Archived Articles — Archive for January 2007

In one of its most significant rare manuscript acquisitions of recent years, the Library has just added an original musical score by influential American composer John Cage to its collection. The work, Daughters of the Lonesome Isle, is a piece composed by Cage in 1945 for dancer Jean Erdman, who was a leading figure in American modern dance, a collaborator with both Cage and Merce Cunningham, and a featured dancer in the Martha Graham Dance Company.

“This manuscript is an extraordinarily important addition to the materials we already have in our John Cage Collection,” says Music Library Head D.J. Hoek. The Library’s Cage Collection is the largest repository of Cage’s correspondence and ephemera anywhere in the world. It includes many of the original manuscripts by other composers that Cage collected, but only a handful of his own compositions.

When word of the Library’s new online collection of antique African maps was released to the media on January 8th, public response was immediate—and worldwide. BBC radio, CNN, and Voice of America all taped interviews with Herskovits Library Curator David Easterbrook. “I am fascinated by the fact that not only was the response immediate but that it was from sources focused on delivering news worldwide, not merely within the US,” David says. “The CNN call, for example, came from CNN in London. So far as I am aware the only purely domestic interest to date came from The Daily Northwestern.”

“This is our most valuable map collection,” says Beth Clausen, head of Government and Geographic Information and Data Services, “and during the seven years we’ve had it all locked up in our drawers, maybe two or three people have asked to see them. That’s the beauty of digitization, because since this was announced, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of hits on the web site.”

“One of the finest of all libraries must surely be the Charles Deering Library at Northwestern University outside Chicago, combining as it does the beauty of age with absolute newness and every modern equipment, and possessing an excellent collection of books,” observed British tourist Catherine Marsh in 1933. Having come to the US to see the World’s Fair in Chicago, she also made a point of visiting several distinguished contemporary American libraries, and her notes about these visits, kept in longhand in two journals, are excerpted in the January 2007 issue of American Libraries.

“The students are well cared-for," Marsh observed, "but the rules are strict. A borrower who obtains permission to take a book out of the building for a night pays increasing fines for each hour it is retained overdue.”

Also, regarding the Library’s cutting-edge technology and cushy professional perks: “There is an ingenious contrivance for obtaining books from other departments. The usual ‘order’ or ‘call’ slip is filled in and given to an assistant, who puts it into a machine and rings a bell. Very quickly the book is shot forth from a kind of lift, where receptacles are constantly ascending and descending. The staff are fortunate in having a large room for meetings or meals, a luxuriously appointed kitchen, and even a bedroom.”

Registered ALA members can read the entire article online.

A search committee, chaired by Harriet Lightman, has been formed to find a new East Asian Studies Librarian. This is a new position, reflecting shifts in University priorities and the special needs and problems of identifying and processing materials in East Asian Studies, both in Asian and in Western European languages. The members of the search committee are:

Kathleen Bethel (Reference)
Russ Clement (Art)
Catherine Grove (MARC)
Harriet Lightman (Collection Management)
Prof. Brook Ziporyn (Religion Department)

Peter Devlin belongs to the search committee as an ex officio member.

A vacancy announcement will be distributed both internally and nationally once it has been finalized by the search committee and by Library Personnel.

Jeff Garrett