Library News for the Faculty

Recent Acquisitions throughout the Library

Libraries across campus continue to add new acquisitions to their collections throughout the academic year; a few highlights are described below.

Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library
UC and UCLA purchases have expanded the scope of BIOSIS Previews and Zoological Record.

Users can now access online the back files of BIOSIS Previews, a database providing access to journal articles, reports, meeting proceedings, patents, etc. in biology and life sciences, and the back files of Biological Abstracts print volumes from 1926 to 1968.

Users also now have access to the online archives of Zoological Record, a database of animal biology and biodiversity research literature, which includes the full Zoological Record print file from 1864 to 1977.

The library also purchased Plastic Surgery, edited by Stephen J. Mathes (Saunders Elsevier, 2006), an important eight-volume monographic set. Individual illustrated volumes focus on the head and neck; pediatric plastic surgery; tumors of the head, neck, and skin; the trunk and lower extremities; and the hands and upper limbs.

Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library
The East Asian Library has purchased several major items and also received an extensive gift collection.

Bai nian dian ying, bai nian shou cang [A hundred years of motion pictures, a hundred years of collection] (China Motion Picture Press 2006) comprises a comprehensive review of China's motion picture history from 1905 to 2005 as represented by one hundred films. It includes film and documentary DVDs, books of the selected films, soundtrack and song CDs, scores, and posters.

Fujin sansei kankeishi shiryo 1918-46 [Sources on history related to women's right to vote, 1918-46], edited by Ichikawa Fusae Kinenkai (Nihon Tosho Senta, 2005), fills fifty-three microfilm reels with thousands of primary source materials including pamphlets, posters, letters, diaries, and documents originally collected by Fusen Kakutoku Domei, an organization of Japanese women campaigning for the right to vote with which Ichikawa Fusae, a feminist, politician, and leader of the prewar women's suffrage movement in Japan, was heavily involved. This acquisition was supported by Japan Alumni Association.

Choson hyangto taebaekkwa [Encyclopedia of North Korean Geography and Culture] (Pyonghwa Munje Yonguso, 2005) is the first official encyclopedia to be published about North Korean geography and culture since the division of the Korean peninsula. It is based on the North Korean official survey of all its regions and contains nearly three hundred and fifty thousand entries as well as pictures and maps.

The library also received a donation of more than twenty-six hundred volumes of Japanese books that belonged to the late Jiro Tokuyama (1919-2001), former director of the Nomura School of Advanced Management and executive vice president of Nomura Research Institute Ltd. in Japan. The collection is especially strong in business management, comparative cultures, and international relations from 1950s to 2000.

Charles E. Young Research Library
The library recently licensed access to American Broadsides and Ephemera, Series I, 1760-1900. Based on the American Antiquarian Society's landmark collection, this full-color digital edition offers fully searchable facsimile images of approximately fifteen thousand broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and fifteen thousand pieces of ephemera printed between 1760 and 1900.

For its Slavic collections, the library has acquired the rare, six-volume set Chronologische Geschichte Böhmens (Leipzig, 1770-1801), which covers the history of Bohemia. Donated by Dany Brodzinski of the Master's College in Santa Clarita, the set will be housed in the library's department of special collections.

The library has licensed online access to two major Russian journals. Vestnik Evropy (1802-30) [Herald of Europe] Online, an influential, pre-revolutionary journal and one of the first Russian literary and political journals, played a significant role in the development of Russian literature as well as social thought. Published in Moscow from 1802 to 1830, it was founded by the author and historian Nikolay Karamzin and counted among its contributors poets Zhukovsky, Derzhavin, Vyazemsky, and Batyushkov; it also published the first poems of Aleksandr Pushkin in 1814. The journal's Old Russian is being adapted into modern Russian orthography with support from the Institute of Russian Language in Moscow. The estimated date of completion is early 2007.

Voprosy Literatury (1957-present) [Issues of Literature] Online, an influential, authoritative journal of literary criticism and literature studies, was founded after the death of Joseph Stalin and the denunciation of his rule and the "thaw" in USSR cultural life; it continues to this day. Famous for publishing selections from Russian writers prohibited during the Soviet period, it is popular among Russian intelligentsia. The journal presents articles and roundtable discussions on multifaceted issues of the development of Russian and world literature as well as previously classified documents from archives and translations from foreign luminaries and major figures of the past. The estimated date of completion is early 2007.

The Research Library Department of Special Collections has acquired a collection of correspondence from former UCLA university librarian Lawrence Clark Powell to Frances Ring, writer and former editor of Westways Magazine and, early in her career, the personal secretary of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The department has also acquired a number of interesting books. Stories of Black Folk for Little Folk by Bessie Landrum (Atlanta, 1923) is a well-loved copy of a scarce children's book containing short biographical sketches of seventeen famous persons of African descent. Nothing is known about the author or her racial identity; the publisher, A. B. Caldwell, who was white, compiled and published seven state-by-state volumes of prominent African Americans.

Select Novels, nine Victorian novels bound in two volumes (New York and Boston, undated), is an important addition to the Sadleir Collection of popular Victorian fiction. This nicely bound set contains popular but difficult-to-find novels of the Victorian era as well as a beautiful frontispiece engraving and thirty-five illustrations.

For its collection of artists' books, the department acquired Wendy Fernstrum's Literary Essences (fernwerks press [sic], 2005). According to the artist, this book is a step-by-step guide to the use of literary essences as natural health remedies for emotional and spiritual well-being. In a handmade clamshell box are twenty-six vials of "literary essence," each of which contains lozenge-sized circles allegedly punched from the pages of twenty-six works of literature; the circles have been soaked in a solution that "captures the precise and particular odor of that work." A set of diagnostic cards that identify the "positive qualities" and "patterns of imbalance" connected with each work are included.

Master book artist Julie Chen's latest book, Full Circle (Flying Fish Press, 2006), offers the sensation of being caught up in something at once momentous and personal. An elegantly bound box opens to reveal a spinning wheel that the reader controls and rotates, which points out successive stations along a journey of discovery. The contents of the book are viewed by turning the wheel and pausing wherever text and image are centered in four windows. Small drawers opened by tabs open to reveal three-dimensional diagrams of the mind and heart in relation to one another.

For its Aldine collection the department acquired Oratio Jo. Jacobi Crotti iureconsulti Cremonensis: qua deflet Nicolaum Lucarus oratores facundissimum ... (Pavia, 1518) by Giovanni Giacomo Crotti, a funeral oration in praise of the humanist writer and editor Niccolò Lucaro of Cremona. It is particularly notable for its Aldine connection: Crotti lists the names of many of Lucaro's friends and collaborators who were part of the important circle of humanists and artists who helped foster the rich ferment of the Italian Renaissance, including scholars Giorgio Merula, Pomponio Leto, Filippo Beroaldo, and Aldus Manutius, who printed Lucaro's books. This is the only edition of this text, and only five copies are known to exist.

The department may have acquired the only recorded copy of Officium (Venice: Bernardino Stagnino, 1520), an unknown and unrecorded edition of the first in a series of miniature volumes published by Stagnino; to date, only three other published works of his have been recorded. Stagnino, who belonged to the distinguished Giolito de' Ferrari da Trino family of printers and was considered a peer of Aldus Manutius, was noted for his innovative use of miniature sizes, attention to scholarship, and commitment to the modern literature of his day.

Sandra Shapiro has donated her considerable collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century children's books, which includes charming editions of Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Story of a Bad Boy (1869) and William O. Stoddard's The Lives of Presidents (1883) as well as illustrated books for the very young, puzzles, and games. She has also donated historical records from her father's Hollywood-based printing company, including sample sheets, publicity, and examples of the firm's work, along with a selection of his books on magic and conjuring.

Dr. Ralph Levinson, an opthalmologist and professor at the Jules Stein Eye Institute, and his wife, Susan, have donated a valuable collection of historical material relating to the Dreyfus Affair to the department and the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. Over the past decade the Levinsons have collected books, newspapers, and other documents about the renowned case of French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was falsely accused of espionage in 1894 and whose case became a source of intense controversy and public attention in France and elsewhere and generated a huge body of journalistic writing. The collection contains scarce first editions of books about the case as well as contemporary journals, pamphlets, and ephemera, including a very scarce special issue of the British journal The Graphic entitled "Dreyfus the Martyr, recorded by pen and pencil." In addition to the collection, the Levinsons have also contributed funds for an undergraduate prize at UCLA to be awarded for the best essay exploring the way in which intolerance has been embraced and sanctioned by a state or other authority, then directed against individuals or members of a group.