Oberlin College Library Perspectives

A Newsletter of the Oberlin College

Number 11, February, 1995

Purchases with Friends Funds

In November 1994 the Friends Acquisitions Committee authorized the use of Friends of the Library funds to acquire a variety of resources that will improve support for selected curricular areas and generally enhance the Library's collections. Here is a summary by category of the most recent Friends purchases:

New Curricular Areas ($2,500)

Professor David Egloff is teaching a new course focusing on moral dilemmas created by the practice of modern medicine. Friends funds will provide support for acquiring library materials in this area.
Professor Francesco Melfi, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies Program, is new to the Oberlin faculty and began offering some new courses in the Fall of 1994. Materials on Hebrew language and literature (primarily in English, with some in Hebrew and Yiddish) are needed to support these courses.

Painting ($300)

Friends Acquisitions Committee members approved $300 toward the purchase of a watercolor painting by Alonzo Pease, "View of Oberlin."

Anti-Slavery Materials ($1,000)

These funds will permit continued acquisitions in an area that historically has been a strength of Oberlin's library collection. Two prior Friends allocations have been used to purchase a number of significant anti-slavery titles.

Literary First Editions ($1,000)

The Friends' purchase in 1993 of Aphra Behn's Poems Upon Several Occasions (1684) has been greatly appreciated by faculty and students in the English Department. This further allocation will be used to purchase other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century first editions.

Reference Titles ($6910)

Friends funds were approved for the purchase of the following reference sets: Dictionary of Art (34 vols., 1994- , the new comprehensive, definitive English language reference encyclopedia of art and art history); The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (10 vols., 1994); Statistical Reference Index 1990-1993 Cumulative Index (1994, a basic source for indexing of statistical data published by state governments, universities, associations, institutes, and other business and research organizations).

Research Collection on Contemporary Art ($5,000)

The Harley-Terra Candella Archive of Mail Art and Artistamps is a major archive documenting the Mail Art movement. Gathered over twenty years by Harley, an artist who formerly lived in Oberlin, the collection represents 1,250 artists from sixty countries in a variety of media. It documents a unique artistic movement, also known as Stamp or Correspondence Art, which was developed outside of the art gallery system. The collection includes hundreds of artists stamps, covers (envelopes), posters, prints, photographs, collages, and other original works of art. It has been purchased with the strong support of the Art Department and the Allen Memorial Art Museum under a two-year purchase agreement.

Table of Contents Library Perspectives, no. 11

Return to What's New at the Oberlin College Library

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

This page is maintained by the Oberlin College Library

Last updated: 9 Feb. 1995