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A Library The Boston Letter from Athenceum • No. II3 MARCH 1997 Richard Wendorf Takes the Reins as the Athenteums Eleventh Director T THE ANNUAL MEETING of 3 February, in a congenial and civilized transfer of power, Director Emeritus Rodney Armstrong welcomed new Director and Librarian Richard Wendorf, who joins ten illustrious predecessors in a line that began with William Smith Shaw in r8o7, and has descended through Charles Ammi Cutter and Walter Whitehill to the present day. Mr. Wendorf takes over on the brink of a period of unprecedented change at the Athen£Eum, possibly the most dramatic in the library's nearly 200-year history: The library's catalogues are about to become completely automated and on-line; plans for developing our property in the I4 Beacon Street building next door, and for renovating space in roY2 Beacon Street, will be going forward; The Twenty-First Century Fund Capital Campaign Drive will be emerging from its "quiet" period; and not too far down the road will come the year 2007, the Athen£Eum's 2ooth anniversary, with its anticipated celebrations. Mr. Wendorf is eager to meet these challenges. He comes to the Athen£Eum from the Houghton Library at Harvard, where he had been Director since r989, and where he supervised projects such as the retrospective conversion of the card catalogue, ex tensive building renovations, the creation and endowment of a visiting fellows pro gram, and the stabilization of budget problems all of which would seem to pave the way nicely for him to move across the river and begin the entire process once again at roY2 Beacon Street. Educated at WilliafUS College, Oxford, and Princeton, Mr. Wendorf came to Harvard from Northwestern University, where he served as profes sor of English and art history. While at Northwestern, he also served as associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences. His many publications include The Elements of Life: Biography and Portrait Painting in Stuart and Georgian England (r990), and his most recent work, Sir joshua Reynolds: The Painter in Society (Harvard University Press, I996). He is presently working on a book devoted to encounters between paint ing and literature, with chapters on Piranesi, Stubbs, and Rossetti. Mr. Wendorf will give his first Athen£Eum lectures on the topic of Sir Joshua on r8 and 20 March, at 6:oo p.m. (see "In the Gallery," below). 2 RicHARD WENDORF, the Athen~um's eleventh Director and Librarian. Photo by Diane Asseo Grilliches. The new Director is welcoming guests in the customary fourth floor Director's office, which has acquired a rich and vibrant new coat of paint (a touch of Wedg wood, a touch of Prussian blue), and he has become delightfully visible throughout the building, so far doing everything from serving drinks on the trustee bus trip to Connecticut, to giving his two children an insider's view of Silhouette Day. He is deeply concerned about the future of the Athen~um, and intends to "reach out vig orously and broadly to the Boston community ... to appeal to a much broader range of constituencies than this library has before." He encourages all members to intro duce themselves if they encounter him in the building and readers are destined to find him almost anywhere! We're Almost On-Line! Head of Cataloguing and Automation Bob Kruse reports that after considering systems from five vendors, the Athen~um has selected a test database of the Voyager automated library system, produced by Endeavor Information Systems, which we be lieve is the most powerful, flexible, and easy to use of all the systems considered. The conversion of the card catalogues to machine-readable form is now almost complete, and we expect to begin using the system for the staff functions of cataloguing and ac quisitions by the end of March. We anticipate having the on-line public access cata logue available for reader use by the end of April. When that time comes, readers will be encouraged to attend training sessions, which will be offered to assist readers in learning how to use the new catalogue. Read ers will receive sign-up notices for group sessions, and individual instruction will also be offered for those who are interested. Automated book circulation will follow later in the year, after the task of bar coding the books in the circulating collection has been completed. Access to our collections from remote computers will also be available some months after the on-line public access catalogue is in use. A Security Reminder In anticipation of the expected increase in the number of visitors to the Athenceum now that the new sign has been installed on our doorstep and our book catalogue is about to go on-line, readers should be aware that the staff of the Athenceum will be enforcing security regulations that have, in fact, been on the books for some years now. We hope that readers will be sympathetic to our renewed efforts to keep a careful eye on the building and collections that mean so much to us all. Effective immediately, readers will be asked to produce a membership card upon entering the building, both as a security check and for the benefit of some new mem bers of the security staff who may not be familiar with regular users. For those of you who over the year have misplaced that bit of identification, let us know and a new one will promptly be sped to your mailbox. To protect our library materials and art collections, we also ask that no food or drink be carried into any part of the building except the second and fifth floor terraces. Most readers are by now accustomed to leaving packages, briefcases, oversized purses, and other similar items with the secu rity guard; this policy will continue. The security guard will also be required to ex amine all material being taken out of the building by readers and staff members. We appreciate past cooperation by members in our attempts to care for our col lections, and hope for your understanding in these current efforts. The Twenty-First Century Fund Update The National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant to the Athenceum of $425,000, awarded in December, will assist immeasurably in keeping the library on-line, ensuring that members will be able to search other library collections in in ternational databases and that our own holdings will be fully accessible to anyone in the world. The grant will help to endow the position of Head of Cataloguing and Automation that's Bob Kruse (see above)! Remaining financial support for the po sition must be raised to match the NEH Challenge grant three to one, requiring (by quick figuring) $I,275,000 over the next several years. Knowing how important the automated capacity is to the future strength of the library, friends have to date 4 pledged almost half of the amount required, with some $675,000 still needed. Those interested in helping may direct an Annual Appeal gift to the match, or make out right gifts as well. Please call Joan Nordell in the Fund office (227-0270, ext. 256) for further information. The john Bromfield Society Trustees G. d'Andelot Belin and Bayard Henry, Bromfield Society co-chairs, want members to know that they will receive a spring mailing about The Bromfield Soci ety, designed to enlighten those who would like to know the best ways to include the Athenceum in their estate plans. Director Richard Wendorf will forward a new book let on the Society, which will include information about specific programs for planned giving (which benefits both the library and thoughtful donors). Members who wish to make gifts to the Athenceum will find that they are able to give more than they thought because of the excellent tax advantages connected with planned gifts. Please call Joan Nordell in the Fund office of you have any questions in the meantime.• Athent£um and Antiquarian Society Collaborate on Lithography Exhibition Lithography, the youngest of the classic printmaking techniques, was invented more or less by accident at the end of the eighteenth century, when the Bavarian Alois Senefelder made a hasty copy of a laundry list on a limestone slab, but within decades it became the medium favored for much of the artistic and most of the commercial work produced in the nineteenth century. To honor the bicentennial anniversary of this auspicious invention, Sally Pierce, the Athenceum's curator of prints, and her col leagues Catharina Slautterback of the Athenceum and Georgia Barnhill of the Amer ican Antiquarian Society, have prepared an extraordinary exhibition of lithographs from the first decade of printmaking, featuring works from both the Athenceum's col lection and also from the important holdings at the Antiquarian Society. The exhibi tion will open on Thursday, 17 April, and will run through 20 June, with an opening reception on 17 April from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. To complement the exhibition, the Athenceum is publishing an illustrated cata logue, Early American Lithography: Images to I8JO, with an essay by Sally Pierce chart ing the growth of lithography in America, and a fully annotated checklist by Catha rina Slautterback and Georgia Barnhill that provides valuable information about early American lithographers and their role in the creation of a new American culture. The book will be available for purchase at the Athenceum gift shop. Second Floor Events April, May, and] une will be busy on the second floor as spring begins to liven up the air. On Thursday, 3 April, a new series, "Noon Music," will premiere with a recital (at noon, of course) by Olav Chris Henricksen (lure), and Carol Lewis (viol).