosemary Stevenson, head of the I Challenge library," says William Brockman, head of Afro-Americana Bibliographic Unit, "One Provide Nearly $200,000 the English Library. of the biggest areas of need for my for Library Programs collection has always been access to ands for big microfiche collections, Interest income generated by ich are absolutely essential as resources endowment funds established as he fields our faculty and students are part of the Library's $4 million NEH orking in. The challenge grant funds Challenge Grant program has provii are one of my major funding sources, more than $73,000 for expenditures and without them we could not have 1992 and nearly $120,000 in 1993 for purchased some of our most library programs. important sets." This amount represents five per- Funding comes from more than cent of the interest generated by just the endowment created with Challenge Grant endowment funds the many individual donations plus during the past two years. NEH's $1 million matching amount. Among the subject areas bene-fitt ing the Challenge Grant fundraising from the funds were Afro-American od, several donors responded to the anthropology, architecture, art, Asiar lenge by donating $10,000 or more to studies, classics, documents, educatic te individually named endowment The "hechisero- English literature, gay studies, Latin caspi," or witch- ds, all of which are considered part of Americana, music, reference, Spanis tree, from the Library's Challenge Grant program. literature, and women's studies. facsimile edition of mong the individually named Purchases ranged from important the 18th-century llenge Grant funds tapped over the Trujillo del Peru, t and volume works, such as the Tennysoi purchased with two years were the George F Archive and Deutsches Worterbuch Challenge a Brown Titus Library Endowment Jacob Grimm, to major microfilm an Grant funds in d, Cordelia Reed Library Endowment ROM acquisitions, such as Records < 1993. d, George and Sarah Patterson Pagels Southern Plantations...Series H and rary Endowment Fund, and the Irma to American Periodicals, 18th and 11 ice Olson Library Endowment Fund. centuries. Sthe coming years, these and the other Challenge grant funds also were i ds established during the NEH cam- to purchase and provide archival pr ;n will be providing even more income ing for rare Spanish civil war items, he individual funds come of age. environmental monitoring equipme hallenge grant funds are allocated by the bookstacks, and for other presei ns of an internal Library-wide grant- and access needs. posal process. Of the 82 proposals "These challenge grant funds giv< mitted over the past two years, totalling opportunity to buy expensive items rethan $264,000, only 56 were funded. are far beyond what our normal bu( would allow-items that neverthele also includes examples from most of the I Library Receives Large important periods of fine printing since the Fine Press Book Collection late 1800s. As such, it will provide a means for students of the art form to trace the and Endowment influences printers had on each other. The Library has received a large and Among the printers represented in the beautiful collection of fine press books, as collection, besides Adrian Wilson, are John well as a $50,000 endowment to support Henry Nash, Ward Ritchie,Jane Grabhorn, the collection, from the estate of alumna Robert Grabhom and Andrew Hoyem, and (Mary) Jane Wilson ('46). Saul Marks. The collection focuses primarily on fine The collection also includes several press printers from the San Francisco Bay examples of "bibliophile curiosities," such area, most notably Adrian Wilson. It also as little hand-printed give-away books like includes other well-known fine-press the 1986 For the Friends of the Brick Row printers, a long run of newsletters from the Bookshop. There are also several boxes of Book Club of California, printing printed ephemera and even some printer's ephemera, and a book printed in 1892 by the plates. Kelmscott Press of William Morris, the "Most of these books are historical reprints originator of modern fine press printing. with little essays or stories in the front about "This is considered by experts to be one of the historic precedents, so they are mostly the best collections around of the San Francisco of bibliophile interest" explains Professor printers," says Nancy Romero, head of the Moore. "So, the interest is not in actually Rare Book and Special Collections Library. reading the books, but in the book as an "Our own collection is fairly representative object, as an example of the printer's art. and includes many of the very small presses, It's something for other printers to enjoy, but we never had too much representation and for bibliophiles to thrill to them." from this area. So, this is a very important addition for us." Ms. Wilson was a librarian whose career was spent primarily at the Asia Foundation I Eleven Friends Join Highest in San Francisco (1951-67), the University "The Devout Tightwad and the Isfahan Columbian," Donor Groups of Illinois Chicago Medical Center (1969-71), woodcut by James Lamar Weygand. From the new Jane Roosevelt University (1971-74) and the Amer- Wilson San Francisco Bay Area Fine Press Collection. Eleven Library Friends have joined the ican Library Association (ALA) (1976-81). University Librarian's Council since the fall She wwrote several articles about fine press closest friends. "His wife Joyce had been my of 1993. They are Arnold W. Thompson, printing and was a longtime member of the children's nursery school teacher, so I had William W. Lovett, Paul E. Gantzert, Arte Book Club of California and other biblio- known them for years and years. And she Johnson, the estate of Marian T. Estep, the phile clubs in the San Francisco area. may have met him also through the estate of Paul B. Dusenberry, Vicki L. She also was a longtime devotee of opera, Roxburghe Club. It was he who taught Howie, Arnold Kiburz III, Charles volunteering for the San Francisco Opera her about books." Marshall, Millicent Bruner Marshall, and Guild, contributing to the Merola Fund for According to another longtime friend, the estate of Mary Jane Wilson. young opera singers, and traveling frequently Dorothy Whitnah, Ms. Wilson's decision to Four of them also have become Life to Europe for special opera performances. donate her book collection to the Library's Members: Vicki L. Howie, Arte Johnson, "Jane Wilson had an infectious, positive Rare Book and Special Collections Library Charles Marshall, and Millicent Bruner personality," remembers University Librarian was made with great deliberation. Marshall. Robert Wedgeworth, who hired Ms. Wilson "She thought about the Bancroft Library Friends become members of the as the ALA's international relations officer at Berkeley, but she knew they already had University Librarian's Council by donating while he was the organization's executive the Book Club of California books and a $5,000 or more within a five-year period, director. "She was always interested in collection of other local printers," explains Ms. and Life Members by donating at least international librarianship. It was she who Whitnah. "She wanted her books to go where $3,000 within a twelve-month period. helped rebuild the ALA's international they would be taken care of and used, and relations program, which had its heyday in she went to considerable effort to ascertain the '50s and early 60's and then went into that her collection would not result in much subsequent decline. She accomplished a lot duplication." of exciting things." Ms. Wilson's choice of the U of I Library International librarianship was not her turned out to be perfect. Despite its good only interest, however. While a young collection of fine press books, the Library librarian in San Francisco in the '50s, she had to cancel its membership with the Book developed a passion for fine press printing Club of California, which sponsors fine and became a good friend of well-known press books, because of budget cutbacks in fine press printer Adrian Wilson. 1987. Wilson, who has produced many limited Books from the club, particularly those editions for the Book Club of California, is produced by Adrian Wilson's Press in Tuscany from Jane Grabhom's typographic laboratory a scholar of fine printing and is himself Alley, are amply represented in the new considered to be one of the most important Jane Wilson collection, as well as a long run 3umbo P sr0ft6ian franlCsro 1937 of the California fine printers. of the club's newsletter. "I think it was through Adrian Wilson However, according to retired U of I Title page of Jane Grabhorn's A Typographic Discoursefor that she became interested in these books," professor of art and design Doyle Moore, the Distaff Side of Printing,a book by ladies,from the Jane remarks Mary Sandner, one of Ms. Wilson's himself a fine press printer, the collection Wilson San Francisco Bay Area Fine Press Collection. two I Mortenson Director concept, whether it's the ease of obtaining a in a peculiar collection profile, to say the library card or the arrangement of tables least! It is estimated that about 40% of all Visits Albania and chairs within a room. collections are Soviet publications on all "This, of course, means that there is a lot subjects, there are very limited collections One of the most important legacies of librarians in Albania can do to improve from Western countries, and Albanian the framers of the U.S.