News briefs

06 December 00

A holiday-season reminder on personal mail protocol
As the holiday season approaches, Mail Services would like to remind campus staff of the protocol for sending and receiving personal mail.

Any personal package sent through the Postal Service to a campus address will be delivered to Mail Services (not to the department) and the addressee will receive a notice for pickup.

Stamped personal mail (such as holiday greeting cards) should not be put in departmental outgoing mail bins. Instead, deposit such mail, along with any stamped department mail, in a U.S. Postal Service collection box.

Campus fund-raising solicitations and invitations to formal events, however, may be included with departmental outgoing mail. For information, call Mail Services Operations Manager Kay Ingle at 643-6403.

Bancroft Library adds collection on Beat poet
Bancroft Library archivists are busy cataloging 20 years' worth of notebooks filled with the verse, illustrations and notes of Beat poet and Zen monk Philip Whalen.

Librarians are combing through the contents of nine overstuffed boxes of journals, posters, correspondence, photos and writings, as well as 77-year-old Whalen's personal library. With Whalen's permission, the materials were retrieved by the Bancroft staff from the basement of a San Francisco house where Whalen stored his work.

Whalen is author of more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction, commentary and interviews. The Whalen collection, highlighted by his calligraphic writing and illustrations, complements the library's archival material of San Francisco Poet Laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti, owner of the City Lights Bookstore and publishing company. Ferlinghetti encouraged the disillusioned and rebellious Beats who emerged in the 1950s.