Thursday, November 08, 2007

Grants, Acquisitions &c.

- The Archives and Rare Books Library at the University of Cincinnati has received a $200,000 grant from the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation. The funds will be used for "facility and furnishing upgrades."

- The University of Calgary has purchased a collection of four early texts of Biblical scholarship by Nicholas of Lyra, which the university librarian called "probably the most famous early comment on the Bible." The library paid $45,000 for the collection.

- Hamilton College was awarded the Outstanding Project for 2007 prize from the Communal Societies Association for its "digitization of the Shaker periodical, variously titled The Shaker, Shaker and Shakeress, The Shaker Manifesto and The Manifesto. This publication ran from 1871 until 1899 and shared religious and political opinions between Shaker communities from Maine to Kentucky."

- An 8-centimeter fragment of a parchment Bible, the "1087-year-old Aleppo Codex[,] will be given to a representative of the Ben Zvi Institute in Jerusalem on Thursday, following 18 years during which Israeli scholars tried to retrieve it from businessman Sam Sabbagh," Haaretz reports. The small fragment was saved from a burning synagogue in 1947. Much more background on the text at the linked article.

- British fashion mogul Tom Tar Singh has donated 'to the Indian nation' a collection of Gandhi letters he purchased at Sotheby's earlier this year (for more than $90,000). The transfer was made on Monday "
at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), which became [the collection's] official recipients. The manuscripts, which include a series of articles, postcards and letters by Gandhi, were received by Dr Karan Singh, Chairman of the Executive Council, NMML."

- Two leather-bound photo albums showing art looted by the Nazis as they ravaged Europe during the early years of World War II have been given to the U.S. National Archives. The albums "
contain photos from which Hitler and his curators could choose art for the Fuhrer's art museum in Linz." Archivist of the United States Alan Weinstein said the albums could help researchers locate looted works of art which are still missing. They "were found in the attic of the heirs of a US soldier who was stationed in the Berchtesgarden area of Germany at the end of the war in 1945," and were donated to the Archives by Robert Edsel, president of the Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art.