College library rankings

JWT86
Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:58:03 +0000

JWT86: what do you mean by “cultural significance”?



This is of course very difficult to quantify, but in terms of just the vastness of primary source material of many of the greatest authors and playrights, really its closest equivalents in the US are the Library of Congress and New York Public Library.



And what does decades-old news have to do with today?



That’s kind of my point, UT was ALREADY acknowledged as one of the greatest libraries in the world back in the 70s and has continued to outpace other US libraries in rare/primary source material since then.



I still would choose Yale’s or Harvard’s libraries over UT’s any day…



You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. But if you want to see primary source material (manuscripts, correspondence, etc.) of some of the greatest authors, playrights, historical figures, photographers, etc. in one place, you’re just not going to find it at Harvard or Yale.

Some quotes from the web:



“Unquestionably, it’s the second best collection of English literature after the British Library,” Ferdinand Mount, editor of London’s Times Literary Supplement, said during a recent visit to the Ransom Center.

The rapid influx of cultural resources, which matched or bettered such collections at Harvard and Yale universities in comparable material, was dubbed “instant ivy” by journalist Nicholas Basbanes in his 1995 book about bibliomania, “A Gentle Madness.” “Before anybody realized what we were doing, we built a library that cannot be matched anywhere,” former center Director Warren Roberts told Basbanes.

In 1970, Anthony Hobson’s book “Great Libraries” shocked the bibliophile world by ranking the center with 32 of the world’s greatest archival institutions.

“There’s a good deal of awe at the speed at which the Ransom has been able to build such extensive collections by the dint of a lot of energy and a good deal of money,” said Jean Ashton, director of the rare books and manuscript library at Columbia University. “We admire it and are more than a little bit jealous.”

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Increasingly, Princeton curators have found themselves standing glumly on the sidelines. “Because we don’t have a lot of money, dealers don’t even bother to come,” says Primer.

Horowitz confirms that. He did not call Princeton about the Mailer papers. Why bother? He knew that Princeton almost certainly would not match the kind of money he could expect to get from the Ransom Center. Horowitz believes it’s a simple difference of priorities. “At Texas,” he says, “they have identified the pursuit of literary scholarship through original manuscripts as a way of being in the world. Princeton, for whatever reason, does not seem to share this sentiment.”

Make no mistake: Staley is near the top of many a dealer’s speed dial. Not only does the Ransom Center have extremely deep pockets, its money has enabled Staley to build a superb collection, cared for by 100 curators and extensive conservation laboratories.

The Ransom’s awesome holdings, which for some time have exerted something like a gravitational pull on other contemporary authors, make it more likely that in the future other writers will want to be part of this amazing collection. This makes perfect sense: Who wants to be a library’s lone big writer when you might be in the thick of things?

The Ransom Center, which was founded in 1957, has pockets as deep as Texas is big, with much of it coming from oil.

It has paid off. Not only does the Ransom possess treasures like a Gutenberg Bible (there is one in Scheide’s collection at Firestone) and the first photograph, it competes in countless other fields, driving up prices for all. “Our strongest area is probably in the British [writers],” says Staley, sounding positively jovial. “We have Julian Barnes, we have Penelope Lively, Penelope Fitzgerald. Tom Stoppard’s papers are here. So are David Hare’s. The Booker nominations came out yesterday, and three of the nominees are already in our archive.”

And it’s not just literary properties that make the Ransom such a juggernaut: In 2003 the center paid $5 million for the Watergate papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. There’s no ignoring the Ransom’s influence on the market. That $5 million price tag has upped the ante for political papers. “There are now political figures who are approaching me about paying for their papers,” says Primer. “One called recently — I can’t say who it is — who believes his papers are worth $1 million.”

[url=PAW November 16, 2005: Features]PAW November 16, 2005: Features](http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/ransom/17mainransom.html)

"How important is the Carlton Lake Collection [at UT-Austin’s Ransom Humanities Research Center]? Florence de Lussy, conservateur en chef de manuscrits at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, had a straightforward answer… “Remarkable,” she said… “In certain areas, for example Paul Valery, the most important writer in 20th century France, you must go to Texas if you want to study the man thoroughly… Consequently, the Carlton Lake Collection is essential, and very well known here in France. I wish it were here and not there.”


from “A Gentle Madness”, Nicholas Basbanes


"Ranked among the top three American cultural archives of its kind — after the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library — the Ransom’s $1 billion collection contains 40 million rare books, manuscripts, photographs and works of art. The accumulation of so many gems, most collected during a 13-year period encompassing the 1960s, was attended by a fair amount of controversy. Critics abroad say the center drained Europe of its cultural heritage and sent it to Texas. "

"Scholars know the Ransom Center as one of the world’s pre-eminent research libraries… Though its holdings are appraised at more than $1 billion, much of its true value may lie in its ability to inspire the imagination. "

“They’re in the very top tier in the United States, which means they’re top-tier internationally as well,” said Barbara Shailor, director of the Beneicke Library at Yale. “They don’t specialize the way the Morgan Library or the Getty Museum do. They’re strong overall. They excel in so many ways.”

“There’s nowhere like it in the U.S.A., and its only rival for 20th-century material in Britain is the British Library,” said Ferdinand Mount, a former editor of The Times Literary Supplement of London who spoke at the Ransom Center recently. “I’m trying to wake up some zest from the British Library. They have the money but they’re not as proactive. The Texas people are very quick.”

A London newspaper, The Independent, has watched what it calls “the great trans-Atlantic manuscript race” with dismay. It warned in one article that “in a generation’s time, British scholars wishing to research the lives of our leading contemporary writers will be forced to travel to Texas.” In another article it lamented that whenever a desirable archive appears on the market, “American institutions like the University of Texas can just call up an oil-rich benefactor and ask him to put a check in the post.”

from “Lifting the Lid on a Treasure Chest”, STEPHEN KINZER, The New York Times (2/4/2003)



I don’t see why it has to be so shocking that a public university can have a greater library than Harvard or Yale. It’s really a shame that since UT is a large public school in the South, such an important world archive is known more by scholars around the world than the general US public.