Opening the doors to his library is important to Tim Pyatt, the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and head of The Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State's University Park campus. This past spring he created research travel awards using funding from his endowed position and from a recent gift in memory of Helen F. Faust. Seeing the awards as an opportunity to showcase the wealth of materials in the library, he said, "I see travel grants as a great way to promote use and disseminate information about our collections."
The award winners of the successful initiative included researchers from as far away as England as well as Texas, New York, Virginia and Iowa. The winners will visit the Special Collections Library between June and August of this year, and they include:
Dorothy Foehr Huck award winners:
-- Christine Garwood, University of Hertfordshire, making extensive use of Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection alongside contextual material in the Science Fiction collection and Hostetler and Huntingdon collections on the Hutterites and Amish.
-- Kyle Jensen, University of North Texas, using the newest addition to the Kenneth Burke papers.
-- Gwen Kay, SUNY Oswego, examining the change in mission, vision and name from the College of Home Economics to Human Development to Health and Human Development.
-- Rachel Pierce, University of Virginia, using the "A Few Good Women" oral history collection among other collections, for the impact of the women's liberation movement on culture.
The Helen F. Faust Women Writers award winner is Taryne Jade Taylor, University of Iowa, using the Arthur O. Lewis Utopia Collection and other related materials, for a study of 19th century feminist utopias.
Additional details are available at www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/speccolls/travel.html or call Doris Malkmus at 814-865-7931. For an interview with Pyatt, see www.rps.psu.edu/indepth/special_collections.html. For more information, contact Catherine Grigor at 814-863-4240 or cqg3@psu.edu.