<p>"But, since you mention it, do you have any numbers to prove what you say about UT-Austin?? I just want to know how it compares to say, Cornell, whose website states: "The Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections includes 300,000 printed volumes, more than 70 million manuscripts, and another million photographs, paintings, prints, and other visual media""</p>
<p>Yes... UT-Austin's Humanities library has been very controversial since the 1960s when massive sums were used to buy up literally every scrap of 19th and 20th century British manuscripts. British institutions could not afford to keep up with the lavish spending of American institutions, with UT-Austin in the lead. The London Independent, along with the rest of the British press literally have singled out UT for years for "absconding with Britain's cultural heritage." Basically, British tax laws made it more favorable for British authors to sell their works and British cultural institutions didn't have the wealth of their American counterparts. There are many sources where you can read of UT's massive spending, especially in the decades of the 1950s-1970s, which resulted in Austin having one of the Greatest libraries in the world.</p>
<p>For starters:
"Great Libraries" by Anthony Hobson. Only a handful of American libraries were included in the list of the world's greatest libraries - the LOC, NY Public Library, Huntington, Harvard, Yale, and UT-Austin.</p>
<p>"A Gentle Madness" by Nicholas Basbanes - an entire chapter devoted to what UT accomplished</p>
<p>An excellent summary of the Ransom and controversies it generated:
<a href="http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/ransom/17mainransom.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.statesman.com/specialreports/content/specialreports/ransom/17mainransom.html</a></p>
<p>"A feeling of reverence overwhelmed Alan Tannenbaum. Alone in a gallery on the University of Texas campus, the IBM software engineer ran his eyes over a glass case containing a small, red book.</p>
<p>"There's always something people would die to have," said Tannenbaum. He was looking at a first edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," part of a Ransom Center exhibit about Lewis Carroll, the author, mathematician and photographer. "I knew this priceless book was somewhere in the center, but to be alone with it was more than I could absorb that early morning."</p>
<p>The object of Tannenbaum's affection, an 1865 edition of "Alice" in very good condition, survived suppression by Carroll and his illustrator, John Tenniel, who disliked the printing quality. Donated to a children's hospital by Carroll, the book traveled to India, where it was purchased for the equivalent of 30 cents, and finally was sold at a London auction to an American mathematician, whose library landed it in the middle of Texas.</p>
<p>Today, the "India Alice," one of 23 surviving copies of the first edition, is valued at almost $1 million.</p>
<p>It's just one treasure in the vast trove of the Harry H. Ransom Humanities Research Center at UT. 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. </p>
<p>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. Massive spending — estimated as high as $55 million in the center's first decade — from secret accounts contributed to the downfall of two university leaders, Harry Huntt Ransom, founder of the archives, and UT President Stephen Spurr.</p>
<p>""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.""</p>
<p>and a good discussion of Princeton's inability to compete:
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Epaw/archive_new/PAW05-06/05-1116/features_manuscript.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW05-06/05-1116/features_manuscript.html</a></p>
<p>"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.”"</p>
<p>"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." </p>
<p>read all about the collections at the Ransom site:
<a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/</a>
Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2007, the Harry Ransom Center has evolved into a world-renowned cultural institution. The Ransom Center houses the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1455), the First Photograph (ca. 1826), film archives of David O. Selznick and Robert De Niro, paintings by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and major manuscript collections of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Tennessee Williams, and Norman Mailer, to name but a few of its treasures. The Center presents numerous public exhibitions and events featuring materials from its rich holdings and is used extensively for research by students and scholars from around the world...The Center's collections contain over 36 million leaves of manuscripts, over one million rare books, five million photographs, three thousand pieces of historical photographic equipment, and 100,000 works of art, in addition to major holdings in theater arts and film. </p>
<p>And what's really fascinating is this is just one library at UT!! UT's Benson Latin American collection, on the other side of campus, is one of the world's largest collections of Latin American manuscripts and literature. UT's new Blanton art museum is now the largest university art museum on any American campus as well, with one of the largest collections of Renaissance and Baroque art outside of Europe, as well as one of the largest contemporary Latin American collections in the world.</p>
<p>Cornell is just really not in the same league... it's about quality as well as quantity. Cornell's collecting has not generated anywhere near the level of controversy UT-Austin generated.</p>